Nowhere to Go (5 page)

‘What about other family?’

‘None have been recorded. I’ve looked back through all the notes and it seems she was on her own. Living in a council property. Either no family, or estranged from them. No siblings or half-siblings, as far as anyone was aware.’

‘So what went wrong? Was there some specific trigger?’

‘Not that I can see,’ Will said. ‘The social worker’s notes mention some concerns here and there, but on the whole she
was
doing okay. They seem to have concluded that it must have been a combination of aggravating factors. She got re-housed when the block she was living in was up for demolition, which could have been key, obviously – you know how it goes. Then a new man apparently came into her life … started her on the heroin again …’

‘And surprise, surprise – it all went back downhill from there?’ John asked.

It was phrased as a question, but we all knew it wasn’t. She’d have been on benefits at that point, not to mention having her own flat. Which would have made her vulnerable. She’d have been a prime target for all sorts of parasites and predators.

‘So Tyler was taken into care at that point?’ I asked.

Will shook his head. ‘No. Would that he had been, eh? No, it’s worse than that. She was always just a hop and a skip away from that, of course – the previous social worker’s made several notes about having concerns – but events seem to have overtaken that. She took a fatal overdose – at home, and probably unintentionally, the social worker thinks; possibly purer stuff than she was used to. And the first anyone knew of it was two days later, when she didn’t turn up for a rehab appointment with her counsellor.’

‘Oh, my God,’ I said, shaking my own head now. ‘That’s so sad.’

‘And it’s lucky she had the appointment scheduled when she did,’ he added, ‘or it could have been even longer before they were found, couldn’t it? As it was, the counsellor had the nous to go round there, thank goodness, and hearing crying from upstairs called the police.’

‘Who then found Tyler …’ I said.

Will nodded. ‘And that’s incredible as well, don’t you think? Given his age. I mean, two whole days. It’s incredible he didn’t come to any harm in that time, isn’t it? When you think about the environment he was in.’

Incredible, but at the same time the word ‘harm’ struck a chord. Yes, he’d survived that ordeal, but, God, he had come to
so
much harm since. ‘So he was unhurt?’ I asked. ‘I mean, physically?’

Will nodded a second time. ‘Emaciated, starving and traumatised, obviously – it’s all in here; you can read it for yourself later – but otherwise, yes. And he was obviously put with emergency carers while they decided what best to do with him, and that’s where the father comes in. With the help of some clues in a phone book and some donkey work, they managed to track him down – which was impressive in itself, because he’d by now moved to this area – and he agreed (I believe reluctantly) that he and his partner would take Tyler on rather than him being placed with a foster family.’

‘Which is interesting in itself, isn’t it?’ John said. ‘I mean, given that he said he didn’t even know about the existence of a baby. Does it say anything in there about him wanting the paternity proven?’

‘There was certainly a test done,’ Will said, ‘though I think we instigated it, for the usual reasons. They wouldn’t have just handed Tyler over, even if they’d welcomed him with open arms. And they kept tabs on the family for the usual span of time. And from what I’ve read in here,’ he said, patting the file, ‘it seems he stepped up to the plate readily enough. That he was the father wasn’t apparently in doubt anyway, looking at the other child. Apparently they were the spit of each other.’ He sat back in his chair, then leaned in again and grabbed another biscuit. ‘So that was that, in theory. Taken off the “at risk” register, and settled back with blood relatives. The only trouble is that it’s obviously not worked out all
that
brilliantly, has it?’

Hmm
, I thought.
You can say that again.

Meeting Will, and hearing first hand about Tyler’s early childhood, was just the kick up the backside I think we needed. Yes, we’d already committed to him and, heaven knew, we’d had enough training, hadn’t we? Enough training to have ‘It’s the behaviour that’s bad, not the child’ mentally tattooed on our foreheads. But the image of that traumatised three-year-old, all alone with the body of his dead mother, was one that stuck firmly to the forefront of my brain.

‘And you know what always strikes me?’ I told Riley one afternoon the following week. ‘It’s that he doesn’t even seem to realise that he’s been handed such a bad hand.’

Tyler being out for his first trip with Will – they were off to the local bowling alley – we were round at Mum and Dad’s, enjoying a bit of family time with the baby, which only served to remind me how random a child’s birth circumstances were. Some babies were born into loving, stable homes. And some weren’t. Some had everything stacked against them from the outset.

‘Life’s been so tough for him,’ I went on. ‘I don’t think he really appreciates just
how
tough. Or that it’s the adults in his life that are responsible for how he now feels. He just doesn’t seem to have processed that. Turns everything on himself. Seems to feel it’s perfectly appropriate for people not to like him. It’s like he just accepts that he’s angry and wants everybody else to as well.’ I sighed. ‘I just wish I could find a way to get him to talk to me about it. But it really is like trying to get blood out of a stone. I only have to look at him in a certain way and I can see him squirming. I swear he has some sixth sense that tells him when I’m about to corner him and try and talk to him. Perhaps he’s like a dog – he can smell a heart-to-heart on the horizon like they can smell fear.’

Riley clapped her hands together. ‘Love it, Mum!’ she laughed. But she then moved on to her serious face, clearly thinking about the problem. At 27, she was the polar opposite of Kieron, though. Where my son would see everything on the surface and immediately have a practical solution or suggestion, Riley was a deep, thoughtful thinker. Like me, she always tried to look beyond what you could see. She was good at it, too, and until taking a bit of a break after having had Marley Mae she and her partner David had been fostering as well – providing respite care for the same agency that we worked for.

Passing the baby across to my mum for a cuddle, she smiled at me. ‘Well, you know what to do about that, Mum, don’t you?’

I raised my eyebrows as she continued to fuss over my youngest grandchild. ‘I do?’

‘Course you do,’ she said. ‘Do what you used to do with me and Kieron. Trap him in the car. Take him off for a drive somewhere and drone on at him while he can’t escape.’

‘God, you make it sound like a form of torture,’ I said, shaking my head at my amused mother.

Riley laughed. ‘It was! Felt like that sometimes, at any rate. I swear, sometimes me and Kieron used to sweat at the jangle of your car keys.’

‘Oh you do exaggerate, Riley,’ I admonished. She was right, though. I did remember doing just that. And she was spot on; sometimes it probably did feel like a kind of torture – especially if the subject matter was at all sensitive: affairs of the heart, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, sex …

And it worked. Even if you didn’t always see the evidence at the time, there was a lot to be said for putting kids in a position where they didn’t have to make eye contact with you. It made it easier for them to talk. And it made it harder for them not to listen.

I still did it, too, with foster kids – albeit almost unconsciously these days. And Riley was right. I’d not yet thought about it, but it was exactly what I should do with Tyler. Because if I was to help him, I really needed to understand better where all that rage and hurt and self-loathing had come from.

And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to reach the conclusion that the relationship with his stepmother was probably key. Though I had nothing to go on bar the rather vague detail on Tyler’s file that ‘relations had broken down’ with his father’s partner, I was itching to get an inkling of what form this breakdown had taken. More to the point, when had it started? Had something specific prompted it? Something Tyler had done? I was particularly intrigued by what sort of conversations must have happened early on, between the father who’d been told he had a son who he’d never known existed, and the partner with which he’d had another son in the meantime, and who might have had her own ideas about the situation in which – through no fault of her own – she now found herself.

I tried to relate it to me. How would
I
have felt if Mike had come home from work one evening and announced that he had another child I hadn’t known about? What would my reaction have been if he then told me I would have to welcome it into our family and raise it?

I didn’t know. That was the honest answer. I didn’t have a clue how I’d have reacted. First, I’d have to accept that he really didn’t know anything about it, and then … well, and then I’d have to do a great deal of soul-searching, wouldn’t I? About my capacity to not only accept this sudden cuckoo-in-the-nest into my home but to commit to loving it and cherishing it to the best of my ability; to bringing it up as if it were my own.

Of course, I wanted to think that, yes, I
would
be able to do that. After all, falling in love with the kids we fostered was both my blessing
and
my curse. It was emotionally draining every time, quite apart from anything else. So, yes, on balance, had it been Mike, and had the circumstances been the same ones, I wanted to think that I would embrace the child – because it would have been
his
child, and a half-sibling to his other children too, which would have meant I would have no hesitation. It would be the right thing to do.

But this wasn’t me, was it? And life was rarely that simple and rosy. With her own child just a toddler, was this Alicia coping okay anyway? Could it be that, actually, she
was
managing, but that she really didn’t want to take on any more? Was she pressured by Tyler’s father to take him in? Pressured by social services? Pressured by knowing that if she didn’t agree to have him, she would feel like a bad person for the rest of her life? Not the best reason to take on another woman’s child.

What with dashing around to help my mum, and life being so busy generally, it was to be another week before the ideal opportunity presented itself. It was almost the end of term now – the long summer holidays looming provocatively, close on the horizon – and as I watched Tyler mooching out of school one afternoon, deep in conversation with another lad, I was idly wondering how it must feel to
be
him. He’d been with us a few weeks now, and we were managing – just – to keep a lid on his behaviour, but, as for getting close to him, progress was proving slow. There had been so many times when I automatically reached out to connect with him physically, but he’d always shrink back, stiffen slightly, send out unambiguous signals. Had this kid ever been hugged in his young life? Perhaps yes, by his real mother, but since then? I decided probably not.

And Will had reported much the same. Not that he was offering to cuddle him, but though Tyler had pronounced him ‘cool’ and better than the previous ‘bossy old bag’, Will himself still felt that sense of distance, of careful guardedness in Tyler; that he was only chipping, bit by tiny bit, away. Time, we’d both agreed – that would be the key. Time and patience. He’d surely let us in eventually.

I watched him now and wondered, though. What went on behind those big brown eyes? Under that mop of inky hair? I wondered something else, too. I wondered what it must feel like to be his stepmother. That, I felt, was key to understanding how we’d got to where we’d got – to her taking what by any yardstick was extremely drastic action – taking her own son’s half-brother to court. I would probably never know that, I realised. It wasn’t my business to know that, anyway. But it seemed that I was about to get an inkling.

‘So,’ I said to Tyler, as he threw his backpack into the back seat of the car and tumbled in behind it, ‘how was school today? Okay?’

‘All right,’ came the expected grunt of a response.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘At least that’s an improvement on “rubbish”.’ Which was what the grunt of a response had been the previous day. ‘Anyway,’ I added, suddenly hatching a plan. ‘I have good news. You’re coming with me to the supermarket, okay? The big out-of-town one. And we’re going to go straight there. And before you pull a face’ – I added, peering into the rear-view mirror – ‘I’ve had a busy day with the grandkids and I haven’t had time to go yet, so, in fact, it’s your lucky day –’

‘Lucky?’ Tyler huffed. ‘Going to buy food and crap?’

‘Language,’ I chided, ‘and yes, going to buy food and stuff, which will give you the opportunity to earn some “being helpful” points for your daily sheet, and, if you are really helpful, I might even treat you to a DVD from the bargain stand by the till.’

I noticed Tyler had already retrieved his mobile phone from his bag and was now busy tapping away on some game or other. ‘And you’ll need those points if you’re hoping to top that flipping phone up at the weekend, won’t you?’

I wasn’t being completely honest about the ‘falling behind’ aspect of my day. Though it was true that I had been longer at Mum’s than I planned, and that I needed to keep Saturday free to help her with all her chores, it had just hit me that a trip to the supermarket would be the ideal situation for a chat. In the car … pushing the trolley round … back in the car again … And even if he didn’t open up that much – and he mightn’t – it would be good for him to help me out domestically anyway. And perhaps taking him shopping and letting him have some input – choosing his preferred cereal and squash and maybe a couple of choices for dinner the following week – would all help with the business of him feeling less threatened, and realising that our only wish was to take care of him until his life settled back down.

And, for a while at least, it seemed it was going to.

‘You know mash?’ he said, growing more chatty with every aisle we went down.

‘I do know mash,’ I said. ‘I’ve probably made more saucepans of mash than you’ve had hot dinners.’

‘Well, d’you ever get salad cream and, like, make a hole in the middle and then get tuna fish and put both in the middle and make a volcano?’

I pulled a face. ‘Erm, not lately, it must be said. Why – is it nice?’

‘It’s epic,’ he said. ‘You should try it. It’s me an’ Grant’s most favourite tea in the universe. When we’re on our own, like, and we’ve only got what’s in the cupboards, that’s what we always make.’

I made a mental note of the word ‘alone’. At their ages? ‘You mean, you peel your own potatoes and everything?’ I said. ‘I am seriously impressed. Remind me to pop that on your chart.’

But he was shaking his head. ‘Nah, not normally – not when it’s just us. We use the Smash stuff. You know – the one you just put water on and stir it.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I know it well. “For mash, get Smaaaaaaash …”’

He looked at me as if I’d completely lost my marbles.

‘It’s an old TV ad,’ I explained. ‘With aliens and … no. Perhaps not. Never mind. But we will get some tuna fish and some extra salad cream, as well, and … Tyler?’ I finished, realising I’d suddenly lost his attention. I turned to follow his gaze beyond me. ‘Tyler –
what
?’

At a pinch, in dim light, you could put two and two together. With us both having black hair and brown eyes, it wouldn’t have been beyond the bounds of possibility to think we were mother and son. Or, okay, if you were feeling less charitable, grandmother and son. It had been Kieron who’d pointed it out and it had tickled me. All those kids we’d fostered – both short and long term – and this was the first time we’d had a child in who looked so much like me. But when I turned around to see what it was that had so transfixed Tyler, it was to find myself looking at a lad who
really
looked like Tyler – so much so that there wasn’t a shred of indecision in my mind. In a dim light they could almost be twins. This had to be the very little brother who we’d just been discussing.

It was. ‘Yo, Grant!’ Tyler called, slipping out from behind the trolley he’d been pushing for me, and jogging the ten feet or so that separated them in the washing powder aisle. It was a perfectly natural and perfectly obvious reaction to seeing him, and for half a second I smiled and thought – ‘Ahh, how nice is that?’ Specially when the two boys briefly hugged.

It didn’t even strike me as any sort of incredible coincidence; I already knew the family didn’t live a long way away from us, and though that was unusual – you didn’t usually foster kids who lived very close to you – it was always going to be odds on they might shop here from time to time.

But within another half second I realised that the other boy wasn’t on his own. A few yards behind him there was a woman, not pushing a trolley but carrying a basket, and who was now standing stock still, bar the hand that she’d lifted to her face, and with which she was looping a hank of blonde hair behind her ear.

Then she spoke. ‘Grant! Come back here!’ I heard her call to him. The tension in her voice thrummed towards me on the air.

‘Grant!’ she said again, at which point he turned back towards her, uncertain. And it was then that I knew, beyond any shred of doubt, that we were going to have a scene. That there would be a kicking off.

I took in the details, realising that she was not as I’d imagined her. She was young – probably late twenties, no more than that – very tall and lean, with the sort of pinched look that set bells ringing in my brain straight away, but which thought I pushed away. Who was I to make assumptions? I didn’t know anything about her, did I?

‘Mu-
um
,’ Grant was saying, as he and Tyler drew level, and I watched older and younger brother greet each other with evident pleasure. I pushed the trolley towards them and plastered on a breezy smile. I wasn’t exactly going to say ‘Well, fancy meeting you here!’ but I felt that something along those lines would probably do. Show the boys that we could play nicely. At least that’s what I’d intended. But something told me she didn’t want to speak to me. She certainly didn’t seem to want to meet my eye.