by Anne Fine
He just sat quietly and stared. He was a serious little boy, and very wary. Like all too many of the kids I see, he startled far too easily. I’d tried the old tests that we’re not supposed to use these days – slammed the car door behind him, raised my hand suddenly – that sort of thing. And, sure enough, each time the boy went rigid.
Still, there was something inside him that didn’t seem to have been crushed. Of course, we didn’t know how long his mum had been in that pathetic state. (With luck, not too much of the last four years.) But it was obvious we could do something with him.
That’s why I chose the Radletts for that first night. They are the best on our No Notice list. I left young Eddie picking at the grass just like a curious toddler and, pulling out my phone, strolled out of hearing. ‘Linda? Can I bring you another small gift tonight?’
‘Oh, God!’ she said. ‘We’ve only just got shot of Gary.’
‘I know. But this one’s special.’
‘Oh, aren’t they all?’
We shared a cynical laugh. And then I said, ‘So that’s OK, then, is it?’
‘I really ought to speak to Alan. He’s still quite frayed. And he’s not finished fixing the gate after young Gary’s fond farewell.’
‘This boy is nothing like Gary.’
‘He’d better not be.’ There was a pause. ‘So can you tell me anything?’
‘Later. By then I’ll know a little more.’
She sighed. ‘When should we expect him?’
I looked at my watch. Though I was starving it was only five. ‘I’ll take him back to the office now to try to get a few things straight. Then we’ll come round. Say around six or seven?’
‘We’ll be here.’
Eddie
Rob kept his eye on me all through his phone call. Then he came back. ‘Ready to go?’
We got in the car again. I can remember being really surprised because the ride went bumpy. At first I thought it was just holes in the road but then I heard him muttering, ‘Bloody speed humps!’
The car drew up outside another building with glass doors, just like the hospital. Rob nodded at the man behind the desk, then steered me through some swing doors and along a corridor. Most of the people who passed us coming the other way nodded, but nobody stopped to talk. He tried a couple of doors, poking his head inside as soon as he’d knocked, only to end up muttering, ‘Sorry,’ and closing the door again.
Finally he came across an empty room and we went in. It had a brick-red carpet and armchairs, and there were toys on a low table and more in a heap in the corner. There was a mirror all along the wall and as Rob propelled me past it, to a chair, I thought a boy was walking in beside us. I didn’t recognize the sideways glimpse of me.
Rob picked up the phone on the table and punched a number. I didn’t understand what he said to the person at the other end, but someone else came in soon after that and sat down in the chair between us.
‘Eddie,’ he told me, ‘this is Sue. She’s a police officer, but she’s a really good friend, and she is going to listen to what we talk about. She might have one or two questions of her own that she might want me to ask. And she’s going to record what we are saying on this little machine.’
I hadn’t noticed the machine. It was so small I’d taken it for some fancy silver cigarette packet left on the table.
‘Just so we can remember things. Is that all right?’ said Sue.
I didn’t know if that was all right, did I? I didn’t look at her. I just sat tight.
Then suddenly it was questions, questions, questions. What I thought strangest was how much they knew, but still kept asking about. They certainly seemed to know a lot about Harris, and they knew things I didn’t know about my mum. Rob told me someone said she’d once worked in a dress shop and asked me if she’d ever mentioned that. (I suppose they hoped I would remember its name so they could track down when she left. I couldn’t help.)
They asked about who shopped, who cooked, who paid the bills. I probably looked blank at all their questions. I mean, I knew Mum used to do the shopping. But after she fell down the wall that time, and Harris couldn’t get her standing, not even after he’d calmed down, he had to do the shopping himself. He’d bring the things he fancied back in a box and dump it on the table. Sometimes he’d eat it, but a lot of the time he bought food for himself when he was out. He often came back smelling of curry or pizza. I never knew if he might want the things out of the box to eat himself so I left most of it, just to be safe. But I did know the things that Harris didn’t like so much, so I fed Mum on those till she was able to hold the spoon herself again, without too much spilling. So how was I to know the answer to the questions that they asked? Who did the shopping and cooking? Everything was so mixed up.
I did my best, though. And after a while somebody brought in chips – brilliant hot chips with ketchup on a plate. Sue and Rob made a few jokes between them about how they’d invited a wolf to tea, and should have ordered double. But on the questions went. Some made sense, even to me. And some seemed very odd, like wanting to know exactly what I remembered of the way Gem died, and how long it took. (I didn’t know. I didn’t count the days. I just remembered Harris kept on idly kicking at her twitching legs and saying, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, get on with it.’)
All stuff like that. I didn’t mind. They’d put me in a great big chair with cushions. Rob Reed was there. He’d made it clear that I would never, ever see Harris again unless I wanted to, and that was enough to make it the best day ever for me.
‘So do you remember going to any school?’
‘Mum said I went to one with little trucks. I think I remember that. You could have yellow or red, but everyone wanted the red ones.’
Sue asked, ‘Did they have pedals, Eddie?’
I had to think for a while. Then I remembered. ‘No. You pushed them with your feet.’
Sue turned to Rob. ‘Nursery school, then? Or day care?’
Rob asked me, ‘Nothing after that?’
‘He didn’t like it,’ I told them. ‘He told Mum people would get nosy if I was going in and out. He said he liked to keep his family to himself, and I was no one else’s business.’
‘Family?’ Rob Reed leaned forward. ‘Eddie, do you remember ever being with your mum and living with anyone else? Some other sort of dad? Sometime before?’
I shook my head.
‘Your mother never talked of anyone?’
I didn’t want to tell him that she’d stopped talking. So I just looked at the trainers they had given me. I really liked them. They were the sort the boys who rode their bikes around the flats wore all the time.
‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘I’m sure we’ll find out something.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I think we might as well call it a day, unless you have some questions of your own.’
I only had one. ‘Where’s my mum?’
‘Right now, she’s busy seeing doctors,’ Rob Reed said.
I felt a stab of panic. ‘Is she ill?’
‘Come on!’ he chided. ‘Think about those bruises. And her head must be sore. We think she needs a few days to recover, then she’ll be more herself, and you can see her.’
‘Is she in that hospital? Where you took me?’
‘No, not in that one. In another one. Safe, well away from Harris.’
Somebody opened the door. I couldn’t see a face but I heard what she said. ‘Hey, Rob. Want to wind up for the day? The poor lad can’t be older than seven.’
Rob Reed asked one last question. ‘Is that right?’
I look back now, and find it really strange to have to say this. But out of all the scores of questions I was asked that day, and all the days that followed, that was the only one I couldn’t even try to answer.
I had no idea.
Linda Radlett, Foster Carer
I didn’t ask the boy questions. I simply settled him on the sofa alongside Rob and said, ‘Well, you’re a nice surprise. We were just saying, Alan here and I, that life was getting dull
and what we’d like to see most in the world is a fresh face.’
He didn’t know how to respond, so he sat tight, glancing at Alan from beneath that mop of hair he’d clearly hacked at himself. The nurse who bathed him must have had a go at tidying him up. But if there’s one thing that I recognize from all the kids that come through here, it’s the remains of a do-it-yourself haircut.
He didn’t look too worried, though. And I’m not surprised at that. There’s no way Alan and I look threatening. I will admit I have turned ‘motherly looking’ over the years, and Alan is pink, soft and bald. (One of our kids once said my husband looks like a walking sausage wearing a really tight belt. And, though the description still amuses me, it is so close to true I never bring it up.)
Alan asked Rob, ‘Fancy a beer?’ and Rob said, ‘Sorry, can’t,’ then followed up almost at once with, ‘Oh, God, why not? It’s been a day and a half. But just the one, mind.’
‘We’ve got alcohol-free.’
Rob looked much happier. ‘That’s just the ticket. Save my licence for another day.’
The boy’s eyes were mostly down. But he was keeping tabs. Every few seconds he’d glance up, fast as a bird’s peck, from beneath his fringe. He clearly wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but he had that same look so many of the children who come to us keep on their faces. Blank, so they don’t set anyone off. If they could make themselves invisible the poor mites would. And watchful, because they’re used to trouble springing out of nothing and nowhere.
Be prepared.
Yet even that first night there was something unusual about his wariness. It seemed intelligent – more on the ball than most of the children we get who come from violent homes. Too many of the ones who have been lifted out of that particular sort of danger are so concerned with keeping a weather eye out for the next blow-up that they don’t have a single brain cell left to use in more enriching ways. The rest of their mind is not just empty for their age, it’s all but frozen.
Not this little guy. He sat there, cautious, vigilant; but he was interested. If he reminded me of anyone, it was Orlando, who was much the same age, and came to us while the police were tracking down his aunt and cousins after the crash that orphaned him instantly. Until that weekend, Orlando had obviously had the best of everything – a steady home, kind school, a host of hobbies and a lot of friends. And though he knew the worst, and kept on bursting into tears when he remembered, in between times he had that same outgoing, curious look as if he couldn’t help but think, now-this-is-interesting about everything that went on under our roof, from the way Alan held his knife and fork to my recycling system, from how I swore when that cat next door got at the robin’s nest to why no one had finished papering the downstairs lavatory.
We’ve done this job so long that most of them remind me of some other child. And Eddie was like Orlando. So I was very tempted to believe there had been good in his life. From what Rob said, it clearly wasn’t that Bryce Harris chap I’d seen on television being led into court under a blanket. And somehow I was doubtful it was his mother, since the first officer to trawl the neighbouring flats for information reported back to Rob that Eddie’s mum had been a fairly pitiful mess right from the start.
The boy was cooped up in that flat for years. Everyone who noticed him on the day the family moved in presumed that he lived somewhere else – off with some parent from a previous relationship, even in care. It never occurred to them that he was still in there. Had it not been for some good busybody who saw his face at the window and poked the Social Services into action, nobody would have known. He could have died in that flat, been buried in some ditch, and no one would have been any the wiser. You ask yourself, how can a child become invisible like that? But it is easy enough if, like Bryce Harris, you know how to do a moonlight flit, not letting your down-trodden partner leave any word behind, or take a single step towards a new life for herself and her young son.
I followed Rob out to his car. ‘Do we even know his full name?’
‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘There’s someone going back tomorrow, to sort through the crap in the flat. They usually find something.’
‘Can’t you ask his mother?’
He made a face. ‘Not sure what’s happening there.’
‘Nobody asked her when they took her out?’
‘Linda,’ he said, ‘you’ve simply no idea what state that woman was in. She was just whimpering flesh. She’s been that bastard’s punchbag for three whole years. Frankly I doubt she knows her own name now, let alone his.’
‘He didn’t bring anything away with him? No cuddly toy? No blankie?’
I watched him looking shifty. Then he said, ‘I didn’t know if I should give it you.’ He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a grubby-looking book.
I turned it over to read the title. ‘The Devil Ruled the Roost?’ I flicked it open. Dense print and narrow margins, with quite a few old-fashioned illustrations tucked under sheets of tissue. ‘Oh, come on, Rob. This can’t be his.’
He blushed. ‘I found it propping up a table leg. But he did seem to want it.’
‘I can’t think why. The child can’t possibly read at this level.’
‘Linda, we don’t even know if he can read full stop.’
I didn’t hand it back. You never know. But mostly what I was thinking was that, given they’d had the mother and the child all day, they didn’t seem to have got very far at all.
Eddie
I loved both of the Radletts from the start. They were the sort of people that Mr Perkins visited. I could imagine him coming through their front door and asking them, ‘Why is the hall painted red?’ or ‘Where did you get this line of wooden elephants on the shelf?’
Linda called me into the kitchen and sat me on a stool. I watched her cut things up and put them into bowls. ‘Have you done any cooking, Eddie?’
I shook my head.
She showed me how to use the cheese grater, and gave me a lump to start on. I made a bit of a mess. It was a whole lot harder than I thought to hold things steady on the wooden board. But Linda didn’t mind. She just brushed all the scattered shreds of cheese over the edge of the table into her hand and sprinkled them on top of her big oval dish. Then she went over to a drawer and pulled out some knives and forks and spoons. ‘Know how to set a table?’
Of course I didn’t, so she showed me how, saying, ‘You’ll pick it up.’
‘Will I be staying here, then?’
She stopped what she was doing and turned to face me. ‘Remember what Rob said? That we’re not sure of anything yet, not till we know a little more about you. But you will certainly be here tonight, and probably for several days. And maybe even longer than that, if we get on together.’ She rubbed her hand over my hair and smiled. ‘Long enough to get you a haircut, anyhow.’
‘Another haircut,’ I corrected her.
She gave me an odd look. Then she went back to putting the bowls and plates in place, and showing me which chair I was to sit on. ‘Rob reckons you’ll have ruined your appetite with all those chips. But never mind. Just have a go.’
She called to Alan and we started to eat. I wasn’t sure about the food. I wasn’t used to lettuce or tomato, and all that stuff. I ate the cheesy topping – not just because I was the one to grate it. I love cheese. This had a funny taste, and it felt different in my mouth from any I had eaten before. But I still loved it.
While I was eating, they were talking the whole time, the two of them. Not to me, but to each other. He chatted about someone he’d met that morning in the supermarket, and how she seemed to be doing really well after the death of her husband. And Linda talked about a phone call she had had from someone called Alice. They didn’t talk about me, and they didn’t really talk to me, except that Alan kept saying, ‘If you’re not eating that, I’ll have it, if you don’t mind,’ and Linda told me, ‘Alice is one of our daughters. She’s grown up now.’
I think that they were pleased at how much c
heese I ate. Then Linda brought out ice cream. Ice cream was something I knew all about, because of Mr Perkins. ‘Ice cream is made from eggs and cream and then a flavouring that can be anything – anything at all,’ I told them. ‘Even a combination like, for example, coffee and toffee pecan.’
They did try not to stare, but you could tell they thought that what I’d said was really weird. So when Alan asked me, ‘What’s your favourite, then?’ I kept my head down and I didn’t answer. I wasn’t quite sure what he meant. I’d only ever seen ice cream on television. And I don’t think I even knew what ‘flavouring’ meant.
The moment passed and they went back to talking about Alice’s new job. I ate the ice cream. Then I ate some more. Then Linda said, ‘I’ll let you skip the bath, since Rob says that you had one at the hospital.’
I wasn’t sure why she said that. Back then, I didn’t know about routines and such. But I could see she was expecting me to get up and follow her, so I did. We went upstairs. She showed me where she and Alan slept. ‘You just knock and come in if you need anything. Promise?’ She pulled pyjamas out of a pile on a shelf, and I remember being really surprised at how tidy everything in the cupboard was – even the flannels were folded. She pushed me in the bathroom and gave me a toothbrush and a lesson in how to brush my teeth. (It was the same way Mr Perkins said, but using a brush with bristles that stood up made it feel different.)
Then she turned down the light till it was just a glow and sat on my bed.
‘Story?’
‘Yes, please.’
So she read one or two. I don’t think I was listening. I was just looking around the room. I felt so high up in that bed, and worried that I might fall out. And I was wondering if my mother had had a bath as well, and if the nurses in the hospital had a cupboard with pyjamas and a toothbrush.
‘Do you think my mum’s all right?’
She broke off reading the book and leaned her face down close to mine. ‘You know she’s in the hospital. And you know she’s safe there. No one can get at her. So we’ll just cross our fingers and hope your mum’s already starting to feel better.’
