by Casey Watson
‘I know what you mean,’ Riley said when I tried to explain it. ‘Remember when Jackson had that bad bout of chickenpox and I was stuck in the house for a week with him? That one day when David took over so I could escape? I honestly didn’t want it to end – I didn’t want to go home. And this was Jackson!’
I nodded, but wasn’t sure that was exactly the problem. Yes, I’d been stir crazy, but it was more than that. More like a sense of impending doom. Because, in truth, despite that glimmer of hope I’d experienced on Sunday morning, it was as if that child – the child I was desperate to reach again – had been spirited away, never to return.
I told myself I was just being silly and over-dramatic, and by the time I dropped Riley home, I was in a much more positive mood. Yet as soon as I reached my own street, the gloom once again descended. For no good reason – because I had none. Sheila had looked so on-the-ball and unflappable. She was that. Stop flapping, I told myself sternly. All will be well.
I was surprised, however, as I pulled up to our house, to see Sheila’s car already parked up outside. I checked the clock on my dashboard. I was a good fifteen minutes early. And no one was in the car. So where were they?
Perhaps they’d got back early, I decided, and gone for a walk to pass the time. Which at least gave me time to get my provisions inside.
I struggled through the front door, juggling my car keys, door keys and three carrier bags, wondering how the train station trip had gone, and whether Miller had been happy about his adventure. Remembering how lovingly he had looked at his own little train, my bet was that he’d have been thrilled. But passing the living-room door, slightly ajar, I almost jumped out of my skin.
‘This is not funny!’ came a shrill voice. ‘Let me out of here right now!’
I stopped. How the hell did they get into my house? I dropped the bags in the hall and ran through into the kitchen. Where I was gobsmacked to be greeted with the sight of Sheila, who was hopping mad – literally – behind the glass door that led into my conservatory.
The key was in the lock on my side, so, still completely at a loss as to how she got there, I unlocked the door and went in.
‘What on earth is going on?’ I asked. Though as I spoke, I already had my answer. Miller was outside in the back garden, in the middle of the lawn, doing some kind of weird dance and laughing hysterically. ‘Sheila?’ I asked, ignoring him (the response was now automatic). ‘What happened? Why on earth are you in here?’
‘I’m locked in here, that’s what,’ she said. She sounded almost on the edge of tears. ‘And I have been for the last bloody hour!’
I still couldn’t understand it. And Miller was still dancing. Dancing even more manically now he could see I was in there as well. He was also now jiggling a pair of keys at me. Obviously those to the outside conservatory doors. How the hell did he get them? I asked Sheila if she knew.
‘He had them with him,’ she said. ‘Was more than happy to tell me, too. Said he crept down in the night and took them. Then spent the rest of the night plotting how to trap me in here.’
No wonder he’d looked so cheerful when they’d left. I cursed my stupidity. My inexcusable naivety. As much as I was angry, I could see how that could have happened. The inner door was always kept locked so I would have had no reason to unlock it, just to check on the keys in the conservatory door.
And it wasn’t like he couldn’t creep around the house in the small hours. Once I was asleep – and no way could I keep awake all night – there was nothing to stop him doing so, either. Why hadn’t that occurred to me? Because it hadn’t, that was why. Because as long as he was quiet in his bedroom, that was enough. Or apparently in his bedroom. God, so stupid!
But why? With the prospect of doing something fun? Again, it was painfully easy to answer my own question. Because this wasn’t about fun, was it? This was about being in control. And I’d been so fixated on that precious two hours with my daughter that I’d failed to consider that this was exactly the sort of control tactic he would employ.
I went and got my spare key and unlocked the back door. ‘Miller get inside please,’ I said, keeping my tone even. ‘I really can’t believe you’ve done this. You need to come inside and apologise to Sheila.’
To my surprise, Miller strolled in, smiled sweetly, handed the keys to me and apologised. He then said he was going upstairs to change, as his trainers had been hurting his feet. I shook my head in disbelief as he walked by us.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I said to Sheila, but then picked up on something else. ‘An hour, you said? Did I get the time wrong?’
Sheila shook her head. She looked slightly uncomfortable. ‘It was probably longer than an hour,’ she said. ‘We’d only just left the town really. Miller asked if we could stop at the big McDonald’s drive-through for a breakfast burger and a milkshake. I’d planned to buy lunch anyway, so I didn’t object, but when we parked up for our food he said he needed the loo, and when he came out he was acting all shocked’ – she frowned and pointed – ‘and waving those very keys at me. He said he’d taken the dog out first thing and must have put the keys in his pocket by mistake, and that we needed to get back to give them to you or you wouldn’t be able to leave the house.’ She frowned again. ‘I know. Born yesterday, or what? And, of course, when we got back here he asked me to go in with him as he was scared. Never even occurred to me to point out that your car wasn’t on the drive any more. So of course I went with him – round the back, into the garden and through the doors there – and he immediately ran back out and locked me in here. I feel such an idiot,’ she finished.
‘But we don’t even have a dog.’ Hadn’t she noticed?
‘I know that now,’ she said. ‘God, I’m such a fool. Oh, and another thing,’ she said, picking up her huge handbag. ‘I don’t know when he did it, but I’m pretty sure he must have. There was a full pack of cigarettes in my bag when I arrived this morning, and now there isn’t.’ Which, of course, she would have checked because, boy, she must have wanted one. ‘Look, I have to go, Casey,’ she said, slinging the bag over her shoulder. ‘I have another child to pick up, and I don’t want to be late.’ She smiled a grim smile. ‘Let’s hope the day doesn’t get any worse, eh? But I’ll give you a ring in a couple of days to arrange the next visit, okay?’
‘Of course,’ I said, wondering if she actually would, after today’s fiasco. ‘And, look, don’t worry about it. You might not have discovered any new interests, but at least you know what you’re dealing with. And how!’
‘All grist to the mill!’ she said, as I showed her out. I watched her go. And pondered the metaphysical as I watched her drive off. No wonder I’d had the sense of foreboding.
And now I had a number of new things to deal with. Stealing the cigarettes – was he smoking? And the not insignificant matter of him taking our keys. I also needed to think about how on earth we could enforce him staying in his bedroom during the night. I shut the front door, and before tackling the subject of my dark thoughts (he could stew for a while yet) I picked my bags up and put the shopping away.
It didn’t take a detective, I mused, as I banged cupboard doors shut, to work out the scores on Miller’s virtual board right now. I was definitely on the losing team, and the victor was winning. By a mile.
Chapter 12
A few days after the incident with the perhaps erroneously named Helping Hands, Miller’s social worker was standing on my doorstep. She was wearing a large straw sun hat, huge rainbow-coloured disc earrings, and a long, floaty yellow and lime green dress. She also wore the same pair of Dr. Martens boots (in this heat!) and an extra-large grin.
She was summer personified, which was perhaps why I felt so irritable. Because, despite the sunshine that had obviously inspired her clothing choices this morning, I felt as if I was living beneath a perpetual black rain cloud.
‘Hi, Libby,’ I said with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. ‘Do come in. Though I’m afraid Miller isn’t up yet. I have tried bu
t he’s ignoring me at the moment.’
‘What a little lazybones,’ Libby said, as she wafted down the hall behind me. ‘But no matter. I can always go up to have my chat with him if need be.’
This was a statutory visit – one which all social workers are required to make at least every six weeks. Though, admittedly, it hadn’t been quite that long yet, it still felt like a lifetime since I’d last seen her. I led her through to the kitchen diner, and ushered her to a chair. ‘Would you like a drink of something?’ I asked her, reaching for the kettle.
‘Oh, just something cold for me,’ she said, fanning herself with one of my coasters. ‘Water or juice, or something? I’m roasting.’
Chance would be a fine thing, I thought, glancing wistfully at the bright blue outdoors. Yes, I could sit in the garden, but there was only so much of that you could do without aching for a chance to actually venture out. Which, apart from a lingering trip to the supermarket after Mike got home from work a couple days earlier, I hadn’t had since the debacle with Sheila from Helping Hands. Whose silence, incidentally, was beginning to speak volumes.
As was Miller’s.
I’d read the riot act to him after the Sheila business, albeit in a necessarily restrained fashion, and pointed out that I’d have to report the incident to both mine and his social workers, and that it would be written up on his record. ‘You really don’t do yourself any favours,’ I’d told him, ‘having things like this available for others to read. These incidents follow you around, Miller, as I’m sure you realise.’
He’d simply shrugged. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘Why should I? You’ll get rid of me, like they all do, and they’re going to run out of places to send me to soon. And then I’ll have my own way, won’t I?’
What? I felt totally exasperated. ‘Is that what you want, then?’ I asked him. ‘To leave here and be sent somewhere else?’
The pause was lengthy. And I let it extend. Did he really want to leave us? He’d had at least two opportunities to do so, and had taken neither of them. Or was running away, under his own steam, and fetching up at, say, a police station, not good enough, not dramatic enough, for him? Was it that important that he orchestrate things so he was forcibly removed, rather than leaving – and removed with as much upset and recrimination as possible? Increasingly, it seemed so. And I felt at a loss to understand it. To understand him. But perhaps I was asking too much even to try to. Even Miller didn’t seem to know what Miller wanted.
He continued to sit and scowl at the floor, arms crossed tightly across his chest. ‘You know what, Miller,’ I said eventually. ‘You’re right. At least half-right. There are only so many foster carers out there, as you say. But there are alternatives to foster care, and they won’t run out of those. And if you –’
‘I don’t care!’ he screeched, leaping up and running from the room.
Which was precisely why it was so clear that he did.
***
Later, when Mike had come home from work, we’d had a debrief over coffee. Most frustrating of all the current crop of frustrations was that I was so powerless to do anything about the missing cigarettes and lighter. Miller had naturally denied that he’d taken them and equally naturally – assuming he had, which I was sure of – wasn’t going to leave them anywhere I could easily find them. Which meant the only way to do so would be to properly search his room; something I was categorically not allowed to do without his consent.
And, for the most part, this is a very important safeguard for children – they have a right to their privacy, and that needs to be respected. So the only way I was going to be able to conduct a proper search of his bedroom would be to wait until he next left the house without me – a pretty long wait, I suspected. The only other way would be if I made a formal complaint of theft to the police and social services, which would mean an equally long wait until they had the time to come over and help me to do an official search. Which left me a bit stuck, because I obviously didn’t want to waste precious resources, so I decided I’d have to take my chances and wait for the opportunity to take a proper look myself.
And just at the point when I was explaining my frustration, Miller had appeared in the kitchen doorway with the PlayStation in his hands.
He’d held it out to Mike. ‘Save you the bother of coming up to take it off me,’ he’d said. ‘Just let me know when I can have it back.’
***
I looked now at Miller’s sunny social worker, who was fanning her face with her hand at my table. Where did I start? Libby’s language of ‘little lazybones’ was about as far off the mark as it was possible to be.
I poured two glasses of apple juice and sat down at the table opposite her. ‘Well, we might as well make the most of Miller’s refusal to join us for a bit, mightn’t we? It’ll give us a chance to talk freely.’ (Where, in ‘us’, I meant ‘me’.)
Libby sighed. ‘I have read all the emails and reports you’ve been sending in, Casey,’ she said – slightly defensively, I thought. ‘And I really do feel for you. I honestly thought we would have him in education by now.’ She sighed. ‘If only he wasn’t such a little monkey.’
I swear, that if I heard that expression one more time, I might have to shake her. Well, not really, obviously, but it really did make me want to scream. ‘Little monkey’ was what you might call an errant toddler, or a naughty puppy. Not a boy entering his teens with multiple, complicated, deep-seated behavioural and emotional problems, and a massive god complex, to boot. I took a breath and forced a smile out.
‘We need something as soon as possible,’ I said firmly. ‘And I’m conscious that there is very little time left now until schools break up for the summer, so if we don’t get something sorted asap, we’re looking at schools closing down, and no chance to make progress till September. Not a thought I’m exactly relishing, as I’m sure you can imagine, Libby. So there is a great deal riding on this.’
She beamed me a mega-watt smile. ‘I have some good news in that regard,’ she said. ‘Though also a bit of bad news. I’m afraid the Helping Hands project have withdrawn their offer of support. They feel that Miller is too much of a risk to be out and about in the community, what with his running off, and his refusal to co-operate. The good news, however,’ she added quickly, ‘is that we have an appointment arranged for Miller at a special school tomorrow. One that deals particularly with the kind of behavioural problems Miller presents with.’
I was still digesting the bad news, which rankled. No, it wasn’t surprising that Sheila wouldn’t be coming back – being locked in a conservatory for over an hour whilst being taunted from outside the door must have been a traumatic experience for her – but really? The entire project withdrawing their support? That did surprise me. Surely they had a team of resilient, dedicated, up-for-a-challenge staff? Couldn’t they have at least tried someone else before giving up?
Clearly not. So not the all-singing, all-dancing answer I had been sold, then. But there was no point brooding on it. I had to focus on the good news.
‘Well, it’s certainly good news about the school,’ I said. ‘Christine Bolton did already mention it, actually.’
‘Ah, of course,’ Libby added. ‘And I believe she’s going to email you all the gen on the school itself – which sounds as if it couldn’t be more ideal.’
She already had in fact. Though there was obviously no point in mentioning it. ‘And you think there’s a good chance they’ll take him?’
She waggled her hand up and down. ‘Let’s hope so,’ she said. ‘Much will depend on how things go tomorrow, I imagine. Have you given any thought as to how you’re going to coax him there, by the way? Because the school’s out of town, over beyond where I live, so there doesn’t seem much sense in me driving all the way here just to turn around and go back on myself, so I was going to suggest I meet you there, if it’s okay with you?’
She looked at me hopefully, clearly well aware that this first hurdle was likely to be a high one. How exa
ctly was I going to coax him to the interview if he decided he didn’t want to go? From everything I’d read, Miller was fully aware that he had to be in education, by law, and once in a school, did actually manage to get some work done. The problem, as ever, seemed to be rooted in control. Without close supervision, one-on-one, he couldn’t resist trying to get it, despite knowing the probable consequences, through long experience. He’d also managed to establish – again by experience – that if he refused to get into transport to get him to school, then no one could physically force him. I don’t think I’d ever had to deal with a child for whom the expression ‘cutting off your nose to spite your face’ felt so painfully apt.
One thing was for sure. I had to find a way to get him there, because the prospect of him attending school felt as if someone had just presented me with a free all-expenses-paid holiday, without any small print or bolt-on compulsory attendance at timeshare presentations.
‘Leave that to me,’ I said. ‘I’ll get him there. By hook or by crook. What time do we have to be there, and who else is going?’
‘Just me,’ she said. ‘And I know it’s a long old round trip for you, but if and when he starts attending, we’ll obviously organise transport for him.’ The smile now became a frown. ‘Hmm. That’s quite a point too, isn’t it? We’ll need to be able to actually get him into the transport, won’t we? And to stay put once he’s in there.’
My mood grew a little fractious again, because I’d never known pennies to drop so painfully slowly. Of course that was likely to present problems.
