The Boy No One Loved (10 page)

Greg slowly peeked out now, sobbing loudly. ‘J … J … Justin b … b … burned me, Casey. He’s a big meanie and he should have a smack. I want Auntie Jennie to come.’ His sobs began to grow even louder. ‘I want her to come and make me better!’

He was clearly very traumatised and I was devastated. I’d been so full of hope, and felt badly let down. What on earth had Justin done to the poor kid? ‘Justin!’ I snapped, ‘Tell me what you’ve done to Greg, you hear me!’

I don’t know what it was about the tone of my voice, but it seemed to finally shock him into talking. ‘I just wanted to see what would happen,’ he said plaintively. ‘That was all, Casey, honest. I just thought it would be interesting to see!’

‘
What
would be interesting?’ I barked at him.

‘What the wax did.’

I felt alarm bells ringing. ‘
Wax
? What wax?’

‘In the tea-light,’ he said. ‘The wax in the tea-light!’

It turned out, then, through a series of halting half-sentences, that what Justin had decided would be ‘interesting’ would be to witness what would happen if he melted a candle – he’d taken both some matches and a tea-light from the kitchen, he admitted – and poured the hot molten wax onto Gregory’s skin.

‘I didn’t think it would
hurt
him,’ he protested. ‘I only wanted to peel it back off when it set.’

I was both speechless and furious with him, and Mike was livid. He could barely look at, let alone speak to, Justin, as he picked Gregory up to carry him downstairs.

‘Get to bed, young man,’ I told him as I followed Mike out. ‘Not a peep – we’ll be dealing with you in the morning!’

I then had the unenviable task of phoning Jennie and explaining to her what had happened. It was almost midnight by now, and I felt awful that she had to rush around at this hour. She wouldn’t hear of us driving Gregory home ourselves, since we didn’t know the way, so she had to come out herself – probably the last thing she expected – to collect her frightened and traumatised nephew.

Worst of all was that, seeing how upset we both were, she made it clear that we mustn’t feel in any way responsible. She knew, she said, that Gregory was a vulnerable child, and blamed herself for allowing him to sleep out.

The next day we went through the usual sanctions with Justin. No privileges, no TV and no PlayStation. Not much of a punishment for most kids, I imagine, but to Justin, such losses were torture.

But about the motivation behind his own form of ‘torture’ I was ambivalent. It had really seemed that he had no notion of the pain he’d inflicted, and I wondered if he was so used to extreme pain himself, via his bouts of self-harming, that he genuinely didn’t think he’d hurt Gregory that much. It was either that, or that he
did
know, which made for an equally depressing picture.

Either way, it was a wake-up call for both of us. Not to mention being a stark reminder of Mona’s chilling prophecy.

But incidents such as this, I mused, once my initial shock had died down, were
exactly
what our kind of fostering was about. It may have been shocking to see what had previously been just a set of notes actually happening in our midst, but this was why I’d wanted to do it so badly in the first place. This – this whole tapestry of tragedy heaped on tragedy, and all the far-reaching ramifications – was exactly what drove Mike and I. I just hoped we could unpick all the bad threads that were making a muddle of the rest, and so succeed where so many others had failed. But I knew now, more than ever, that this would be a tall order. A real challenge. Justin seemed more complex by the minute.

‘Curry or pizza or Chinese – what’s your preference?’

It was the following Saturday morning and Mike and Kieron were off to football as per usual. It had been a quiet sort of week since all the revelations and rearrangements, but, even so, I felt shattered and not at all like cooking a big family dinner. Tonight I had a date with a take-away and the telly and someone else would definitely be doing the washing up.

‘Curry!’ Mike, Kieron and Justin all said together, though Justin’s contribution came from the behind the PlayStation controller that he was, as ever, feverishly playing on. Indeed, today, having only just got his privileges back, he was even more obsessed with it than usual. One day, perhaps, we’d get him off to football with the boys, but today wasn’t the day, I thought, to push it.

It had been much colder than usual, with a bitingly chilly wind, and I was actually happy to spend the day indoors myself, my scheduled mooch around the shops with Riley having been cancelled a little while back because she’d been feeling a bit off-colour. I did miss my daughter, though, and felt a little redundant as I dragged the mop and bucket out from the cleaning cupboard.

She’d said she might pop round later and, if not, I might stroll down to hers, but it was probably a good thing for me to catch up with a bit of housework and cleaning in the meantime; I’d forgotten, and had been forcibly reminded by having Justin, that having an extra person in the house created a lot of extra dust. And I definitely couldn’t be having that.

‘That’s a shame,’ I said, grinning. ‘Because I fancy Chinese …’ I pushed my sleeves up. ‘Only kidding. Now get out from under my feet. And you, Justin,’ – I paused here, to look at my watch – ‘have only forty-seven minutes of TV time left before I stage a takeover of the sofa and remote!’

I’d planned, as is my slightly obsessive way with housework, on making a circuit of the upstairs bedrooms, stripping beds as I went, before embarking on a big upstairs dustathon. And since Justin’s was the first door on the left once up the stairs, it seemed logical to tackle that room first.

It was, as it had been for a little while now, a mess, but in a good way. Since the last time he’d stripped it back to basics, he’d now got most of his belongings out again. There was dirty washing piled up in a heap behind the door, DVDs and cases strewn around the floor, and the carpet was actually a small sea of toy soldiers, which looked like they’d originally been set up in ranks but were now, given that they were mostly lying prostrate all over the place, in the last throes of some important battle or other, during which almost all of them had been slaughtered.

I crossed the room, casually dispatching a further couple of gallant heroes, and pushed my sleeves up, ready to get stuck in. As I approached the bed, however, something caught my eye immediately. On it was Justin’s memory box, which, along with his photo album that he kept in it, was open.

We’d learned about memory boxes during our training. Lots of kids in care have them apparently. In an uncertain world and with, very often, equally uncertain futures, they are encouraged to keep a tangible store of cherished memories, so they have touchable reminders of happy times. As well as photographs of loved ones, greeting cards and letters, a box might also include things like ticket stubs from the cinema or a sporting event, programmes, souvenirs, postcards – anything, really, with something meaningful about it, that they could look through when feeling sad or lonely.

I had seen Justin’s memory box several times already, but he had always been looking in it and, invariably, he would close it if anyone approached. Where he kept it, I didn’t know, because he secreted it away, and though I’d been through his room thoroughly when I’d tracked down his stash of socks, I hadn’t seen it, and, in any case, hadn’t wanted to intrude. These things were clearly private, and I respected that, obviously, though I was very keen to have him open up to me more, and things like this would prove very helpful. I had asked him a couple of times if he wanted to go through the box with me, but he’d always shaken his head and gone, ‘Nah, there’s nothing in there. It’s just crap’, or something equally dismissive. And though he would sometimes bring photographs from the box to show us, the actual box always stayed put.

Yet here it was now, just sitting on his bed, wide open, almost as if he’d put it there specifically for me to find. Engrossed as he’d been on the games console when I’d left him, he knew perfectly well that I was coming upstairs to clean bedrooms.

It just seemed way too much of an open invitation to resist, particularly since the incident with Gregory – so, spurred on by the knowledge that the more I knew about him the better I could help him, I sat down on the bed and placed it on my knees.

It was a shoebox, that had been transformed by being encased in black faux-leather, and was covered in Bart Simpson stickers. In the centre of the lid there was a small photograph of Justin aged around eight years old, though it was difficult to make out as the box and lid had obviously been reinforced often; both were criss-crossed with many layers of Sellotape.

Inside was a menu from a Tex Mex restaurant, some birthday cards, a brochure from a theme park and a football programme, plus a number of different kinds of sea shell. There were also lots of photos, some of children – who I assumed were his little brothers, because I could see a definite family likeness. Not that I knew just how much of a family likeness, because, as with Justin, their paternity was unknown, none of her ‘boyfriends’ sticking around for long enough to lay claim to them. Justin had asked his mother, apparently, some years back, but had been simply told not to be nosey.

The photos also included ones of a variety of women, all of which (not just the dark-haired ones, this time, I noticed) had had their faces stabbed with something sharp and their eyes carefully removed. It looked like it had mostly been done with scissors. Most heartbreaking of all was that so many were crumpled; the ones of his mother particularly badly, as if they’d not only been stabbed at repeatedly, but then also been screwed up in distress many times.

And then – and I felt my eyes smart at this – smoothed out again. At least, in so far as they could be. It was a record of the many times in his young life he’d felt unloved, and then loved, and then abandoned, and then hopeful. It was very, very difficult to look at.

And it seemed I wasn’t the only one looking.

I don’t know how much time had passed when I first became aware of it, but while I was sitting there deciding I must press Justin to talk to me about this, I suddenly had that feeling that I was no longer alone. I looked up then and, sure enough, he was standing in the bedroom doorway.

He said nothing at all, just crossed the room towards me, took the box, closed it and calmly placed it under his pillow.

For all his silence and his uncharacteristic lack of histrionics, I could feel his anger thrumming in the air. I felt a wave of embarrassment and floundered for a moment, feeling I’d been caught redhanded doing something naughty. ‘Justin, love …’ I began. I … I … was … well, it was just
there
, and –’

‘You were looking at my private stuff,’ he said calmly.

‘I was cleaning love, that’s all. And it was there, open, on your bed.’

He stared at me for a moment before shrugging his shoulders ‘Don’t matter anyway,’ he said. ‘It’s only a load of old crap.’

I stood up, then made myself busy smoothing the duvet. ‘I’m so sorry, love,’ I said. ‘It’s your personal things. I really had no right to …’

‘It’s fine Casey,’ he said, and his tone was light, even dismissive. ‘I’m just gonna stay in here now, though, if that’s okay. And watch a DVD.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s fine. I can do your room later.’

I hesitated a moment, in case he wanted to say more, but he just turned, knelt on the floor and started gathering up DVDs. So I left the room, quietly closing the door behind me. And though the feeling persisted that he’d
wanted
me to see it, I couldn’t help feeling really bad. I had intruded on something personal to him, and that was something I could never have imagined myself doing.

When I passed his room later, Justin was still in there, only now he was no longer watching a DVD, but once again stripping it of all but its functional furniture, and apparently doing it on autopilot. If he heard me or saw me, he certainly didn’t register it. Same process, I thought, but this time without the drama.

I wasn’t sure who he was trying to punish; me or himself. It was just such a desperately sad thing to witness.

April had arrived and with it some slightly warmer weather at long last and, like another ray of sunshine, Riley was on the phone. ‘Mum, it’s me,’ she said, and I could tell right away that she was brighter than she had been of late. Which was good to hear, as I’d been a little worried about her. It wasn’t like Riley to be ill – she was almost invariably like a Duracell bunny. But she’d been feeling off-colour more than once in the last couple of weeks. I’d been just about to call her myself.

‘Hiyah, lovey,’ I answered. ‘You feeling better? You certainly sound it.’

‘Brilliant, thanks,’ she said brightly. ‘Just wanted to check you were in.’

‘Yes, I am. No plans to be going anywhere, either. Why, are you going to pop round?’

‘I was, yes. Mum, what time’s Dad likely to be home?’

Strange thing to ask, I thought. ‘Usual time,’ I answered anyway. ‘Around five-ish or so. He didn’t say any different when he left this morning. Why?’ Mike was a warehouse manager for a big office-furniture supply company. He worked long hours, but, thankfully, also regular ones.

‘Good,’ she said firmly, but not answering my question. ‘I’m just going to wait for David to get back from work, then we’ll be over. Can we have tea at yours?’

All these strange questions! But what a daft one this was. ‘Of
course
it’s okay, stupid! It’ll be lovely to see you both. I was just going to do pizza for Justin and Kieron, but I’m sure I can come up with something more elegant for us four. Hey, but listen, you sound like there’s some particular reason for all this. I mean, it’s lovely to see you
any
time, but –’

Riley laughed. ‘That’s because there
is
a reason, mum. See you about five-thirty, okay? Byeee!’

But there was no time to dwell on what the reason might be because almost as soon as I’d put down the phone, I heard the front door bang and a spirited ‘Hi, Casey!’ being bellowed from the hallway, closely followed by the sound of a herd of wildebeest thundering up the stairs. It was Justin, home from school and, as had become his routine now, dashing upstairs to get out of his school uniform.

I let go my breath and simultaneously realised that Justin wasn’t the only one who’d got into a routine. Holding my breath on his arrival was mine – at least till I was sure of the mood he was in; sure he wasn’t going to kick off and spoil everyone’s day. It was ridiculous, and I mentally chastised myself for it. He was an eleven-year-old child, not a monster.

But glancing at the clock I realised there was no time to dwell on that either; if Riley and David were coming to eat with us I needed to think about what it was we
would
eat, and that meant a thorough rummage in the fridge and freezer. I also needed to press on and get Kieron and Justin fed. Whatever impromptu arrangements I fixed up with my daughter, my son wanted feeding when he got in from college and it was also important I stuck to Justin’s meal chart; both the timing and the menu were non-negotiable.

Justin himself joined me in the kitchen just as I was taking the pizza out of the oven. It was almost as if he had some sort of sixth sense for knowing exactly when food was going to arrive.

‘Just in time!’ I quipped. ‘Hey, that’s what we should call you, shouldn’t we? Justin Time!’ I was in a buoyant mood knowing Riley and David would soon be over. Justin, too, it seemed. He found this hilarious.

‘What’s so funny?’ asked Kieron, arriving in the doorway. ‘Ah, pizza!’ he said, seeing it and emitting a small cheer. ‘That’s good. So I won’t die of starvation after all.’

They went through to the dining room with their tea and I could hear them laughing and chatting. This was shaping up to be a good day all round, I decided. I then grabbed a coffee and cleared the desks and set about round two – preparing a nice tea for the rest of us. As it was so summery, I’d settled on cold roast chicken and salad. Mike would probably moan – he was more of a pie and chips man – but oh, well. Didn’t matter. It was all food.

Five-thirty arrived and, with it, David and Riley. ‘Thank God for that,’ Mike said, letting them in and mock-frowning. ‘It’s bad enough that I’m forced to eat rabbit food after a hard day at work, but even worse to have to wait half an hour for the pleasure!’

‘No, no – we can’t eat yet!’ Riley said, seeing me emerge from the kitchen with the salad bowl. ‘You need to get everyone gathered together first, so we can tell you our news. Where’s Kieron? And Justin. Dad, can you get them?’

‘They’re back upstairs,’ I said. ‘Playing on the computer in Kieron’s bedroom. But –’

‘Mum, Dad!’ Riley chided, while David stood there grinning goofily. ‘Stop staring and go get them, will you!’

I took the salad bowl and plonked it back on the kitchen table, while Mike bellowed to the boys to come down. ‘Quick, you two!’ he added – probably for the benefit of his stomach, while I, meanwhile, had a sudden bolt of inspiration. I looked at Riley, then at David – the pair of them like a couple of grinning idiots. It couldn’t be, could it? Or maybe it
could
be …

The boys both thundered down then, Kieron volubly complaining. ‘This had better be good, Riley. We were in the middle of an important game!’

But his big sister was having none of it. ‘Shut up and sit down, you two,’ she ordered, and it was only once they’d done so and she had all our full attention that she deigned to impart their ‘big news’. Which
was
big. At least, would before too long become so. ‘Everyone,’ she announced. ‘David and me want you to be the first to know. I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby!’

Now my heart really
did
leap. So my hunch had been right. This was a shock, but such a great one. Such a fabulous thing. Mike and me were going to become grandparents!

I glanced at Mike to see him looking stunned, his eyes filling up with tears. Then he leapt up from the sofa and the room all but exploded – into a big noisy round of hugs and congratulations, with everyone kissing everyone else, just like it was New Year. But then, minutes later, I noticed Justin, in the corner.

It was his face; it had taken on that strange inhuman quality. He looked like thunder. I could see he was seething.

‘You okay, babes?’ I asked him quietly, but he seemed unable to answer. In fact, I could see he was struggling hard to try and maintain control. He was shaking, and he looked like he wanted to punch something. Luckily, it didn’t seem as if anyone else had noticed, and with me now standing between him and everyone else, hopefully they wouldn’t notice, either. I really didn’t want this wonderful occasion spoiling.

I discreetly manoeuvred him – and thankfully he didn’t try to resist – out into the hallway, and then looked right into his eyes, maintaining contact as I spoke to him. ‘Look,’ I said gently, but also quite firmly. ‘I know something about all this has upset you, Justin, but we don’t want to hurt Riley’s feelings, do we? You’re obviously too angry to talk to me about it right now, I can see that, so why don’t you go on back upstairs for a bit, eh? Kieron will be up in a minute and you can get back to your game. Okay, love?’

For a moment he looked like he was about to speak, but then changed his mind and clamped his mouth shut again. Then he turned and plodded off back up to his bedroom and as I watched him go up, I slowly exhaled. Once again, I’d been holding my breath.

We didn’t see Justin downstairs again until Riley and David had finally left for home, and when he did come down, he had Kieron close behind him. And for a reason; when I asked him about it, sensing he was calmer, and would want to talk about it, right away, Kieron, who was standing behind him, was busy making a face at me and shaking his head.

Taking my cue, I dropped it, and instead just ruffled Justin’s hair. ‘I know it’s a lot of fuss, kiddo,’ I said lightly. ‘But don’t worry. It’ll calm down soon enough.’

It was only once he’d gone to bed that Kieron told me what had happened. He’d been aware from the off what had happened to Justin, bless him – had actually seen him metamorphose into that other, scary Justin, and though I hadn’t been aware of it, specifically popped upstairs to check all was okay.

Once up there, he’d asked Justin if he was okay and, getting little back, then observed, ‘Bloody women, eh! Getting all over-excited about babies! So. Back to our game, then? Prepare yourself, mind. Welcome to defeat, little brother!’

Justin had apparently laughed out loud at this, his parting comment on the subject being an equally spirited, ‘Hah! She won’t be so happy when she’s round and fat like my mum!’

I could have kissed Kieron for that. I really could. Trust him to have the wisdom to say
exactly
the thing Justin needed to hear. I really felt proud of him that day.

‘It’s not really surprising he’s found it difficult to swallow,’ said Mike, once we were tucked up in bed, him with his book and reading glasses and me with my magazine and coffee, like the grandparents-in-waiting we couldn’t believe we now were. ‘Hard for him to separate it from what’s happened with
his
mum, is it? You know, another woman having a baby, all the fuss and attention and everything. Must remind him of how wretched his own family life is.’ Mike put the word ‘family’ in quote marks with his fingers, and he was right to – what sort of family life was Justin ever going to have? His mother was about as reliable as the British summer. What were the chances of her every really wanting to reconcile with Justin once her ‘princess’, her precious baby daughter, came along? My guess was that she wouldn’t want him within a mile of her.

But all we could do for Justin was what we were doing already – trying to give him stability and boundaries and affection and, as far as possible, help him to deal with the scars he already had. And I couldn’t dwell on it all – not that night – as I was way too excited. ‘Grandparents’. It made me giggle just to say it out loud. In my head I was way, way too young to be a ‘nanna’, and I laughed when I realised I was actually rehearsing in my head how I was going to break the news to my parents. How mad was that?

But there was a serious aspect to this incredible new situation; the effect this would have on our fostering. Way in the future, though we’d yet to have so much of an inkling of it, our fostering would turn out to be such a great positive that it would end up having a direct effect on Riley’s own choice of career, but for the moment, as Mike commented, we must proceed with caution. We must make sure we had a much fuller background on future children, especially older ones, to be sure they didn’t have a history of hurting little ones.

In the meantime, I agreed, thinking about Justin’s reaction earlier, we must take care. If he was still with us when the baby was born – it was due in November – we mustn’t be blind to how that might affect him.

The days passed, and I never really did get Justin to articulate his difficulty about Riley and her pregnancy. Even though, intuitively, it was so obvious why it affected him, it still would have been so helpful for him to be able to talk his feelings through with me, yet as a subject for discussion, no matter how hard I tried to set things up for him to attempt it, it seemed it was a definite no-go area. I heard second-hand from Kieron that his only other comment to him on the matter was that all girls were ‘slags’ and that he knew ‘all the stuff they do to get pregnant’. He also warned Kieron that he should never get a girlfriend, because they were ‘trouble’.

Despite him not opening up about it to me, his distaste was still palpable and obvious, even if it wasn’t aggressive. He would simply get up and leave any room Riley entered. Riley herself, blooming and beaming, was philosophic, however. ‘He’ll get over it, Mum,’ she said. ‘I know he will. And I’m not taking it personally. So don’t worry about it.’

Bless her too, I thought. And she was spot on, of course. If we ignored it, he’d probably get past it all the quicker. In the meantime, we’d just ride it out.

But his reaction to Riley’s pregnancy aside, I was beginning to feel Justin and I were making progress again. Relations between the two of us were just beginning to feel so much warmer; I could sense a return of the closeness we’d begun to develop before the massive blow-up following his last disclosures. And by the last day of term, as I prepared the crumpets and the chocolate, I realised our weekly ‘points’ meetings were something I had begun to look forward to.

They were, however, always bitter sweet. Since he was doing well on level two now, he had quite a lot to spend, and a big part of our ‘meeting’ was to sit down together so he could decide what he’d like to spend them on.

He didn’t tend to deviate a great deal. A third of his points would be used up on the ‘basics’: an 8 p.m. bedtime, TV and DVD player in his bedroom, time to spend on the computer. He was then meant to use the rest of his points up on various things on the pre-arranged programme manager’s list, which included extra peer time or having a pal round for tea. It also, rather poignantly, included ‘sleepovers with friends’ – something that, since the incident with Gregory and the candle wax, would be out of the question for the foreseeable future. Sadly, if predictably, he’d never do all of them anyway, and instead – without commenting in any way about them – he’d just quickly skip the page altogether. He’d then quickly move on to the things that he could do, like ordering a special take-away, choosing a DVD or game rental, or going somewhere special with either one of us or one of his carers. That he had no friends his own age must have been constantly on his mind – how could it not be? – but he’d always come to the last section as if the things he was choosing were the most exciting imaginable, so it didn’t even occur to him to want to have friends.

It was heartbreaking, yes, but there was a positive to it too. He would confide in me again. And today he did.

I couldn’t quite pin down what it was that prompted it, but out of the blue, while we were just finalising his treats, he said, ‘You know, when I was eight, I went to hospital.’