look guilty. Though, actually, not that guilty. Because, given that he was leaving, why would he? He pulled a manila file, smooth as silk, from his trusty bag.
He looked at me. ‘You don’t have to say yes, Casey,’ he said as he held it up. ‘And I’m not playing games with you, I promise,’ he added, having read my expression (something he was obviously good at) and correctly interpreting it as one of irritation that what he’d been doing was exactly that.
‘A child,’ Mike said, nodding towards the unopened file.
‘A twelve-year-old boy,’ John said. ‘Name of Miller Green. And this literally landed on my desk only this morning, or of course I’d have phoned you and told you both. We’ve barely even had a chance to have a read through of all the notes, have we?’ he added, glancing at his now professionally grim-faced successor. ‘And I obviously didn’t want to welly straight on into it till you and Christine had had a chance to get acquainted. So …’
‘Sounds fair enough,’ Mike said mildly. ‘What’s the story?’
‘First thing is that this doesn’t sound like an easy one,’ John admitted. ‘So you’ll have to think hard before agreeing to it, okay? And I mean that.’ He tapped the file. ‘This looks like one challenging kid.’
At which point I’d have normally thought bring it on. I didn’t. ‘So?’ I asked instead. ‘What’s his background?’
John donned his reading glasses and skimmed through what he’d obviously identified at the key facts. ‘A really sad case, it seems. Poor kid was first known to social services when he was found playing on a railway crossing, adjacent to a busy road, almost seven years ago. Almost naked, etc., etc., police called to investigate, parents didn’t want him – they’re both long-term substance abusers, apparently. The boy’s been in care ever since. But a huge number of placement breakdowns. And I mean huge. From what I can gather, there’s also a pattern. Always seems to feel the need to destroy it almost before it starts.’ John glanced at me from over his glasses. ‘Frequently described as being “difficult to like”.’
He’d freighted the last three words with heavy, deliberate meaning. ‘And where is he now?’ I asked.
‘Currently with a foster couple called Jenny and Martin in another county,’ John said. ‘Martin works away during the week, and Jenny can no longer cope. The boy has been excluded from – it says here – “yet another school, and is not at the moment in education”. Jenny wants him gone as soon as possible. Ideally today.’
’Wow!’ I said. ‘I know you’re not trying to put me on the spot, but this really is a decision that needs making, like, now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it does,’ John admitted. ‘Though, given what we do know about the boy, and his previous history, plus the fact that he’s currently out of education, we don’t expect you to make a long-term commitment right away. All we’re after is a commitment to giving it a proper shot. See how things go, say, for starters, on a month-by-month basis. Well supported, of course. You know you can depend on that.’
A proper shot, I thought. As if we’d ever commit to anything less! But well supported? Without John? And by this brisk, slightly stiff woman?
‘Well, of course,’ I said. ‘Obviously. But –’
Then Christine jumped in. ‘But we completely understand if you think it might be too big an ask for you. I mean given his age – and let’s face it, none of us are getting any younger, are we? Please feel free to say no, and we can keep the door open for you to take on a child who doesn’t come accompanied with quite so many challenges.’
I stared at John in disbelief. In fact, I think my mouth hung open for a good twenty seconds. Too big an ask? None of us were getting any younger? Take on a child without quite so many challenges? Cheeky mare!
A part of me accepted that she was just covering the bases. If she sensed any hesitation, it was right that she did, too. It would be insane to place a child with carers any less than 100 per cent willing. Placement breakdowns were damaging. And it seemed this kid had already suffered quite a few.
But, whether she was aware of it or otherwise, her words had hit a nerve. Needless to say, if there was one thing I always rose to, it was a challenge. In this case, the challenge of correcting Ms Bolton in the matter of the impression she had obviously already formed about me. So it was that I opened my mouth before engaging my brain. ‘We’ll do it,’ I said firmly. ‘He sounds right up my street.’
They’d said they’d be with us at 6.30 p.m., and it was now almost seven. So my initial reservations about Christine Bolton had now been replaced with the familiar feeling of nervous anticipation I always had before a new child arrived.
Though she had indeed ruffled my feathers earlier in the day, even if not in the way I had expected. It was only after she and John had left us that it occurred to me that I might have been ‘played’ – as Tyler might put it. That her gestures of concern about whether Mike and I felt up to such a challenge might have been expressly designed to ensure that I couldn’t help but rise to it. A laying down of a gauntlet that I couldn’t resist picking up. If so, she already knew me better than she realised.
So I’d put myself here, in short. Just as I had convinced myself that I could easily walk away from fostering and find something else to keep me occupied, a huge spanner had consequently been thrown in the works – one which would certainly force me to put any thoughts of leaving on the back burner. And for me, that wasn’t an ideal situation to be in at all. I hated having a ‘should I, shouldn’t I’ scenario playing out somewhere in the back of my mind. It would gnaw away at me during any quiet moments, I just knew it.
The truth was, of course, that I could, and perhaps should, have said no. I could have explained that I’d been having doubts about our future as foster carers, and that at this point – at least till I’d worked my concerns through in my head – I wasn’t ready to take on another child, particularly one flagged as particularly difficult to manage. They would have understood. I knew that. They would have offered to support me. There was no point in less than 100 per cent commitment, after all. That was true for them as much as me.
But even knowing little about this child they were so desperate to place, the fact that he was real now – no longer a potential child, but an actual one – was already messing with my head. It would no longer be a case of turning down a hypothetical child. I’d be turning down a specific one, which felt very different. My decision to do so wouldn’t just be removing us from the agency register. It would mean refusing to take a real child, with very real, possibly grave, consequences for him. No, he wouldn’t know that, but I would.
Which was my right. And, given my ambivalence, perhaps the right thing to do anyway, but I couldn’t help my mind from returning to Justin, the very first child we’d agreed to foster, over a decade back and, in some ways, one of the most challenging, because of that. We had helped turn his life around, and back when we were still very inexperienced. Now we had all that experience under our belts, wouldn’t we be even better placed to offer the support and guidance this child clearly needed? The similarities between the boys resonated too. Here was another lad knocking on the door of that ‘last chance saloon’, with another string of failed placements making him increasingly hard to place. Abandoned, both by his parents, and – at least as good as – by the system.
