The Wild Child

by Casey Watson

  But, of course, this was really no laughing matter, and any displays of mirth were as much about relief that he was back safely as about the ridiculous nonsense he’d concocted. Street-wise and old for his years he might be in some ways, but in others he was eight through and through.

  ‘Where on earth did you think you were going, love?’ I asked him once I’d herded him into the living room and texted Mike and Tyler that he’d been returned. ‘What did you think you were going to do? Spend the night in a garden shed?’

  ‘I’ve slept in worse,’ he huffed sullenly, his shoulders now drooping. ‘You don’t know the half of what I’ve done. You really don’t.’

  Then he burst into tears.

  I did as I’d always do at that point. I pulled him close to me and rocked him while he cried, and though he was stiff at first, he soon wilted and let it all go.

  ‘I’m sorry, Casey,’ he said eventually, still not raising his head from my chest. I stroked his hair, which still smelt of cold and fresh air, acutely aware of Mike and Tyler heading home, and wondering if they’d be quite as sympathetic. ‘I just got a bit giddy an’ all that. Like I do, sometimes. You know, lose it a bit. Go off on one.’

  ‘Well, you certainly did that, love.’

  ‘But I never mean to. Not really. You know, not to really run away. I was just messing about,’ he finished – oddly, given what he’d only just told me. ‘Am I in big trouble?’

  I thought for a few moments before answering. It would have been so easy, given my relief, to tell him that no, that was an end to it. That we’d now finish our evening, and that everything would be fine. That way, we could trundle on with the business of containment till Monday, as per the plan. But I couldn’t, because that suddenly felt all wrong. And particularly wrong, given that Tyler was involved. Conscious that I needed to be able to tell him I’d thrown at least half the rulebook at Connor, I knew I had to take a firmer line.

  ‘No, not big trouble, Connor, but this isn’t something we can just brush off. We had to report you missing to the police, love. It’s the law and we were very worried about you. And we’ve potentially wasted lots of their valuable time.’

  He was suddenly animated. ‘The cops!’ he spluttered. ‘You phoned the cops! You grassed on me?’ He looked dumbstruck. ‘God, you’d get your fingers chopped off for that in London!’

  It was so unexpected that, again, I had to suppress a smile. And another mental image; of the place in London where you might find acrobatic dwarfs who hung about with ladies of the night, while gangsters removed people’s fingers.

  Not to mention where foster kids were routinely murdered and buried beneath the carpets. What a curious collection of stuff Connor had in his head. ‘Relax,’ I said. ‘We only reported you missing, love. That’s all. But they won’t be too pleased to know that you’ve been giving everyone the run around. Imagine if a really serious crime had been committed while you were hiding, and there were no police to go and solve it because they were all busy looking for you? A missing child as young as you means that everyone drops everything to go find them, Connor. And not just the police. Mike and Tyler have been out searching for you for an hour. What do you think they are going to have to say when they get back?’

  He looked at me with a completely different expression then. ‘Really?’ he said, as if genuinely surprised. ‘Blimey. I thought that Tyler kid hated me.’

  The front door banged before I had the chance to reply and, half a minute later, in came Mike and ‘that Tyler kid’ himself.

  ‘So the prodigal son returns,’ Mike said as he took his coat off. ‘Mate, you’ve caused quite a bit of trauma this evening. I hope you’ve got a good explanation, because we can’t be having this. None of us can.’

  Connor’s face was a picture of contrition. ‘I’m sorry, Mike; an’ sorry, Tyler,’ he said, looking from one to the other. ‘Honest to God I am. I never even knew how long I was gone.’ He gestured with a thumb. ‘I was only hiding in a garden shed over the road. I thought you’d find me straight away, like. Honest I did.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Tyler said irritably. ‘Course you did.’

  With Saturday evening fast disappearing beneath us, I decided that now wasn’t the time for a post-mortem. With everybody tired I said the matter was closed – at least till both boys were up in their bedrooms, and I’d had a chance to debrief Mike first.

  I made Connor a hot chocolate – Tyler hadn’t wanted one – and filled Mike in properly while the marshmallows on the top began to melt. Despite the way our evening had been so comprehensively hijacked, I thought he’d at least find Connor’s bit about the bodies under the floorboards amusing.

  He didn’t. ‘Well, that’s all very well coming from a neighbour down the street, because most of them know what we do. But imagine him telling that to a complete stranger? I mean, I know it’s too ridiculous for anyone sensible to believe, but what with the things you hear on the news these days …’ He shook his head thoughtfully.

  ‘Love, I can’t imagine anyone would give it so much as a moment’s consideration,’ I said. ‘Honestly – can you?’

  ‘Yes, but if a child makes an accusation, you know how it works, Case. It has to be acted upon, doesn’t it? Has to be seen to be looked into.’

  ‘Honest, love,’ I said. ‘I don’t think we have to start worrying about the Keystone Cops flying round and pulling up the laminate!’

  I was grinning, but he looked mildly exasperated. Which I suppose he had a perfect right to. ‘I’m not saying they’re going to,’ he said. ‘I’m just pointing out that he’ll be leaving here on Monday and might tell all sorts of porkies about his time here. Things that people conceivably might believe.’

  Mike was right, of course, but there was nothing to be done about that and, besides, I thought, as I trotted upstairs with the drink, Connor had a file thicker than Tyler’s. So everyone would know what a troubled kid he was.

  And certainly one with a vivid imagination. ‘Bodies under the floorboards, indeed,’ I gently chided him as I took in his hot chocolate.

  Since he was already tucked up in bed, reading a comic and looking like butter wouldn’t melt, I placed the mug down on his bedside table. I then sat down on the bed and drew a hand across his forehead to smooth his hair back. ‘Next thing you’ll be telling me we have fairies at the bottom of the garden.’ I grinned. ‘Or are fairies too wet for a hard man like you?’

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘I was only joking,’ he insisted. ‘Honest, Casey. Just pulling the man’s leg.’

  ‘Well, those aren’t the kind of jokes that are funny,’ I told him gently. ‘If you tell fibs all the time and make stuff up, how will anyone ever know if you’re telling the truth? And you never know, the day might come when it really matters that someone does. Have you ever read the story about the boy who cried wolf?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nah. I don’t like proper reading much. I prefer me comics.’

  ‘No need to read it,’ I said, rising. ‘I’ll tell you it tomorrow.’ Then I had a thought. ‘Tell me, Connor,’ I said, ‘Sammy the Dwarf and Lydia the Porn Queen – are they real?’

  He looked confused. ‘Course they’re real!’

  My expression must have told him I thought otherwise because he wriggled into a more upright position. ‘Honest they are, Casey. They’re me dad’s mates. They used to look after me.’

  ‘Really, Connor?’

  He nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, yeah. Real as I am. Used to be round ours all the time – well, when me dad was home, anyway. They used to sleep over sometimes too.’ He grinned at a memory. ‘It was Lyds who taught me how to play pontoon.’

  Lyds. As presumably in Lydia, as in the Porn Queen.

  ‘And seven-card brag,’ he enthused. ‘Least I think it was seven-card. Might have been five-card. Whatever. They were like me best mates, them two, they really were.’

  He looked sad all of a sudden. Genuinely bereft. ‘You must miss them, then,’ I said.

  H
e nodded. ‘Like mad.’

  He seemed to think a moment, as if unsure whether to open up to me more about them.

  ‘So when did you last see them, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, it was ages ago now. I shoulda been allowed to stay with them. That was what me dad wanted.’

  ‘For them to take care of you?’

  He nodded. ‘While he was inside, yeah. And they could’ve done, too. I stayed with ’em a whole week once. Hid under the stairs when the cops came so they couldn’t take me back into care while me dad was inside for the week for his fines an’ that.’

  We were returning to the realms of, if not the wholly unbelievable, certainly the ‘somewhat muddled, perhaps, in the telling’. I couldn’t imagine how the authorities would allow that to happen.

  But it apparently had. ‘Lydia never told the cops I was there. She gave them some cock and bull story about me having gone round a friend’s and that. Then they stayed and looked after me when the cops went away. They kept saying if the cops came back they’d have to hand me over, but they never did.’

  He looked thoughtful again, perhaps imagining a world in which he could stay with his ‘best mates’ for ever, rather than being shunted from care home to care home, already a loner and social outcast. Discarded by his mother, let down by his criminal father, with only a couple of what appeared to be also social misfits taking care of him – his only points of reference in a very cruel world.

  ‘I’ll bet they miss you, too,’ I said. ‘And who knows?’ I added, aware that Connor was still in contact with his dad. ‘Maybe you’ll see them again at some point, eh?’ I bent to kiss his forehead. ‘And I’ll bet they’d like that, too.’

  Chapter 9

  Having tucked Connor in I padded across the landing to check on Tyler, a thought already half forming in my head. Poor old Tyler, whose day had been derailed as well, and with whom I’d barely had a proper chance to chat – particularly given that come Monday he’d be off on his football-skills course.

  He had his back to me, curled on his side, his headphones plugged in; obviously listening to music on his iPod. ‘Hey,’ I said, touching his shoulder, causing him to roll towards me sleepily. ‘Maybe time you took those out and got some shut-eye, eh?’

  I helped him remove the plugs from his ears and kissed him goodnight. ‘Quite a day we’ve had today, eh?’ I added as I switched his bedside light off. ‘Like a whirlwind, that one, isn’t he? Hope he didn’t completely ruin your day.’

  ‘Is that what I was like?’ he said sleepily. ‘Was I that bad when I first came?’

  ‘Oh, you were much worse,’ I ribbed him. ‘Absolute nightmare, you were. They broke the mould when they made you, as you already know.’ I jumped on him and gave him a bear hug through the covers. Tyler liked hearing about what a ‘nightmare’ he’d been in much the same way as some kids – kids with less complicated pasts – liked hearing about the antics they got up to as toddlers. Mad but true. Especially when I finished up, as I always did, by telling him how Mike and I fell so in love with every little part of him that we couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t let him go. ‘And you’re alright, love?’ I finished. ‘You know. About Connor being here?’

  He nodded through half-closed lids. ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Honest. You’d never manage him without me in any case, would you?’

  I gave him a last kiss and conceded he was probably right.

  It’s amazing what a couple of glasses of wine and a DVD can do to restore your flagging spirits, because the next morning Mike and I were both feeling positive and energetic. ‘We’ll pack the car up, whatever the weather decides to chuck at us,’ Mike had suggested. ‘Just drive out to the country, have a picnic, play football, feed the ducks, or the swans, or whatever they have there. Make a day of it. Tire the little tyke right out.’

  I’d agreed, so we were now doing exactly that; preparing and packing a huge picnic, hunting down old trainers and right-size wellies, and throwing bats, balls and buckets into bags. If containment it was to be then we’d do just that, via the perhaps unlikely but probably easier option of containing him in the great outdoors.

  We’d not heard another peep from EDT and didn’t expect to. As things stood the plan still was for them to have him collected on Monday morning, a plan I imagined they’d confirm at some point on Sunday night. ‘But what if they don’t?’ I said to Mike while the boys were upstairs dressing. ‘Or what if they tell us it might take another few days?’

  In truth, the thought that had been forming in my own mind overnight was that if it did take a few more days, it wouldn’t be a major problem. With Ty going off on his footie course on the Monday morning, I could devote all my energies to Connor, at least for a couple of days. Better that, I’d pretty much decided, than have him dragged off somewhere horrible – some grim secure unit in the middle of nowhere. And with the kind of fostering Mike and I usually did, I knew about such places, and with the kind of file Connor had, I knew it was highly likely – particularly given the violent incident – that a grim secure unit might be exactly where he would be headed. Unless they had the luxury of a few more precious days to track down a carer with a tad more positivity.

  Mike turned towards me. ‘You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, Case?’ he asked, looking pointedly at me.

  ‘Well, um, no, but, yes, but … oh, I don’t know,’ I confessed, feeling scrutinised. ‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, love, shall we?’

  ‘Blimey,’ Tyler said, having bowled into the kitchen. ‘We camping for a week or summat? How much food is in this bag?’

  Saved by the proverbial bell.

  Chapter 10

  We drove out to a spot that we’d been coming to for decades. A big country park with a few acres of forest, a big river running through it and, beyond it, accessed via stepping stones, a swathe of open land that was perfect for picnics and ball games. And with the various travails of yesterday apparently forgotten, both boys seemed in good – and high – spirits.

  Perhaps slightly too high spirits, as it turned out.

  I’ve never been particularly sure-footed in such situations, so though the water couldn’t have been more than two or three feet deep at that point, getting me across was something of a military manoeuvre. Rather like in the story, Mike had to plan it carefully, taking all the stuff that I’d been carrying across the river first, then, his hands now free, coming back over to collect me.

  ‘You’re not going to have him give you a piggy back, are you?’ said Tyler, laughing. ‘Because if you are, give me a mo so I can pull out my phone and film it.’

  I gave him a pretend cuff around the ear for that – in fact, the idea had crossed my mind – but in the end I was able to cross to the other side without incident, all by myself, using Mike’s hand to give me precious confidence.

  And I was just congratulating myself on my achievement when I heard a splash. Groaning inwardly, I turned, expecting to see Connor, messing about. But it was Ty I saw, knee deep in the glittering water by the bank, his expression thunderous but his phone thankfully still in his hand.

  ‘I was trying to effing help you!’ he roared at Connor. ‘What the hell did you do that for?’

  ‘I di’n’t do nothing!’ Connor responded, hopping nimbly up onto the bank and rushing across to help Tyler out. ‘I just tried to grab his hand, Casey, honest!’ he said, turning to both of us. ‘An’ then I slipped! Here, let me help you, Tyler. Gimme your phone before you drop it!’

  Tyler scowled at him. ‘Yeah, right – and yanked me right into the water! Cheers for that, mate,’ he said. ‘Great job!’

  Mike hurried across and held a hand out, pulling Tyler to the bank easily, while our furious teenager batted Connor’s outstretched hand away.

  ‘Oh, God, mate,’ Connor said. ‘I’m so sorry. I really am. Have we got any spare clothes, Casey? Tyler, d’you want to wear my trackies? They’ll be a bit short on you, but –’

  ‘No, I do not want to
wear your trackies!’ Tyler said, accepting a towel from me while Mike held his phone. ‘I’ll be fine,’ he said, looking at me. ‘I’ll put my board shorts on instead.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I agreed, anxious to defuse the situation and hugely glad I’d packed some swimming shorts. ‘They’ll dry in the sun easy enough, won’t they?’

  But Tyler wasn’t to be mollified. Having divested himself of the wet trousers and sodden trainers, he stomped off in shorts and flip-flops to the picnic area.

  ‘Thank heavens for Mary Poppins, eh?’ Mike joked, obviously also trying to make light of it as we followed Tyler up the path to where the picnic benches were. ‘We may all scoff, but where would we all be without her? Up blankety-blank creek without a paddle, I reckon, Connor, don’t you?’

  But Connor, whose hand I was holding, was on his own track. ‘He’s going to really hate me now, isn’t he?’ he whispered, tugging on it lightly.

  ‘Oh, he’ll come round,’ I reassured him. ‘After all, accidents happen, don’t they? And you’d be amazed what a difference a jumbo sausage roll makes. And an apology from you, okay? Even if it was an accident. A proper apology makes all the difference in the world.’

  He nodded. ‘I’ll tell him I’m sorry. I am sorry, Casey. I was just thinking this morning how he seemed to be getting okay with me now.’ He sighed. ‘And now I go and do that. D’you think his trainers are gonna be okay?’

  ‘They’ll be just fine,’ I promised him. ‘And they’re only his old knocking-around ones, don’t worry. Quick spin in the tumble dryer and, spit-spot, they’ll be good as new.’

  ‘Like in Mary Poppins?’

  ‘Just like in Mary Poppins,’ I reassured him.

  Chapter 11

  Connor did apologise and, as predicted, Tyler did come round. So much so that by the end of the day I was feeling quite relaxed. Kids had spats, kids had fall-outs. All these things were normal. Heaven knew, I’d seen it enough with my own two. And it was lovely to watch the three of them – Mike being one of the boys as well, of course – kicking a ball around and laughing and joshing with one another, just like every other family at the country park that day. But I was still knocked for six when, just before we were leaving, Connor came over – Mike and Tyler were playing competitive keepy-uppy by this time – and flung his arms around my neck.