Eight o’clock came and went and, alone in the house, I re-donned my Marigolds and set to work with a vengeance. There wasn’t much that needed cleaning – almost nothing, in fact – but it filled the time I’d have otherwise spent pacing up and down, fretting about something I could do absolutely nothing about anyway.
We’d been here before. A few years earlier we’d had a serial absconder; another lad with a grim start of indifference and neglect behind him. And I thought of that phrase again: ‘five minutes’ peace’. It was one that had a lot to commend it, but at the same time it had a lot of uncomfortable connotations; was it a craving for five minutes’ peace that led Connor’s mother to give up on him the way she had?
I was also concerned about Tyler. He clearly felt responsible for Connor running off, and I prayed that it would be him who would spot him and return him. At the very least I needed to make clear to him that Connor behaving as he’d done was absolutely not his fault.
As for fault itself, as a concept, where it concerned a child like Connor, where did you start in apportioning blame? And where did it end, more to the point? What would happen to him next? Another children’s home? Then another? Till the heart was completely ripped from him? Assuming that hadn’t already happened long before.
In the short term, the ‘crisis’ (as it would be described in my log when I wrote it up later) came to an end just over an hour later. The promised officer had arrived and had just left with all the particulars, when the doorbell rang again, several times in quick succession. I thought it might be Mike and Tyler, in too much of a rush to use either of their keys, but I opened the door to reveal a man from the end of the road – one whom we had up to now been only on waving terms with – clutching an irritable-looking Connor by the pyjama collar.
‘Oh thank goodness!’ I said in relief as I knelt down in the hall and did that thing that mums do, as though checking for broken bones. I held Connor’s arms out and scrutinized him and then looked up to our knight in shining armour. ‘Thank you so much for bringing him back,’ I said, as I relinquished my hold on Connor. ‘Where did you find him?’
The man grinned and held his hand out to shake. ‘You must be Casey, then. I’m Nev. Nev Thompson. From number 42.’ He grinned again, and ruffled Connor’s hair. In the short time of their acquaintance, our little escapologist had obviously managed to charm him. ‘In my shed,’ he finished. ‘Hunkering down with all the mice and spiders.’
I decided I’d better attempt to give our neighbour some kind of explanation. ‘My husband Mike and I are foster carers,’ I said. ‘He’s out with my foster son looking for this young man as we speak. Connor here is staying for the weekend. There was a bit of an altercation between the boys, and … well, as you can see …’
Nev held his hand up. ‘No worries. I know how it goes. I’ll leave you all to it.’ He then patted Connor’s shoulder. ‘And perhaps you can have a chat with Mum … erm … this lovely lady, and tell her what you know about the bones under the floorboards, lad, eh?’ He then winked at me. ‘Save calling the police out unnecessarily …’
‘Bones, Connor?’ I said, confused. ‘Bones under the floorboards?’
‘Hundreds of them apparently,’ Mr Thompson confirmed. He was clearly enjoying this. ‘Of all the foster kids who’ve apparently been starved to death and then buried under the floor. And as I said to young Connor here, you might be keen to hear about them. Only you’ve not lived here that long, have you?’
‘Erm, no we haven’t,’ I confirmed, looking pointedly at Connor, who, if it had been humanly possible, I think would have screwed his head right down into his pyjama top. As it wasn’t, he had no choice but to face it out.
‘Bodies?’ I asked again.
But it seemed Connor had nothing to add at this point, so I thanked Mr Thompson. ‘And we’ll be sure to investigate the starving foster-child situation,’ I added, trying not to grin.
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.
He 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.’