by Casey Watson
I took a couple of deep breaths. She was crying again, head down, the tears dripping into her lap. ‘Love, I just want to help you,’ I said. ‘We want to help you. And I thought you were enjoying college. Yet …’ I paused. ‘Yet it seems the first thing you do is hook up with the worst kind of people. Get into scrapes. Go off AWOL. What’s the attraction?’ I raised a hand and touched a finger to her temple. ‘What’s going on up there? Keeley, I can’t help you if carry on as if you don’t even want help, can I? Look at me, Keeley. Do you want our help? Do you want to stay with us?’
She let out a great heaving cry then and – to my utter astonishment – fell against me heavily, burrowing into my shoulder as I put my arms around her and shaking with sobs. ‘I don’t know what I want,’ she mumbled into my dressing gown, scenting the air with her expensive perfume.
Though, whatever she might want, one thing was clear, that there was something she needed, and that was a hug. I sat and held her for a good twenty minutes.
‘Oh God,’ Tyler groaned, at the kitchen table the following morning. ‘Nan and Granddad must think I am such a prize prat. I should ring them to say sorry, shouldn’t I, Mum? And, cross my heart and hope to die,’ he said, with feeling, ‘I am never, ever drinking again.’
I say ‘next’ morning. It was the same morning – still. Not quite noon yet. Thank God it was Saturday.
‘I’m never drinking again either,’ said Denver. ‘Well, not till I’m eighteen, anyway, obviously,’ he added sagely. ‘God, I’m so sorry, Casey.’
I was tempted to say ‘yeah, right’, re the ‘not till I’m eighteen’ bit, because there was a slim to zero chance of that happening, I reckoned, even if I didn’t officially know about it. But I decided to let it go. They’d learn. They were learning.
As was I, as it turned out. Because it had come to light that it hadn’t just been beer they’d been drinking. A recce of the conservatory by Mike, before he stomped off to football in high dudgeon, had established that Keeley’s ‘friends’ hadn’t just brought wine with them. They’d been necking something called Jägermeister, and one sniff at the almost empty bottle he’d unearthed from beneath the sofa was enough to make me think I’d probably be saying that in Ty and Denver’s shoes too. Quite apart from anything else – it smelled like the devil’s own cough syrup – it was about 35 per cent proof. And there’d been just five of them drinking it, at most. So the maths wasn’t hard.
But we’d done the post-mortem now, and as far as I was concerned that was the end of it, even if Denver still had to run the gauntlet of his mother. (As did I, to an extent, because I felt very guilty. Thank goodness she was the non-judgemental pragmatic type. ‘Denver’s big enough and ugly enough to know what he’s doing,’ had been her generous response when I kept on – and on and on – apologising.)
‘Look, the pair of you messed up,’ I said. ‘But there’s no harm done – except to your heads – so let’s move on now. You can do your penance by making the breakfast. If you can stomach any, that is.’
Apparently they could. Cast-iron stomachs, teenage boys.
Keeley, on the other hand, wasn’t about to get off so lightly. She didn’t yet know it, and perhaps wouldn’t at any point, but had what to do about her been Mike’s decision alone, that phone call to Danny would already have been made. As it was, he agreed to give her one final chance only on the basis that she suffer some serious sanctions. She would be grounded, yes, but she should also have her phone taken off her. No access to the internet. No nothing. Cold turkey. It was the least we should expect, was his view on the subject, as proof of her commitment to treating us with respect.
‘But it’s her phone,’ I began. ‘So we’re not in a position to do that, love. You know the rules. If it belongs to –’
‘I don’t care if it belongs to the Sultan of bloody Brunei!’ he barked. ‘It’s not about whose phone it is, it’s about making the gesture. About her being inconvenienced as much as she’s ruddy well inconvenienced us! And if she’s not prepared to do that then she’s not giving an inch, is she? And I’m not having that. Sorry, Casey, but I feel strongly about this. I know she’s had a bad time of it and I’m not unsympathetic, but Keeley isn’t a child. She’s old enough to start taking responsibility for herself, and to my mind, until she does, why should we? Don’t forget how we ended up with her. Because of some pretty damned irresponsible accusations. I’m sorry but unless she can show us there is some point in her remaining under our roof, then I don’t want her here. We have to think of Tyler.’
It was that ‘Casey’ that struck me, more than anything else Mike said. He almost never called me Casey; it was his ‘this is something serious, take note’ way of addressing me, and it meant that he meant every word he said.
We’d been lucky, Mike and I, when it came to differences of opinion about the children, and with our own two had managed to negotiate the teenage years largely harmoniously. Oh, we had the odd flare-up – more often than not involving Riley pushing the boundaries, rather than Kieron (for whom boundaries, which meant rules and routines, were a natural place to stop) – but once we started fostering we were trained in so many aspects of the job that, with any type of challenging teenage behaviour, there always seemed to be a clear route to hand. And, as we were specialists, trained to deal with particularly challenging children, that was perhaps even more true of us than many. And though from time to time Mike had to rein in my emotional excesses, and provide a voice of calm and reason when I’d temporarily mislaid both, we were largely singing from the same hymn sheet.
But he’d never so forcefully expressed second thoughts about keeping a child before. Yes, we’d had our wobbles with a few, occasionally serious wobbles, and there’d been one occasion when we made the tough decision not to keep a child long term because of the nature of the ‘baggage’ she’d brought with her. But for Mike not to see a chink of positivity in a fostering situation was a rare thing indeed. And I knew it was mostly about Keeley’s age. She was by far the oldest child we’d taken care of, and perhaps that was the nub of it. Why should we bother if she was going to throw it back in our faces? Had she been eleven, say, even twelve or so, the issues would be very different, and the possibility of ‘adding value’ to her impending adulthood so much greater.
But it wasn’t just Mike’s decision, and though I shared many of his concerns, that hug I’d shared with Keeley in the hour before dawn had decided me. If we could agree on a level of sanctions that seemed reasonable to both of us, then, if she accepted them and kept her nose clean, Keeley should be granted that final chance. I just wasn’t ready to give up on her.
‘But you already know you can’t take her phone off her,’ John confirmed a couple of hours later. ‘Sure, if she’s willing to hand it over, then fine. But if she’s not, you have no right, and she knows that. And you honestly think she might? I don’t. And we just can’t class mobiles as luxuries any more, can we? Less and less people bother with landlines, public phone boxes are history – people need their mobiles for everything, basically, from keeping in touch to keeping a diary, to running their bank accounts – don’t you? No, it’s out of the question,’ he said, ‘and I know how much that grates, Casey, but unfortunately it is what it is. It might be slightly different had you bought her the phone and were paying the bills on it, but that’s not the case. It really will be a necessity for her, particularly given her situation. What about her contact with Danny, for example? And with her foster sister? No, mobiles aren’t a treat to be given and taken away as and when any more – not for us, anyway. You’ll have to come up with something else, I’m afraid.’
‘And that’s another thing,’ I said. ‘Something that’s been nagging me for a while now. How come the Burkes are still paying her phone bills? That’s a little odd, don’t you think? I mean, why would they? And it’s a pretty generous tariff she’s on, or so Tyler tells me. Why? At least if that were down to me, I’d have some control – keep her on a pretty basic one. But as it is
, there’s not even any point in us restricting the use of the wifi – Tyler says she’s got enough “gig”, whatever that means, to use the web any time she likes.’
‘I did ask Danny about that,’ John said. ‘And I believe it’s on a twelve-month contract with some time left to run. After that, it’ll be down to Keeley herself, obviously, but till then I guess there’s no benefit in them not paying. And probably a penalty for ending the contract prematurely. And you never know, perhaps it’s a way of them saying there’s no ill will between them.’
‘You might be right, actually. Did I tell you they bought her a birthday present? I’m not sure I’d have, given what she put them through! But maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s exactly that. Which is all to the good, I suppose. But it definitely doesn’t help us right now, does it? So frustrating having no leverage.’
John laughed. ‘I have faith you and Mike will find a way to rein her in,’ John said. Then he chuckled. ‘If anyone can, you two can.’
I decided that perhaps now wasn’t the time to alert John to the reality that in this case it wasn’t really ‘us two’ at all. In our very first training session we were warned about the importance of always displaying a united front, and how children were good at spotting any weakness in this area. Divide and conquer. Had all children imbibed that saying with their mothers’ milk?
Probably. And our barricades were broken.
We didn’t ask Keeley to relinquish her phone. Much as Mike had pointed out to me that we’d do exactly that with our own, he wasn’t really thinking it through. He was just harking back to a time when phones weren’t a necessity. I didn’t point it out, though, because diplomacy is a delicate and nuanced business, but I knew he’d never part Tyler from his mobile. How could he? If I couldn’t get hold of Tyler, it would be me that would be on pins.
As a result, such telling-off as Keeley had from us that Saturday afternoon involved only what we could achieve given her age and our limited status; that, bar college, she would not be allowed out for a week. That she’d go to her classes, then come home and stay put for the evening. And that really was it. If she wasn’t prepared to, she knew what the alternative was.
And she didn’t even seem reluctant to agree. Indeed, she seemed completely okay with it. By the time we hit Wednesday she was still toeing the line easily – simply taking to her room once dinner was over, and chatting to friends, real or virtual, on said phone. As to whom she was talking, and the possibility that they were paying her, I decided I’d have to take the pragmatic view – that what I didn’t know couldn’t hurt me. So her grounding – after all those weeks of hard-core hanging about – seemed like no kind of sanction at all. Even Mike, though he didn’t say so, appeared cautiously optimistic, because it really was as if she’d read the ultimatum correctly. Either that or she had totally changed her tune.
My instinct was that it was probably a little bit of both. I think she did worry that we meant what we said, and for all her earlier ‘offskies-go-it-alone’ line I think the privations of the reality had begun to sink in. It was one thing to bang on about wanting your independence when you knew you weren’t getting it any time soon – quite another to have your bluff called.
I had a strong hunch I knew why she was happy staying in as well. Because the old mates had melted away – had they ever been that close? – and that the terrible twosome she’d hooked up with, in Gemma and Katie, had now dropped her like a stone. Which made me almost feel sorry for her, particularly when she confessed to me that her favourite hoody – another branded item with a price tag to match – hadn’t gone missing, as she’d first told me when I’d asked her about its whereabouts; she’d lent it to Gemma, apparently, and Gemma had yet to give it back. Along with a pair of expensive hair straighteners, no less.
‘That’s absolutely not on,’ I told her. ‘Do you want me to intervene? I can come into college with you tomorrow if you want me to. Or I can see about having a note passed to her foster carers?’
Keeley was appalled at the very idea, however. ‘D’you have any idea what would happen if you did that? I’d be, like, hated. No way can you do that. I’ll sort it.’
‘But will you? Sounds like she’s taken you for a mug, love.’
Which, to my surprise, made Keeley’s chin wobble, so I was anxious not to push it. But it didn’t stop me adding to the picture I was beginning to form now. Of a girl who really did have a bit of a people-pleasing problem. Yes, she had all these apparent ‘friends’ but, materially and emotionally, at what cost?
It sunk in then. I was beginning to get a feel for what I’d known since the day Keeley had come to us. There was a good reason why she’d smashed the photograph she had. Why it had been that one, out of the many she could have chosen. Because she hated it the most.
Because she felt so alone.
Chapter 13
We plodded on doggedly for the next couple of weeks.
Now Keeley was in college – well, busy ‘reaching for success’ – Danny was keen to allow inertia to take over. All the while she wasn’t pressing for her big new independent life to be arranged for her, he was happy to just let things stay as they were.
‘You never know,’ he said, when he called me for an update on progress on the Friday morning before the autumn half-term, ‘she might even make it to Christmas at this rate – which’ll be the longest time she’s spent in education in goodness knows how long. You should feel pretty proud, I reckon. That’s some achievement.’
I told Danny that, great as that scenario might be, I didn’t dare let an optimistic thought enter my head. And it wasn’t like the bedevilled child had turned into an angel. Yes, Keeley was toeing the line and, for the most part, a much easier presence in the house, but that wasn’t the same as her skipping home daily, full of the joys of self-discipline and education. Indeed, as the days moved on, so did her body clock appear to; she was clearly getting her head down later and later every night and, as a result, finding it harder and harder to get up in the mornings – a situation that was steadily bringing about a new problem – of her being so late that she was struggling to get ready in time for college – well, her level of ready, anyway, which involved the sort of professional make-over people bought each other for their birthdays.
‘But it’s hardly worth me going in, is it?’ she had suggested only that morning, having suggested the same thing the previous three days running, though on those occasions without any realistic hope of success because every time I quickly countered ‘I’ll drive you’.
But now she pushed it, because she’d obviously worked out she had a good case to make. ‘I mean it’s the last day before half-term, and it’s only for half a day. Only two hours, in fact. And it’s only maths, isn’t it? And, like, there won’t be any work done. I mean, really, Casey? You want to drag out all that way for nothing? Didn’t you say you were supposed to be going round Riley’s this morning, too?’
And so on. ‘No,’ I said. I drove her anyway.
‘So do you have plans for half-term?’ Danny went on now. ‘Because you know you can count on me to take her off your hands a couple of times, don’t you? Well, if she’ll let me. But I’m sure she will, at least once. There’s a film out I know she’s keen to see, and there’s always shopping, of course …’
‘Like she doesn’t have enough stuff! In fact, one of the things I suggested she might do to keep herself occupied next week is to see what she can try and sell on eBay.’
‘Now that’s an idea,’ Danny said. ‘Anyway, listen, leave it with me, okay? I’ll give her a call later and see what can be done to lighten your load.’
For which I told Danny I would be very grateful. Even if a scowling stroppy teenager who couldn’t get out of bed in the mornings was a universal problem and hardly the end of the world, it was definitely wearing to go through the same battle every morning, and a break from that particularly dispiriting routine would be very welcome.
But it seemed I had become ensnared in a web of m
y own stupid making: a web of optimistic assumptions (despite my stern words to Danny) about the reason for Keeley’s about-turn about her social life. And this despite the fact that she’d been grounded for a week, yet a week later she was still staying in every night. Oh, we’d pondered, Mike and I, about a resumption of the phone sex – and had that been the case, we already knew that there was little we could do. But there was no evidence that she was doing anything like that. I wasn’t above putting my ear to her bedroom door. Well, more accurately, I’d still do it any time I passed her closed bedroom door. And unless she was doing it via signing or semaphore, or via the medium of mime, it seemed unlikely.
Perhaps, then, she was chatting to her foster sister, Jade. Perhaps she was on social media. Perhaps she was just surfing the web. And because it suited me – suited both Mike and me – to believe that, whatever she was doing, it was better than walking the streets and/or getting drunk with so-called ‘friends’ in the town centre, I was happy to believe all of those. Why wouldn’t I?
Which was why I probably deserved what I had coming the following morning.
It being the first Saturday of the half-term, it had that lovely start-of-the-holiday feel to it, and, having risen early, because the boys were off to watch Kieron in some terribly important football match or other, I thought I’d rise with the sun and make something special for breakfast. Pancakes, perhaps. Yes, definitely pancakes.
It was a lovely autumn morning, too, the sky a brilliant unbroken blue and the trees rising up, waving yellow, red and orange leaf-hands to greet it. The sort of day that can’t help but put you in a cheerful mood. And when I unearthed a bag of frozen berries to go with the vanilla yoghurt and maple syrup, I had a big happy smile on my face. All my favourite indulgences in one breakfast feast. ‘Today’s a new day,’ I told myself, as I got a pan out to fry some bacon. ‘Anything is possible. Let’s do this.’