A Boy Without Hope

by Casey Watson

  ‘After they said I had to leave there.’

  ‘Why was that, love?’

  Now a sigh. The first stirrings of impatience. ‘Because the social made them. Like they always do. Else I’d still be with them, wouldn’t I?’

  I had a powerful urge to hug him, but I doubted he’d allow that. ‘That’s sad,’ I said instead. ‘How long were you with them?’

  ‘Dunno,’ he said, stamping the duvet back with his feet. ‘A long time. They should’ve let me stay with them. But they wouldn’t let them.’

  ‘So you couldn’t ...’ I groped for words. Groped for the best words to keep this going. Finally settling on, ‘That must make you feel very sad. But it’s a comfort to have things we can see and touch that remind us of happier times, isn’t it?’

  He shrugged then. And twisting round, lay the photo on the bedside table. Face down, I noted. Then he scrambled out of bed.

  I stood up, too, yanked at my dressing-gown belt, opened the other curtain. Sunlight flooded in, and I remembered something Kieron once said. One of his sometimes interminable summaries of favourite films. In this case, some time-travelling movie or other, and the complexities of escaping through some temporary portal, crucially, before the portal was shut. It seemed this one was.

  But I was wrong.

  I turned around to see Miller rootling beneath the headboard, behind his pillow. He pulled his hand out. ‘I’ve got my train still. And see? Rob repainted it for me.’

  And there it was. In his hand. ‘That must be precious then,’ I told him.

  He nodded and placed it back, pushing it deep down behind the mattress. ‘’Tis,’ he said. ‘So what’s for breakfast? I’m starving.’

  ***

  In a perfect world, my brief glimpse into Miller’s past would have marked a sea of change. The moment of connection. The point at which we moved on to a more productive stage with him. But this was not a perfect world, so I didn’t hold my breath. Breakfast done – and, true to his word, he had been starving – it was almost as if our moment of tender reflection hadn’t happened, because straight afterwards it was as if the Miller we knew and loved had been restored to us – approximately half a second after Mike, on hearing his impassioned representations, decreed that, no, there would be no resumption of PlayStation privileges till at least tomorrow, and that obviously dependent on his behaviour today.

  So it kicked off. And though, to be fair to Mike, I’d not had an opportunity to share what had happened with him, I felt the route to the precious portal now fading away. No, he didn’t want to kick a ball about. No, he didn’t want to go to the park. He just wanted, Greta Garbo-style, to be ‘LEFT ALONE!’, his words hammered home by the thump of his feet on the stairs.

  Mike rolled his eyes, obviously, and Tyler wearily shook his head. But the voice in my head reminded me that, nevertheless, we had made progress. That the exchange in the bedroom proved further progress was possible. I just had to keep chipping away.

  ***

  It was my new link worker, Christine Bolton, who was first on my hit list on Monday morning. Much as I was loath to be critical, Libby had been less than helpful on all of my previous calls, and I was sorely tempted to ring her manager directly. First though, I would see what Christine had to say.

  Well, only after I’d said some things to her. Like how I was feeling. Like how Miller was behaving. Like when I could expect to have a fuller, more useful picture. Like when I could expect to get some help. ‘I really do need some support, Christine, like yesterday,’ I told her firmly. ‘I can’t put our programme into practice without some structure outside of the house, and he clearly needs it. Urgently. Before the rot sets in. And quite apart from that – and I’m sorry to labour the point – but I feel like both a jailor and a prisoner. There’s no way I’m going to make progress with him until we have some structure. Some sort of plan put in place.’

  To my surprise, I thought I heard my link worker snort before she answered. ‘Oh, Casey,’ she said, ‘I know nothing about this is funny, but John was right. You certainly do call a spade a spade, don’t you?’ Then a tinkling laugh. Which amused me not a jot.

  But then she went on to wax lyrical about my passion and commitment, and though she didn’t exactly get round me, I did at least get an inkling, and it was a positive inkling, that Christine called a spade a spade as well. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m feeling exactly the same as you are about all of this. It’s terrible. There’s no way the boy should be left out on a limb like this and it’s the social care team’s job to do something about it. Leave it with me for half an hour and I promise you, I’ll be back with an answer.’

  ‘You mean a resolution?’ I asked hopefully. ‘Because Libby’s already been giving me answers, none of which so far have been helpful.’

  ‘You’re right, Casey,’ Christine said. ‘I promise you, I am on to this. I will have a resolution of some sort. I’ll speak to you very soon.’

  ‘And his history,’ I said, before she had a chance to escape. ‘He has a photo. Of a couple who fostered him early on. Neen and Rob. If you can find anything out about them, or his time with them, that would be a great help. They were obviously very important to him. Still are.’

  She promised she would, and I passed the time waiting for the promised call back by writing up some reports about the weekend. As a foster carer, you get used to keeping such records. It’s so important to get down all the details, good and bad, as it helps with reflection, both when writing them – the immediate thoughts and reactions – and also later, when you look back and read them again; I’d often then be better able to identify triggers for behaviours, and reflect on which strategies worked and which didn’t. It was simple good practice, and I’d learned not to censor myself.

  So out it all came – all the anger I’d felt on Saturday, and the frustration, as well as the sadness and empathy that the events of Sunday morning had elicited. And it was always cathartic, so by the time Christine called back, I was in a much more amenable place.

  ‘Good news!’ she told me straight away. ‘Great news in fact. The outside agency you’ve been told about are called Helping Hands. They’re a project that send outreach workers in regularly to take a child off your hands for a few hours, a few times per week, while they are not in formal education. The idea is that they take a child on activity-based outings, such as rock climbing, bicycle riding, seaside trips, etc., and the time is spent’ – I could sense she was reading from a crib sheet – ‘both in learning and in openly talking about the past, the present and the future.’

  ‘Sounds a bit hippy dippy,’ I said. ‘I haven’t heard of Helping Hands. Do they have a proven track record of success with this programme?’

  Christine laughed. ‘Well, it’s quite new at the moment, Casey, but my thinking is that anything is better than nothing right now, isn’t it? And I have more news. We’ve an appointment arranged for next week at a school for you. It’s a very exclusive school for boys with behavioural problems – and I do mean exclusive – and the entry criteria is really strict, so we’ve done extremely well to even get that much. So keep your fingers crossed. I’ll email you the name of the head, the address and the time, okay? In the meantime, someone called Sheila from Helping Hands will call you later today to arrange to come and take Miller out tomorrow for you.’

  Tomorrow? ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Blimey, that’s quick work.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, you did want a resolution, didn’t you? Oh, and by the way, that couple you wanted to know about? Janine and Robert Cresswell? You were right, they were his foster carers. From about three months after he came into the system till he was almost seven. So a little shy of two years.’

  ‘And what happened? Why was he moved?’

  ‘Because they could no longer keep him. She fell pregnant with twins. And you know what it’s like. Not the easiest decision to make, I’m sure. But with the prospect of two babies … and given the challenges he posed … Sad, but there you go. Such
is life, eh? So he was shunted off to a children’s home while another family were found for him. And I imagine it all must have gone downhill again from there.’

  Christine carried on then, explaining that she’d spoken to Libby’s manager, and that fuller records should be emailed to me by the end of the day. But all I could think about was the word she used. ‘Shunted.’ Shunted on like his little red train.

  I thanked her for the ‘Helping Hand’, for which I was really extremely grateful, but my mind was mostly on the couple who’d made the decision to let him go, and how, somehow, they’d been able to manage the process so that, in Miller’s mind, at least, it had been a decision foisted on them, rather than made by themselves, however regretfully.

  I was ambivalent about it, to be honest. On the one hand, it meant less of the pain of rejection, which had to be a good thing for Miller’s psyche. If he truly believed he’d been taken from them rather than discarded (a hard word, but, if he had known, it would surely have been his one) he could retain bright, happy memories of his time there, rather than hating them for ‘shunting’ him on. But, on the flip side, all that pain was then directed at others – in this case at the powerful people in social services who, for their own inexplicable cruel, callous reasons, had decided he’d be ‘better off’ in a children’s home.

  Would it have been better for them to be honest with him? We’d never know. But what I did know was that this, surely, must have been the start – or if not the start, at least a hardening and deepening – of his mistrust and hatred of the adults who ‘ruled’ his whole life.

  I thought about ‘Neen’, Miller’s foster mum, and the day she had found out she was pregnant. With the child she had longed for for a very long time? I imagined so. Perhaps that had been why they’d taken up fostering in the first place – because they thought they couldn’t have children of their own? And to then find out it was twins. The delight. The shock. The re-calibration for the foreseeable future. And the big, difficult conversations that must than have ensued. The mental contortions they must have gone through, weighing life as it was with Miller, and life as it might be with two new babies and Miller – who, given his developmental stage, and the neglect and abuse he’d suffered, must have been a challenging prospect even then. And the decision they had reached – and for which I would never judge them, because it wasn’t as if they’d adopted him – to give Miller up and begin new and different lives. God, that must have been a hard one.

  That one day, that sent his childhood in a whole new direction. A direction which Christine had already described as ‘downhill’. One day he had been a damaged child who was making steady progress. The next, the brakes were off, and he was hurling downhill. A runaway train that no one had yet been able to stop.

  One thing was for sure. No wonder Miller had control issues.

  Chapter 11

  They say be thankful for small mercies and, in my job, I knew exactly what that meant. More often than not, it meant grabbing hold of the little things that went well, in the hope that, sooner or later, the more frequent big things – the things that didn’t go so well – would eventually be outweighed.

  And today my luck was in, because two came my way.

  The first took the shape of a call from my GP. We had a new one these days, a Dr Patterson. He was young enough to be full of energy and up-to-date medical knowledge, and old enough to have acquired lots of experience and wisdom. He was also very much on the ball in terms of social care situations, which meant he understood the specific needs foster carers routinely had.

  ‘So I’ve had word back from Miller’s consultant,’ he said, once he’d explained why he was calling, which was to confirm he’d received Miller’s medical records and made contact with his sleep doctor. ‘And we’re both of the opinion that since Miller’s been using melatonin for so long, it wouldn’t hurt – since it’s clearly not having the desired effect – to replace them with a placebo and see how that goes; try and get him back to a more natural sleep pattern.’

  My first thought was ‘here we go’, because it meant another bout of tinkering, with me at the sharp end, as the dispenser. But I quickly realised that it could hardly be any worse, could it? And perhaps it would help. After all, no one knew what his usual sleep patterns were, did they?

  ‘Okay, great,’ I said. ‘Thank you. So for how long?’

  ‘Oh, a couple of months or so, I think,’ he said. ‘We can review things from there. And if there’s no deterioration, or an improvement, then we’ll obviously take him off them. Anyway, I’ve made up a prescription for you. Pick it up whenever you can.’

  ‘Well, funnily enough,’ I said, ‘I’m escaping for a couple of hours this morning.’

  He laughed. ‘Bit like that is it?’

  ‘A lot like,’ I said.

  And the other small mercy was in the shape of a small blonde woman called Sheila, who arrived at my doorstep ten minutes later. She wore a black leather jacket atop an oversized linen top, and faded, fashionably ripped-at-the-knee jeans. Teamed with her black ankle boots and her big cross-body handbag, she looked very trendy. And definitely ready for business.

  And she’d clearly just finished a cigarette, as she was also accessorised by a waft of eddying tobacco smoke; something I’d become surprisingly attuned to since giving up my own habit. In a spirit of solidarity – no one likes an evangelist, after all – I tried not to wrinkle my nose. I guessed her to be in her late fifties.

  ‘So,’ I said when she’d followed me inside, ‘Miller’s quite excited to be going out with you today, which is a plus. He’s currently upstairs getting his trainers on, so he’ll be down in a minute. In the meantime, come on in and take a seat. You can tell me all about the all-singing, all-dancing Helping Hands. My link worker didn’t seem to know much about it.’

  I grinned so she would know I was only teasing, and she laughed out loud. ‘God, not much chance of that,’ she said. ‘I only started there two weeks back. Your Miller is actually my first outreach kid, so I’m really still fumbling my way through. I mean, don’t worry, or anything. I do know what I’m supposed to do. Take him off for a bit, and try to find out about his interests. Any ideas? Any thoughts on what he might enjoy?’

  I shook my head. ‘To be honest, I’m as much in the dark as you are and he’s been with us almost three weeks now. Aside from his computer games, and pretending to be a dinosaur, he hasn’t really given us any indication of what he likes. Though there is one thing,’ I added, the little red train, and his attachment to it, still very much on my mind. ‘I’m not sure how it would tie in with what you do, but I think he likes trains, or at least he used to. He has a toy one in his room which he’s had since he was little. It’s very special to him.’

  ‘That’s it, then,’ Sheila said, slapping her hands down on her thighs. She really did seem very no-nonsense. Very capable. ‘Most towns have a train station, right? We can have a drive to one today and go for ice cream or something in their café. I’m sure they’ll have one. Then we take it from there. See how it pans out. You never know, it could lead to a bit of a cross-country trip over his sessions – you know, to visit different areas and different trains.’

  Two things occurred to me. One being, why hadn’t I thought of that? And the second being the circumstances of him coming into care in the first place. Was a fascination with trains the reason he’d been playing by the railway? Why hadn’t I thought of that either?

  Probably because I’d been too busy hacking my way through the trees to see the whole wood. In any event, this seemed a grand plan, and when Miller arrived in the living room, I was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat.

  ‘Oh, I think you’re going to have great fun,’ I told him after introducing Sheila. ‘And while you’re out on your adventure I’ll go and do all the boring stuff like shopping, going to the doctor’s for your pill prescription and paying all the bills.’ I checked the time. ‘So half twelve then?’ I asked, calculating the two and a half hours
I’d been allotted. ‘I’ll make sure I’m back by then.’

  ‘And don’t worry about us,’ Sheila reassured me, even though, in reality, I wasn’t. She looked more than capable of doing her job. ‘Me and Miller are going to have a ball, aren’t we? So you get out and have a bit of a break and we’ll see you soon. Come on, kiddo,’ she said as she stood up and motioned for Miller to follow. And he did exactly that. All meek and mild, as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. I almost gaped as I watched them go. A. Maze. Ing.

  ‘I’m freeeee!’ I squealed down the phone to Riley, the minute I’d seen Sheila’s car drive off. ‘I’ve just got to pop in and pick up Miller’s prescription, then I’m on my way. Are you ready to hit the shops?’

  Riley laughed. ‘Calm down, Mum! We’re only going to the flipping supermarket.’

  ‘Might have time for coffee and cake too,’ I said, ‘so long as you’re ready to be picked up in fifteen minutes.’

  She was. With the kids all off in school now, and David at work, Riley also had some welcome free time on her hands. She and her partner David were still doing a bit of fostering – short-term emergency care or respite – but these days she was studying, so had taken ‘respite’ herself. She wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do yet, but had recently completed a course on counselling, done some training in outreach support work and was now one year into a child psychology qualification.

  ‘I actually feel like we’re bunking off,’ Riley giggled as, prescription procured, we pulled into the car park of the large hypermarket that had recently been built on the outskirts of town.

  ‘Me, too, and I’ve been dying to sample the delights of this place,’ I said. ‘It says in the paper that there are thirteen different places to eat in here. Can you imagine?’

  ‘Flipping heck, Mum,’ Riley said as she drove into a space. ‘You sound like you fell asleep in the seventies and have just woken up!’

  ***

  We spent the next hour and a half browsing and picking up essentials, both enjoying the simple pleasures of laughing and catching up. Though it would take a full day to take advantage of the multitude of shops here. No wonder Riley had laughed when I’d suggested we use our scrap of time to come here to shop. Because all too soon, it was time to get back into the car, and it shocked me to realise that a dark cloud had started to descend over my shoulders. I tried to shake the unwelcome and unfamiliar feeling.