The Wild Child

by Casey Watson

  I was on my knees at the time, packing up the picnic things, which made it easier, given his diminutive size. He also almost knocked me for six, literally.

  ‘Well, well,’ I said, when he released me and looked self-consciously at me through his fringe. ‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’

  He knelt down and started helping me. ‘Nuffing,’ he said. ‘Well, nuffing in particular.’ He sat back on his heels and shrugged. ‘I dunno. I just love being with you lot,’ he said. ‘I never get to do stuff like this. Well, ’cept with school and then it’s mega-boring.’ He did one of his heavy sighs. ‘I wish I didn’t have to go tomorrow. I wish I could stay.’

  I grinned at him, my heart melting, quite without my telling it to. ‘Well, there’s a turn-up,’ I said. ‘I thought we were losers. And what about all those bodies under the floorboards, eh?’

  ‘Even with the bodies under the floorboards,’ he said, leaping up again, seemingly embarrassed by what he’d said now. Which kind of let me off the hook, because I really didn’t know what to say.

  We were all exhausted by the time we got home, not least because of the many miles we’d covered, quite apart from anything else and, given that it was Sunday night and Tyler had an early start the following morning, I sent the boys up to get themselves organised while I put Tyler’s trainers in the dryer and Mike emptied out the picnic bag.

  ‘And, seeing as we’ve been so good, Casey,’ Connor chipped in, ‘and seeing as how this will prob’ly be my last night, can I please, please be allowed half an hour to play Xbox with Tyler before bed?’ He looked across at Tyler hopefully. ‘Just for a little while? Nothing naughty or anything. Just the footie game? Please?’

  Tyler didn’t seem that fussed – he was probably more interested in getting packed and chatting to his mate Denver, I reckoned – but he nodded. And with Connor’s small hands pressed together as if in prayer, how could I say no?

  ‘Go on, then,’ I said, turning back to the sodden trainers, ‘but I warn you, bath first and then I’ll be up to turn everything off in half an hour, so chop chop! You best be quick, hadn’t you?’

  They both scooted off and, once we’d finished off the chores, Mike and I went for a brief but welcome sit-down. We’d not yet heard from EDT about what was going to happen in the morning, but I was feeling pretty relaxed about that now and I wondered if Mike was, too. I told him what Connor had said about wishing he could stay with us.

  Mike lowered the volume on the TV he’d only just switched on. ‘Casey, are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ he asked me.

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ I replied. ‘I’m simply telling you what he said. Though I have to say, now that he’s settling down a bit, it does seem a bit unfair to shoo him out the door after just one weekend. Not if he’s only going to be shipped off to some God-forsaken unit somewhere. How’s that going to help him?’

  ‘Love, have you forgotten that this kid attacked his social worker with an iron bar?’

  He was astute, Mike, I had to give him that. Because I hadn’t forgotten – of course I hadn’t – but, on the other hand, I sort of had. It was just becoming so difficult to reconcile the story we’d been told early the previous morning with the slip of a little lad who was currently in the bath upstairs and about whom I was in the middle of a big reassessment. Perhaps the outlook didn’t need to be so bleak for him after all.

  Mike sighed, obviously reading my mind. ‘Love, it’s out of our hands anyway. And it’s alright having one good day, but we have to think about Tyler, too. Besides that, my guess is that they already have somewhere for him. If they hadn’t, I’m pretty sure they would have been on the phone by now, buttering us up.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘but you know what’s likely to happen. They’ll just take him off us and bung him anywhere they can find a space. I just think that what with Tyler heading off to footie tomorrow, it’s not like it would be a problem for us to hang on to him for a couple more days. You’ll be at work anyway and I’m just thinking –’

  ‘That you can burrow beneath the surface, find out what makes him tick, see something in him that no one else has, do him some good, and –’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to try to do?’ I wanted to know, feeling myself getting chippy.

  ‘Love, there’s nothing wrong with that. I just think it would be madness to go off half-cocked about a child you know so little about. Committing to stuff. Getting his hopes up. You haven’t said anything to him, have you?’ he asked, suddenly looking alarmed.

  I shook my head. ‘No, of course not!’ I said. ‘And before you ask, I haven’t said anything to Tyler either.’

  ‘Good,’ Mike said. ‘Because you can’t think about doing anything till you’ve spoken to him anyway. See how he feels about it. It’s not just what we want. We have to take his feelings into account.’

  I promised I wouldn’t do anything before speaking to him, and once Connor was tucked up in bed I went into Tyler’s room to help him finish off his packing. But before I could bring the subject up, Tyler did himself, and I wondered if Mike wasn’t the only one able to read my mind.

  ‘So he’s going tomorrow then, Connor, is he?’ he asked, as I redistributed his shin pads.

  I nodded. ‘In theory. I’ve not spoken to EDT yet, but yes, love, that’s the plan.’

  ‘They haven’t called you, then? To ask if he could stay with us a bit longer?’

  ‘No, they haven’t,’ I said. ‘I imagine they’ll pick him up mid-morning. Why d’you ask?’

  Tyler glanced at me. ‘I was just wondering,’ he said. ‘You know. He really likes it here now. Really likes it. Did he tell you?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ I said. ‘We seem to be flavour of the month now, don’t we? Bless him. Not that it’s hard. He’s barely ever known a real home up to now, has he?’ I let the thought lie. We both knew that Tyler knew all about how that felt. ‘What a difference a day makes, eh?’ I said eventually. ‘Anyway, we’ll see. But would you like it if he did, then? You know, just for a bit? Till they can find him somewhere long-term? I rather got the impression earlier that you could have cheerfully throttled him.’

  ‘We-ell,’ he admitted. ‘That’s true. I did. But, you know. Whatever,’ he finished, turning back to his case. ‘If you think you should – that you can help him – that’s fine.’

  ‘“Fine”?’ I pressed. ‘Really? Not “if you must”?’

  ‘No, really,’ he said. ‘Honest. It’s fine.’

  Chapter 12

  Having told him how much we loved him, I left Tyler to it, and when I went downstairs again Mike and I talked at length. No, we wouldn’t commit to anything long term – if he was lucky enough to be found a home rather than a children’s home, which was a long shot, Connor really seemed to me to be a boy who needed to be an only child. I might have got a bit misty-eyed about the hand life had dealt him, but I wasn’t stupid. His notes were detailed enough for me to know that just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one agreeable day doesn’t the perfect child make. As Mike had pointed out, this was a boy with a very violent episode under his belt less than 48 hours earlier.

  But a few more days with us might make the difference between him being carted off to a secure unit and being found a placement that might be altogether more positive for him in the long term. I never forgot that the first child Mike and I ever fostered had come with an equally long list of ‘crimes’ and it was either us or be banged up in such a place.

  Our position decided, I wrote up my log and emailed EDT with my thoughts. It was probably too late to phone them – well, to discuss something like this, anyway – but whoever dealt with it first thing could act on it then. I also copied John Fulshaw in, mostly as a box-ticking exercise. He was only due back home from holiday that morning, and I doubted he’d look at it till he returned to work. Which was fine. He really didn’t need to be bothered on this one. My main plan was to see Tyler off first thing i
n the morning, then, when EDT called me, to just clarify that we’d discussed it and that if the plan was to take Connor temporarily to a secure unit, that there was an alternative that would give them the luxury of a few extra days.

  I then went to bed and slept the sleep of the righteous – well, till, about 3 a.m., when something must have woken me.

  I lay in the dark for a few minutes, trying to work out what it was that had pinged me into wakefulness so suddenly. It clearly wasn’t Mike. Curled up on his side, he wasn’t snoring, so it hadn’t been that. Then I heard it again. Indistinct, but definitely there.

  My first thought being Connor, I slipped from under the covers with the intention of going to check on him, but as soon as I opened my bedroom door I could tell that the sound was coming not from Connor’s room but from Tyler’s.

  And it was the sound, to my surprise, of Tyler crying.

  I hurried across, opened the door and then shut it silently behind me.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart!’ I said as I saw him sitting up, clasping his knees, in his bed, ‘What is it, love? What’s the matter?’ I asked him, hurrying to his side.

  He sniffed and shook his head, ‘I’ll be okay, Casey. It’s nothing. Just a … a nightmare, or something.’

  ‘Or something?’ I put my arm around him. ‘Tyler, you know me, love. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. What kind of nightmare? What happened? Bogeymen? Monsters? Dropping your mobile down the toilet? Or something else?’ I clasped him tighter. ‘Come on. Spill.’

  It took Tyler a moment to compose himself. Then he did spill. ‘Do I have to go to the football course tomorrow?’ he asked me tearfully.

  ‘Why ever wouldn’t you want to?’ I asked him gently. ‘You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.’ Then I had a thought. ‘Have you and Denver had a falling out?’ I asked him.

  He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that. I just … I just …’

  ‘What, sweetheart? What is it? Come on. You know you can tell me.’

  He sniffed some more. I could tell he’d been crying for quite a while. ‘I can’t …’

  ‘Yes you can. Anything. Come on. Spit it out.’

  ‘It’s just … it’s just I don’t want to go. I just want to stay here and …’

  Another long pause. ‘And?’

  ‘And make sure he doesn’t …’

  ‘Who doesn’t?’ And then it hit me. ‘Connor?’

  I felt Tyler stiffen then. Felt the burgeoning adolescent muscles tense under his pyjama top. ‘He’s a liar, Casey. You don’t realise!’ Tyler almost spat the words out. And then, bit by bit, out it all came at last. It seemed their little Xbox session hadn’t been that at all. It had been a ‘chat’. About how Connor was going to be moving in with us while he was out of the way. How he knew how to ‘play’ us. How he knew a good thing when he saw one. How he’d soon have us ‘on side’ and be the one we ‘loved best’.

  ‘And he means it, too,’ Tyler finished. ‘You don’t realise, Casey. Me going in that river? That wasn’t an accident. He yanked me in on purpose! Honest, I wouldn’t lie to you –’

  ‘Tyler, I’d never doubt you for a moment. You know that.’

  He sighed miserably. ‘An’ I can’t bear it. To be going off and him standing there all smug, like, waving me off. And still being here when I get back. He’ll ruin everything. He will, Casey. I know you’ve got to do what you’re doing, an’ I know you feel sad for him – an’ I know Mike does as well – but, honest, he’ll ruin everything. I know he will!’

  I held him tight and soothed him, feeling in five kinds of shock, which was ridiculous. That an eight-year-old child could pull the wool over my eyes so completely. That I could be so blind as to not notice how stressed Tyler had been. That I’d the confidence – no, the arrogance – to forget all my training, and think I could swoop in and be bloody superwoman where others had failed.

  I comforted him and reassured him and promised him things would be fine. That he could go off with Denver secure in the knowledge that when he returned things would be back to normal.

  I thought about my log and the email I’d already sent, and it took a while for me to settle down again. All I had to do now was expedite it, knowing even as I thought it that EDT might well have already acted upon my message, i.e. not acted, no longer being in any sort of rush.

  I also had a lot of thinking to do. Not least analysing what an idiot I had been. Thank goodness I’d heeded Mike and not given Connor so much as an inkling that he could stay with us. Only thing was that I now had a potential situation in which we had no choice but to keep him, at least for those few days I’d breezily promised and which I could now repent at my leisure.

  And even the hardening in my heart was a tricky one. Much as I’d felt angry that Connor had duped me so effectively, there was a part of me that felt the extent of his pain even more. To be just eight years old and to see the world as a place where your fellow human was reduced to being a ‘player’ or being ‘played’. And why wouldn’t he try to play us? He’d glimpsed a different sort of life with us. One where the transient carers that he was used to in the various children’s homes were replaced by a home and a loving, caring family. Did it matter that he felt not a flicker of emotion for us? No, it didn’t. It was a far superior billet than his previous one and, being so ‘streetwise’, I didn’t doubt he knew would be superior to his next.

  The behaviour, not the child. That was the mantra I tried to stick to. And, who knew? As his unguarded words about Sammy and the Porn Queen had already hinted at, there always remained the hope that Connor could be redeemed in some way. So, yes, a part of me, though my head said we couldn’t be his redeemers, still felt bad that the alternative was looking so bleak.

  It took me a long time to fall back to sleep.

  Chapter 13

  My alarm went off at 7.00 a.m. on Monday morning and for a while I just lay there, trying to work out just how little sleep I’d had. I could hear Mike in the shower, so, while I waited for it, I crept out onto the landing, then crossed it and quietly opened Tyler’s door. He, too, was already up, thankfully, though still in his pyjamas, and on his knees rummaging through his little wheelie suitcase.

  ‘Are my black footy socks in here?’ he asked. ‘As well as my red ones? ’Cos I just checked the list and it says we need both. And now I can’t find them. D’you remember me putting them in?’

  ‘Stop flapping, worrywart,’ I said, pleased to see him focused on his course again. ‘Everything you need is in there, including a new toothbrush. Speaking of which, have you washed yet? Because time’s getting on.’

  ‘Just about to,’ he said, jumping up and rushing past me through the door.

  Changing my mind – I could shower later – I left Tyler to it and having been back to the bedroom to grab my dressing gown, then went down to the kitchen to boil some eggs for breakfast. I was immediately accosted by Connor, who appeared from behind the kitchen door, going ‘Boo!’

  ‘Morning, Casey!’ he added, beaming. ‘Did I make you jump? Sorry.’

  ‘You did indeed, love,’ I confirmed. ‘What you doing up so early?’

  His expression changed and he sighed as he pulled out a chair at the table. ‘I couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘I was worrying. Wondering where they were going to take me. Has anyone told you yet? Are those men in the van coming again?’

  Amazing how you see things differently when someone has turned the lights on for you. And I was glad to be able to answer him truthfully.

  ‘I don’t know yet, love,’ I said, ‘it’s a bit of a case of we’ll know when we know. But perhaps getting some breakfast inside you will cheer you up a bit, eh?’ I went over to the fridge. ‘Ah, and here’s Mike,’ I added. ‘Hello, love. One egg or two?’

  But there was scant time for Mike to tell me because just at that point there was a sharp rapping on the front door.

  Tyler had walked in just behind Mike and now looked up at the kitchen clock.


  ‘That can’t be Denver and his mum, can it?’ he said. ‘God, they’re early.’

  They would indeed have been. They were due at 8 and it still wasn’t quite 7.30. ‘Grab yourself some breakfast, love,’ I told him. ‘I’m sure it’s not them. Probably just the postman with a parcel or something.’

  I hoped it would be, too, since I wasn’t averse to a bit of online shopping. So I was open-mouthed to see John Fulshaw standing on the doorstep.

  ‘And a very good morning to you, too,’ he said, as I hauled my jaw up and ushered him into the kitchen. ‘Morning, Mike; morning, lads,’ he said. Then he sniffed. ‘Can I smell coffee? All over the place I am, with this flipping jet-lag nonsense. So I could definitely do with one, if you don’t mind.’

  I went to pour him one, making a ‘no, I don’t know either’ face at Mike as I did so.

  Who then spoke for me. ‘Good holiday?’ he asked John.

  ‘Best one in years,’ he said. ‘Brilliant.’ He’d taken his family to Disney World in Florida, so I didn’t doubt it for a moment. But why was he here?

  ‘So to what do we owe the pleasure?’ Mike added, still as confused as I was.

  ‘I’m here to pick up this young man,’ he said, turning towards Connor and smiling down at him. ‘Got some transport laid on – picking up from the office,’ he clarified. ‘And in less than an hour from now, so I thought we’d better crack on.’

  Connor’s expression was hard to watch as John placed a friendly hand on his shoulder and told him not to bolt his food, but that when he was finished he needed to trot upstairs and get his belongings together. ‘Time and tide wait for no man, I’m afraid, mate,’ he added cheerfully.