Kelly hadn’t been fostering for very long. If she stuck at it – and I hoped she would – she would doubtless see worse. But it did sound pretty grim; in fact, to call Sam a ‘live wire’ seemed too benign a term, because as well as rampaging around her house, breaking and smashing things indiscriminately, he would apparently hurt her own children at every opportunity.
‘Which I completely understand is all part of him expressing his rage,’ Kelly said. ‘But I can’t take my eyes off him for a minute. And if I try to reason with him, or chastise him, he turns his anger on me instead. I know he’s only small, but it’s like being attacked by a whirling dervish. He really has no self-control, or self-soothing mechanism, at all. Well, perhaps one,’ she added. ‘This peculiar habit of barking and howling, which he does for prolonged periods at a time. And at any time he’s confronted, he snarls. Really snarls. Poor Harvey said yesterday that it was like we had the big bad wolf living in the house.’
Harvey was Kelly’s oldest. Around seven, as I remembered. And I wondered how it must feel to return home from school every day thinking there was a wolf living in your house. I wondered too how they’d come to ask Kelly, who was relatively inexperienced, to take on such a boy, knowing there were two younger children in the house. Not to mention that they already knew his own siblings were so afraid of him that it had been agreed to have them fostered somewhere else.
But that was a question for another day. And I probably already knew the answer: because there wasn’t anyone else. Which Kelly must know too, so I imagined she’d feel pretty bad about passing the buck.
‘So, how does the autism affect him?’ I asked her instead. I’d looked after quite a few children who were on the spectrum and, in my experience, one size certainly didn’t fit all. Each one of mine – and that included my own son, Kieron, who had Asperger’s – had been very different, with different challenges to face.
‘To be honest,’ Kelly admitted, ‘I haven’t even really had the chance to notice. Everything else is so full-on, I just … Oh, Jesus, hang on. Sam! Stop that right now!’
I waited on the line, listening to a symphony of different sounds – shouting and swearing and, at one point, high-pitched screaming. The jolly hold music of a call centre it definitely was not. No wonder her nerves were torn to shreds. Plus, it was Saturday now, of course, so both her kids would be home. And perhaps this had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back.
‘I’m so sorry, Casey,’ she said as she came back to the phone, ‘Sam’s just bitten Harvey and now he’s attacking Sienna. I honestly do not know what to do with him. It wouldn’t be so bad if Steve was home but he’s had to go into work this morning. And I’d take them out, but I – Sam! Right now! I mean it! – God, Casey. I am tearing my hair out here.’
I could tell she was, too, because she sounded on the verge of tears. ‘Look, I can see it’s a bad time,’ I said. ‘You obviously need to step in and get your own two to a place of safety. Shall I give you a call back later, perhaps when the kids are in bed?’
‘Call me?’ Kelly asked, her voice now even more desperate. ‘I was rather hoping you’d come round and take him off me. As in today. Seriously. I know it’s not the best endorsement you ever heard, but I can’t take any more of this. I really can’t.’
Knowing Kelly as I did, I knew she was telling me the truth. She was at breaking point, overwrought, and couldn’t see a way out. It tended to be hard to with all your senses on high alert. No, it didn’t sound so much, just having to oversee a naughty nine-year-old, but I knew there was ‘naughty’ and there was ‘downright demolition-mode’; if she was dealing with the latter in isolation it would be a hard enough job – just in terms of trying to keep the child safe from himself. But with two little ones in the mix – her own little ones – it could be a Herculean task. And there was a world of difference between the odd flaring of temper and what sounded like twenty-four seven all-out warfare.
I knew the drill. I really shouldn’t be making any promises. I should tell Kelly I’d speak to Mike and Christine and get back to her. But how could I? Besides, I was getting fired up now. No, I wouldn’t be diving into any phone boxes, doing a spin and donning tights. But unlike my bikini top, I knew I had the strength for a challenge. And this lad sounded as if he was the word ‘challenge’ personified.
Plus, truth be told, I still had a few demons of my own to exorcise.
‘Don’t worry, love,’ I told Kelly. ‘I’ll take him.’
No matter how diverse the types of children who’d come to us over the years, my modus operandi for welcoming them rarely differed. In the here and now, one thing took priority over all others; to provide them with their own space – a place of comfort, calm and safety.
It had been a long time since we’d opened our home up to our first foster child, Justin, and as I went through my usual mental checklist for getting Sam’s bedroom ready for his arrival, I reflected on just how much our singular job had become an everyday part of our lives. So much so that, these days, I was ready for every eventuality; stocked to the proverbial gunwales with everything I knew I’d need, or a frightened, disorientated child might want. Which meant that today it was a far cry from those anxious days before Justin was due to move in, when I’d run around like a mad thing, decorating, choosing, shopping and fussing over every detail, every imagined speck of dust.
Today, of course, I didn’t have the luxury of time, but it didn’t matter. It was really just a case of making up Sam’s bed, and making everything nice for him. And as he’d bowled in from football training just an hour or so earlier, I also had Tyler, our long-term foster son, on hand.
Though we never thought of him as that, obviously, because ‘son’ pretty much covered it. He’d been with us seven years now. He was part of us for ever.
‘Mum! Where d’you want this stuff?’ he yelled from halfway down the loft ladder. From where I was smoothing the bedclothes all I could see were his legs and feet.
‘In the conservatory!’ I yelled back.
‘What? Really?’
‘Honestly, love, where do you think I’m going to want it?’
‘Very funny. Not,’ he said, staggering in carrying a giant beanbag, which he dumped, along with the brace of cushions I’d ask him to fetch down for me, right on top of the bed I’d just made up.
‘Not on there,’ I snapped. ‘Now there’ll be wrinkles in the duvet.’
‘God, Mum,’ he huffed. ‘He’s a nine-year-old, isn’t he? You really think he’s going to care if his duvet’s a bit crumpled?’
‘That’s not the point,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s a question of standards. Besides, I’ll care. Anyway, thanks, love. Now go on down and tell your dad I’m almost finished, and that I’ll be inspecting his dusting when I get there.’
I got the usual mock salute, accompanied by the usual grin and eye-roll, and as I always did when a new kid was about to be ‘on the block’, I thought back to the circumstances that had brought Ty himself to us – as angry and distressed a kid as you could ever wish to meet. A tightly wound ball of sheer fury, in fact, who’d greeted me (our first meeting had been at the police station where they were holding him) as if I’d been especially bussed in to torment
