The Cast-Off Kids

by Trisha Merry

  ‘OK. A bath will be great. I can wash the streets off my skin and out of my hair.’ He gave a half-smile. ‘Thank you for taking me in.’

  ‘Well, as I remember it, you fell in when I opened the door!’

  ‘Did I? I’m sorry.’ He looked rueful and I laughed.

  I gave him the clean clothes and he started to strip in the room, standing right next to me, stopping only at his tattered underpants. ‘Just come down and join us for a cooked tea when you’re ready,’ I said, standing up.

  ‘OK. Thanks.’ He picked up the clean clothes and turned to go out of the room. That’s when the shockwaves hit me. The whole of Luke’s back and shoulders were covered with marks and scars. There wasn’t even the smallest area that was unscathed. All of his skin was puckered, with rough, raised nicks, tracks and patches, mauve and purple, with some dark red wheals in between.

  As he reached the door, Luke must have suddenly realised. He turned back to look at me and searched my face for a reaction, so I had to keep my expression as normal as I could. I knew that if I showed my shock and my feelings at what had been done to him, he might think I was judging him, instead of whoever did all that damage.

  After about ten seconds, Luke turned again and went off to the bathroom. Now I could react. I blinked away tears. I couldn’t imagine how this damage had been done, and was desperate to know, but at the same time, I just wanted to hug him and show him that I cared very much, and wanted to protect him from any more harm.

  Luke must have been very tired and half-starved, because the next couple of days, he just slept and ate, slept and ate. We hardly talked at all. I thought it would be better to wait until he felt stronger.

  I popped out and bought him some underwear and a couple of tops as well as some trousers and pyjamas. He must have got up while I was out, because someone had left the milk and a cereal packet out on the worktop, and it could only have been him. Remembering what Mike had said about protecting our valuables, I did pop up and check my jewellery box, but everything was still there. I breathed a big sigh of relief and I mentally congratulated Luke.

  Later that day, I called Social Services again, with Luke’s surname and his date of birth. Of course, I couldn’t be sure he’d given me the right details, but it was worth a try. They checked their list again and said they didn’t know of him. In fact, they didn’t seem at all interested. I suppose he was only a few months off his sixteenth birthday and there was no evidence to show that he had come from this area.

  ‘But don’t you think you should take him onto your list?’ I persevered. ‘He is under sixteen, homeless and has no idea where his mother is. He’s apparently been in a number of foster placements and children’s homes. He wouldn’t tell me exactly where, but in the southwest.’

  ‘I see,’ said the snooty voice. ‘I’ll pass on this information to our supervisor. Thank you for letting us know.’

  About half an hour later, the phone rang and it was a senior social worker, who said he was too busy to come out that day, but could he speak to Luke on the phone? This was a very unusual request. It had never happened to us before; but then I’d never found a boy sleeping in our porch before either.

  I called Luke and he shambled down the stairs, bleary-eyed.

  ‘I’ve only just woken up,’ he protested.

  ‘Can you come to the phone please, sweetheart,’ I said, holding it out towards him. ‘The senior social worker wants a word with you.’

  ‘I don’t speak to social workers,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, please do it just this once, for my sake.’

  He hesitated, then took the receiver from me. He listened and said ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Then he suddenly became more animated. ‘But I don’t want to leave here. It’s the first time I’ve been in a proper home with a proper family that love each other. Please don’t take me away. If you try, I’ll just run away and come back here.’ There was a pause while he listened again. ‘Yes, I definitely want you to register me as a foster child at this address . . . until I turn sixteen.’ He handed the receiver back to me.

  ‘Mrs Merry. Luke clearly wants to stay with you. How do you feel about him being officially placed in your care?’

  ‘I would be very happy to keep him on with us.’

  ‘All right,’ he confirmed. ‘I’ll get the paperwork done and one of our team will come round with it and meet Luke in a couple of days’ time.’

  26

  Scarpered

  ‘Somebody has drawn a picture in MY sketchbook,’ wailed Daisy when she got home from school on Luke’s second day with us. She brought it over to show me. ‘I left it on the table this morning, and now look what somebody has done.’

  I looked at this creative, fantastical sci-fi image, beautifully drawn, in an almost comic-book style.

  ‘Wow! That’s very different, isn’t it?’ I tilted it this way and that. ‘I rather like it. What do you think, Daise?’

  She looked at it again. ‘Mmm,’ she seemed to be warming to it. ‘It’s OK, I suppose. It’s a good drawing,’ she said, grudgingly, then carefully tore the page out of her pad and gave it to me.

  We showed it to Mike later. ‘You’re the expert,’ I said. ‘What do you think of it?’

  ‘Well, whoever did it – they’ve certainly got talent.’

  The next time I had the chance to talk to Luke on his own, I asked him straight out. ‘Did you do this drawing, Luke?’

  He looked at it briefly. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mike is a design engineer and he says it’s very good. I like it too. Can I put it up on display in the kitchen?’

  ‘OK,’ he shrugged. ‘If you want to.’

  ‘Mike reckons you’ve got talent and he’d like to see more of your drawings. So I’ve brought you some spare drawing paper I found in the playroom cupboard and some different kinds of pencils and pens.’

  His eyes lit up. ‘Thank you.’ It was the first time I’d seen him with a proper smile.

  So he now had something of his own to work on when the others weren’t around. But the only real interaction he had with the kids in those first few days was, surprisingly, with Kevin, who didn’t like being with people. Somehow these two clicked. Perhaps it was their ages, at thirteen and fifteen; but also because they didn’t seem to make any demands on each other, which suited them both.

  ‘Why are Kevin and Luke always in their rooms?’ asked Paul one Saturday. ‘Shall I ask them if they want to come and play football with us?’

  ‘That would be a great idea in a week or two, when Luke feels more settled, but he needs to be able to just do things in his own way at the moment.’

  Daisy, who was usually so self-contained, but felt a bit mean that she’d been cross with Luke about drawing in her book, offered to take both Kevin and Luke some drinks and snacks upstairs, when everyone else was helping themselves in the garden.

  ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Daise. But I think Kevin is reading the new book Mike bought for him, and Luke is busy drawing a whole comic strip, so they probably don’t want to be interrupted. I expect they’ll come down for something when they’re hungry.’

  Kevin had been with us for about three or four months by this stage and we had found him a place at a special school for autistic children, where he seemed quite happy, at last. So he was the first to leave in the mornings, on the bus they provided, and the last to get home after school.

  About a week after Luke arrived, when everyone else was in school or nursery, I sat him down with me in the kitchen.

  ‘I think it’s time we had a chat,’ I began. ‘First of all, I know you said you were sleeping rough, which must have been awful, but what made you come to our door?’

  ‘One of my mates told me that the local authority were on the lookout for someone, and I thought it might be me.’

  ‘I see. So you were worried they would catch you?’

  ‘Yes. One of the boys had been talking to a man who had been with you – one of your foster-children, years ago, and
he said you were the best, and you didn’t judge people. So you were my last hope.’ He paused. ‘And that guy was right, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m pleased he sent you here. But who was this man?’

  ‘I don’t know his name.’

  ‘Well I’m glad you managed to find us. We love having you here.’

  ‘Thanks. But I probably won’t stay long.’

  ‘No. You’ll be sixteen soon, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, just before Christmas.’

  ‘Well, now that you’ve been with us a week and have settled in, it’s time we got you into a local school or college.’

  He gulped, and his face immediately changed from relaxed to tense.

  ‘I’ve rung the local secondary school and they have a place for you.’

  ‘I don’t do school,’ he said, as if that was the end of it.

  ‘I’m afraid the law says you have to attend school or college, at least until you turn sixteen.’

  ‘B***** the law!’ he exclaimed. ‘They’ve not caught up with me yet.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I’ve hardly ever been to school. My mum never bothered to take me to start with, although some of her boyfriends took me just to get me out of the house, but I always ran away and hid when I was little. Then I was put in care, so I lived in a lot of different places. Children’s homes are very dodgy – training grounds for criminals and paedos more like. The foster-homes I went to weren’t much better. None of them cared about me.’

  ‘It must have been terrible for you.’ I genuinely sympathised with this lad, who seemed harmless enough and just needed to be loved and valued as a person. Not just a number in the social care system.

  ‘Where do you come from, originally?’ I asked.

  ‘Like I told you the first day – the west country,’ he said vaguely. ‘A long way from here.’

  I could tell he didn’t want me to know the exact place, so I changed the subject back to his education. ‘Didn’t any of these homes send you to school?’

  ‘Yes, they all did.’ He paused to push his over-long fringe back out of his eyes. ‘But I never stayed after registration.’

  ‘Didn’t you like school?’

  ‘Nope. I didn’t like them and they didn’t like me. I could never learn. I’m just thick.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Teachers, other children, carers, everybody really. Plus I could see it for myself. I’ve always had good ideas. I always wanted to learn, but nobody could find a way to teach me, so I never bothered after that. What was the point? I always bunked off. So it’s my fault that I can’t read or write.’

  ‘No, I’m sure it’s not your fault. Maybe you’re dyslexic, like me.’

  His expression changed. ‘I’ve never heard of that.’

  ‘You seem quite bright to me. But your teachers should have tried to find the right way of teaching you – different ways that could help you to learn.’

  ‘I thought there was only one way, and it was no use to me.’

  ‘No, there are lots of different things they could have tried.’

  He looked surprised. ‘Well, they didn’t.’

  I thought for a moment, while I made us a coffee and brought it to the table. ‘I’m going to make a couple of phone calls to see if I can arrange an alternative solution.’

  ‘It won’t work.’ He was adamant.

  So, I changed the subject again. ‘Tell me about your back,’ I said, with my most sympathetic expression. ‘Is it painful?’

  ‘No, not now,’ he said. ‘A bit itchy sometimes, with being so messed up and tight, but most of that was a long time ago.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was when I was a littl’un, still living with my mum. There was just her and me . . . and all her boyfriends. She mostly had different ones every day. They had sex on the sofa, so that she could keep an eye on me, she said. But I hated it. I thought they were attacking her. Sometimes they did and she would have cuts and bruises to show for it. One guy even broke her arm. He was the one who came most often. If I ever made a sound, or tried to stop him attacking her, she used to get him to attack me instead. It seemed to excite him to hurt people. To start with, he took off his belt, with its big buckle, and beat me with that, mostly across my back. But then my mum got a cat-o-nine-tails from somewhere.’

  ‘That sounds terrible,’ I gasped.

  ‘Yes, it was. She used to get this man to use it on me. He would thrash me again and again with it, while he and my mum laughed at my screams. In the end, I tried not to scream so much, so that he would stop hurting me.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone hear your screams?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I could see that Luke was quite distressed now, going back over these painful memories

  I leant across and put my arm round his shoulder. I was pleased he let me.

  ‘How old were you?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, about three or four I suppose.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe that anyone can be so cruel, especially your own mother.’

  ‘Well, they were.’ He was quiet for a moment. ‘Looking back, I think she must have been on drugs most of the time, and she used to drink a lot of booze as well. Anyway, Social Services must have had a tip-off in the end, because they came to get me. I never saw her again after that.’

  The next day, a Friday, I went up to wake Luke. I used to let him lie in a bit, so it was after everyone else had gone out. I called him from the stairs, but there was no grunt of reply, like he usually gave. So I went to his room, which we’d done up specially for him . . . and he was gone. He must have sneaked out overnight.

  ‘Luke’s scarpered,’ I told Mike when I phoned him at work. ‘What do you think I should do?’

  ‘Did he leave a note?’

  ‘No,’ I paused. ‘Remember? He can’t write.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Well, he’s fifteen. Maybe there’s a reason. He might be back later. Let’s wait till I get home and see if anything happens.’

  ‘Mrs Merry?’ the male voice on the phone asked that evening.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is the Ashbridge police station. We have your young man here.’

  ‘Oh . . . do you mean Luke?’

  ‘I do indeed. He has got himself into a bit of trouble today, ramming a shopping trolley into the Co-op’s plate-glass window and smashing it.’

  ‘On no!’ I exclaimed ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What I need to ask you is, are you willing to be his responsible adult?’

  ‘Er, yes,’ I said, and then, ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, we’ve charged him, so now we need to interview him. But as he’s under eighteen, we can’t interview him without a responsible adult present. We have specially trained interviewers to work with young people. If you could come down here to the police station and attend his interview with us and sign the forms, that would move things along.’

  ‘Will he have to stay there?’

  ‘Only till you get here and the interview has been completed. Once you’ve signed for him, you should be able to take him home on bail.’

  ‘Oh good.’

  ‘But, depending on the interview and any previous dealings he may have had with the police, he may have to appear in court. Do you know whether he has ever been cautioned or charged with anything before?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. We’re foster-carers, and he’s not been with us long.’

  So I left Mike to manage all the children’s bedtime routines, much easier now that most of them were old enough to sort themselves out, and down I went to the police station. The interview was quite straightforward, as Luke admitted what he’d done from the beginning.

  ‘Well done, Luke, for owning up,’ I said in the car as I drove us both home. ‘You don’t have to tell me why you did it . . .’

  ‘That’s OK. I don’t really know why. My head just went wild, with everything raging inside it. I was confused and . . . I
think it was going over all that stuff about my mum and her boyfriends. I can’t cope with all that.’

  ‘I understand, Luke. We don’t ever need to talk about that again, unless you want to. Let’s get home and have something good to eat. What do you fancy?’

  ‘Sausages and mash?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘I’m pretty sure I’ve got some lovely sausages in the fridge, so sausages and mash it will be. And this time, make sure you don’t scarper overnight!’

  Luke’s youth-court case came up quite soon after the event. Mike went to support him and spoke at the hearing.

  ‘I told them he’s a good lad really, but he’d had a bad day, affected by having to go over bad memories of his past. And that it wouldn’t happen again. So they took a while, in their side room, to make their minds up. But finally, as it was his first offence, they let him off with a caution.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ I said fervently. ‘Let’s hope it’s his last offence, too.’

  27

  A Man on a Mission

  Social Services rang up one November day to tell me that Daisy and Paul’s long-time social worker John had been taken off the case.

  ‘But why?’ I asked. ‘He’s been with them ever since they came, ten years ago.’ No answer. ‘It’s such a shame.’ I went on. ‘He’s been really good with them all these years. He can’t be old enough to retire . . . Is he moving to another job?’

  I was fuming. I’ve met a lot of mediocre social workers as a foster mum, but John was one of the best. We may not have seen him that often, but when we needed him, he had come to our aid out of hours at a moment’s notice, like the time when Daisy had been so ill. Not many would do that, in their free time, referring us instead to the duty social worker. John really cared. I was furious that we had lost him now, without even knowing why.

  ‘So do Daisy and Paul have a new social worker now?’

  ‘Yes. His name is Bernard Brown. He’ll give you a ring in a day or two.’

  So that was it. I will have to break it to the kids, I thought. But maybe I’ll wait till he’s made contact and I can find out what he’s like. In the meantime I decided to do a bit of sleuthing.