Nowhere to Go (9 page)

Over the next couple of days I felt happier than I had about Tyler since he’d come to us. Happy that the court case was behind us, happy that he was forging a great relationship with his social worker, happy that we would surely find a path through the acrimony and get something set up whereby he could have regular contact with his little brother. Happy, all in all, that we could make some progress.

I also felt happy that Tyler was going to have his brother in school with him come September, because it had made such a difference to his mood. How could I not find that a positive? But the truth was that, although I tried not to show it, I was at the same time a bit on edge about it, too. That fate had conspired to place them in the same high school was out of our hands – and in some ways it was a welcome development. But another part of me, looking into less positive scenarios, had started having niggling, persistent concerns. I said as much to John when he next phoned for an update.

‘What if this family reconciliation doesn’t come about?’ I said once I’d filled him in on the latest developments. ‘In that circumstance, won’t it just serve to drive home the fact that Grant is with the family, and Tyler isn’t?’

‘I know,’ John said, ‘but there’s little we can do about it either way, is there? And let’s try to remain positive. Our aim for Tyler was always to reconcile him with Alicia and Gareth. And, all the revelations notwithstanding, that’s still one of several possible outcomes, isn’t it?’

I wasn’t sure I agreed. The more I thought about it, the more I worried that he might end up being returned to a place of cruelty, not acceptance. ‘What, even after all the things she’s done and said to him, John? After all the things he’s told us?’

Though even as I asked it, I knew the answer. Much as I knew John shared my concerns about Alicia’s fitness to parent Tyler, I also knew that if there was any slim hope of Alicia shaping up and having a change of heart, then social services would cling to this and attempt to make it so. They’d work on the basis that she could change her ways. Be given support. Learn, if not to cherish him, at least to give him the bare minimum of parenting – which, almost all of the time, was better than being in care. So it was absolutely the right thing to do, and much as it upset me I knew they were right.

‘I know, I know,’ I said, ‘and I realise we’d have to give it a chance. But my number one aim is to push for contact with Grant. Formal contact, so that when they return to school it’s not a case of them “bumping into” each other and having clandestine meetings – that it’s a normal part of official contact that’s already in place. I know that’s going to be a sticking point, given the bloody hoo-hah we had in the supermarket, but hopefully his father will see it as reasonable and make her agree to it – you know, proper supervised family time – all of them together.’

‘Exactly what I was thinking, Casey. And I am mindful of your concerns about our Mrs Broughton, too. In fact, I’ve already spoken to Will about it, and our plan is to go and see the pair of them, at home together. I’m pretty sure that, between us, we’ll be able to get a sense of the true lie of the land.’

‘That’s great,’ I said, relieved that John intended to investigate further before making a decision. Because we didn’t live in la-la land, and what we now knew about some of the cruelties Alicia had inflicted on Tyler couldn’t, as John had said, now be un-known. ‘Will you let me know as soon as you can?’ I asked him. ‘I’m already having to watch what I say so that I don’t give him any false hope – so it would be good to have a clearer idea of what we need to prepare him for, wouldn’t it?’

I sat tight, waiting on John, for well over a fortnight, Tyler’s father having apparently gone back to his oil rig for his next stint; and there was no way John and Will were going to go round till he was home again. In the meantime, the school holidays ended and Tyler returned to school – and, of course, was now regularly seeing his little brother.

And it seemed he was settling into year 8 very positively. I didn’t know if it was the Grant effect, the Will effect, or even the Mr Smart effect – it could have been a combination, or just that he was adapting to his new situation, but I had a call from his new head of year at the end of his first week to let me know how pleased she was with his behaviour.

There was a knock-on effect at home too. Tyler had raced through the programme he’d been doing at home with me and Mike, and was now nearing the end of level two. This meant he had a lot more flexibility in the home, and also more freedom to choose what he did with his spare time. And the fact that Tyler realised this himself, and was feeling the benefits, was brought home to me just a couple of days into the second week of term. He had started walking home by this point and came charging through the door.

‘Casey, guess what!’ he yelled, dropping his coat and bag on the hall floor before running towards me. ‘Our Grant said that your link thingy man is off round to Dad’s tonight. Will’s going too, he thinks, and Grant thinks it’s about me moving back home! Can you believe it? So Alicia must be sorry by now, mustn’t she?’

The words had come out in an excitable tumble. I smiled, but at the same time I felt anxious about his complete confidence that this was it – that he was definitely heading home.

‘That’s good news,’ I said carefully, ‘but we mustn’t count our chickens, love. We don’t know
for sure
that’s why they’re going round, do we?’

But he was not to be corrected. ‘But it must be – Grant heard them whispering about it. An’ the only thing it
can
be about is me. Didn’t no one tell you about it?’ he added, obviously beginning to wonder about that.

‘No,’ I lied, ‘but, love, like I said, we can’t jump to conclusions, can we? It might be just that they’re going round there to tell them how good you’ve been lately and how …’

‘Yes!’ Tyler interrupted. ‘Course! Might be that, mightn’t it? And that’s fine too, because when they hear they’re going to want me back for sure.’ He gave me such a lovely smile then, before turning to deal with his coat and bag, as per the house rules. ‘See? You’ve done a good job with me, Casey,’ he said, hanging his coat on its hook. ‘You and Mike, and that. They’re going to be
well
pleased. They’ll know I’m not a bad lad any more. I’ll tell ’em that you and Mike don’t do drugs or anything, too, so they’ll know it’s not in me any more.’

And with that, he ran upstairs to his room to get changed, while I reflected wryly on our getting that clean bill of health. I then went into the living room to call John, ostensibly to let him know that Tyler had already heard all about it, though, in truth, it was more of a knee-jerk than anything – it wouldn’t make any difference to anything, after all. I just wanted to connect; see if there was anything else I didn’t know.

But I was obviously too late. John’s office phone went straight to voicemail, and there didn’t seem much sense in calling him on his mobile; he and Will might even be
en route
there right then. No, all I could usefully do was wait. And start fretting.

Happily, Kieron phoned soon after – just for a chat, as far as he’d thought, anyway – so I cajoled him into popping round for a bit. Tyler was somewhat over-excited, and instinct told me that the best thing would be for him to have both a distraction and a bit of physical exercise. So we dug out a football and Kieron took Tyler over to the park for an hour, so they could work on his goal-scoring skills. And I was also grateful because I was on such pins about what was happening that I knew it would end up transmitting to Tyler, and that was the last thing we wanted. No, there was nothing to be done but wait for John’s phone call and cross everything crossable for good news.

‘But still prepare for the possibility of bad news,’ Mike cautioned, as he helped me prepare a salad to go with the pasta bake I’d made.

‘I know, love,’ I said. ‘That’s what’s killing me. I’m not sure we shouldn’t actually prepare him for bad news maybe – you know, as in tonight; lay the groundwork, temper his expectations a little more.’

But Mike shook his head. ‘You know, Case, we’ll have to deal with what we’ll have to deal with. I think we should leave that to John and Will, don’t you? If the outcome is negative then I think it’s better if they’re the ones that tell him. We shouldn’t be the bearers of bad news all the time, should we? Our job is to deal with the fall-out, yes, but only after
they
impart the news.’

Mike was right. I should probably stop second-guessing the outcome, and I should definitely leave the telling of it in John’s experienced hands, and in the meantime try not to think about something I could do absolutely nothing to influence. It could be the best news, it could be the worst news – or it could be somewhere in between. In life, I found, things usually were.

Of course, it was impossible not to think about what might have happened at that meeting. Would Dad have stepped up and put his son’s case to his wife? Would they see reason
re
contact with Grant? Would they agree to some sort of supervised family contact? But however many scenarios I pictured as I lay awake that night, I never imagined the one I was presented with the next day. It was a Thursday morning, which meant double PE for Tyler and a guarantee that he’d leave the house in a good mood. Which I tried to match, though I still felt a sharp pang of guilt as I watched him sprint off down the path, grinning widely, a slice of toast still in his hand.

I loved that he seemed so much happier generally, that he’d seemed to make friends – friends he could meet on the corner – that, in one area of his life, at least, things were calming down. But at the same time I felt the weight of the ‘what-ifs’ bearing down on me, hoping that he wouldn’t soon be taking a step back. But that weight was completely natural – life had a habit of doing that, didn’t it? Of throwing a spanner in the works from time to time.

It was 10.00 a.m. by the time the phone went, and I almost lunged at it.

‘Oh, thank goodness,’ I said when I realised who it was. ‘I tried to reach you last night, actually, but you’d obviously set off to the Broughton’s …’

‘You knew that?’ John said.

‘Yes, I did. Tyler told me.’ I quickly filled John in on Tyler’s excited announcement the previous day. ‘So please tell me the meeting went well,’ I pleaded. ‘I’ve been worrying like mad, as you can imagine.’

‘Oh, Casey,’ John said, with a sigh in his voice. An unmistakable harbinger of doom. ‘I’m afraid it didn’t,’ he said. ‘No point in beating about the bush here. Listen, my plan is to drive over to you as soon as I’ve caught up with my manager. That okay? I shouldn’t be more than an hour. Probably less.’

‘But can’t you just tell me now?’ I asked. I was irritated now and just wanted to know. But no. He said it would be better if he explained everything in person and that he’d be there just as soon as he could.

I’d just have to wait. There was nothing else for it. So I used the time positively – as much for me as for Tyler – and went on the local leisure centre website to research their parties and how to book them, for his upcoming birthday. What did Mary Poppins say? (As if I even needed reminding.) That a spoonful of sugar always helped the medicine go down? And though there wasn’t much I could do about whatever gloomy news John had for me, I could at least have something positive to sweeten the pill.

And it turned out I would be desperately in need of something positive, as almost as soon as I’d ushered John into the kitchen and given him a coffee he made his pronouncement – that it had basically been ‘bloody awful’.

‘They know all about the boys seeing each other at school,’ John explained, ‘and they basically want Will to put a stop to it. Just like that – as if we can just wave a wand and make it happen!’

‘Did they give a reason?’ I wanted to know, anxious to hear on what grounds they were making this insane demand – after all, what did they think social services could organise? That Grant spend the rest of his life wrapped in a Tyler-deflecting force-field?

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘They had one ready. They said seeing Tyler was upsetting Grant; that it had made him “aggressive” when he got home from school. In fact they went as far as to say they were considering taking Grant out of the school if things didn’t improve. So I tried to reason with them – pointing out that, surely, the boys seeing each other was a positive –’

‘Which it so obviously is!’ I said indignantly.

‘Exactly,’ John agreed. ‘And for both boys. I pointed out that
both
were doing well in their respective classes, both academically and socially, and that’s when it all got a bit, um, messy.’

‘Messy?’ I parroted, wondering at his unusual choice of word.

‘Yes, messy,’ he said. ‘They obviously didn’t want to hear anything we were saying, and when Will pointed out that it would be crucial to Tyler’s well-being to have some contact with his sibling, we got a barrage of counter-fire, mostly from Mrs Broughton, as you’d expect, about how Tyler’s well-being – and there might have been some reference to his “druggy” mother – wasn’t coming at the cost of her own mental health or being achieved at the expense of her own son. I’m sure you can picture the scene …’

I could, too. All too readily. ‘That bad, eh?’

He nodded. ‘Worse, actually. Because when I dared to use the term “parental responsibility”, in relation to Tyler’s
father’s
responsibility, we were treated to another blast of “Who do you think you are, interfering and telling us what to do?” And various rants about home-wrecking kids practically being dumped on them by social services, etc., etc., and, yes, sadly, Dad was joining in too.’

‘Unbelievable,’ I said shaking my head. ‘I just can’t get my head round it. Her, yes, but how can that man just disown his flesh and blood like that?’

‘
Really
, Casey?’ John asked, though it wasn’t a question. ‘You
really
need me to tell you that?’

And, of course, he didn’t need to. Why else was the care system straining under the pressure and bursting at the seams? Because of all the children like Tyler in the world.