Having told him how much we loved him, I left Tyler to it, and when I went downstairs again Mike and I talked at length. No, we wouldn’t commit to anything long term – if he was lucky enough to be found a home rather than a children’s home, which was a long shot, Connor really seemed to me to be a boy who needed to be an only child. I might have got a bit misty-eyed about the hand life had dealt him, but I wasn’t stupid. His notes were detailed enough for me to know that just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one agreeable day doesn’t the perfect child make. As Mike had pointed out, this was a boy with a very violent episode under his belt less than 48 hours earlier.
But a few more days with us might make the difference between him being carted off to a secure unit and being found a placement that might be altogether more positive for him in the long term. I never forgot that the first child Mike and I ever fostered had come with an equally long list of ‘crimes’ and it was either us or be banged up in such a place.
Our position decided, I wrote up my log and emailed EDT with my thoughts. It was probably too late to phone them – well, to discuss something like this, anyway – but whoever dealt with it first thing could act on it then. I also copied John Fulshaw in, mostly as a box-ticking exercise. He was only due back home from holiday that morning, and I doubted he’d look at it till he returned to work. Which was fine. He really didn’t need to be bothered on this one. My main plan was to see Tyler off first thing in the morning, then, when EDT called me, to just clarify that we’d discussed it and that if the plan was to take Connor temporarily to a secure unit, that there was an alternative that would give them the luxury of a few extra days.
I then went to bed and slept the sleep of the righteous – well, till, about 3 a.m., when something must have woken me.
I lay in the dark for a few minutes, trying to work out what it was that had pinged me into wakefulness so suddenly. It clearly wasn’t Mike. Curled up on his side, he wasn’t snoring, so it hadn’t been that. Then I heard it again. Indistinct, but definitely there.
My first thought being Connor, I slipped from under the covers with the intention of going to check on him, but as soon as I opened my bedroom door I could tell that the sound was coming not from Connor’s room but from Tyler’s.
And it was the sound, to my surprise, of Tyler crying.
I hurried across, opened the door and then shut it silently behind me.
‘Oh, sweetheart!’ I said as I saw him sitting up, clasping his knees, in his bed, ‘What is it, love? What’s the matter?’ I asked him, hurrying to his side.
He sniffed and shook his head, ‘I’ll be okay, Casey. It’s nothing. Just a … a nightmare, or something.’
‘Or something?’ I put my arm around him. ‘Tyler, you know me, love. I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s wrong. What kind of nightmare? What happened? Bogeymen? Monsters? Dropping your mobile down the toilet? Or something else?’ I clasped him tighter. ‘Come on. Spill.’
It took Tyler a moment to compose himself. Then he did spill. ‘Do I have to go to the football course tomorrow?’ he asked me tearfully.
‘Why ever wouldn’t you want to?’ I asked him gently. ‘You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.’ Then I had a thought. ‘Have you and Denver had a falling out?’ I asked him.
He shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that. I just … I just …’
‘What, sweetheart? What is it? Come on. You know you can tell me.’
He sniffed some more. I could tell he’d been crying for quite a while. ‘I can’t …’
‘Yes you can. Anything. Come on. Spit it out.’
‘It’s just … it’s just I don’t want to go. I just want to stay here and …’
Another long pause. ‘And?’
‘And make sure he doesn’t …’
‘Who doesn’t?’ And then it hit me. ‘Connor?’
I felt Tyler stiffen then. Felt the burgeoning adolescent muscles tense under his pyjama top. ‘He’s a liar, Casey. You don’t realise!’ Tyler almost spat the words out. And then, bit by bit, out it all came at last. It seemed their little Xbox session hadn’t been that at all. It had been a ‘chat’. About how Connor was going to be moving in with us while he was out of the way. How he knew how to ‘play’ us. How he knew a good thing when he saw one. How he’d soon have us ‘on side’ and be the one we ‘loved best’.
‘And he means it, too,’ Tyler finished. ‘You don’t realise, Casey. Me going in that river? That wasn’t an accident. He yanked me in on purpose! Honest, I wouldn’t lie to you –’
‘Tyler, I’d never doubt you for a moment. You know that.’
He sighed miserably. ‘An’ I can’t bear it. To be going off and him standing there all smug, like, waving me off. And still being here when I get back. He’ll ruin everything. He will, Casey. I know you’ve got to do what you’re doing, an’ I know you feel sad for him – an’ I know Mike does as well – but, honest, he’ll ruin everything. I know he will!’
I held him tight and soothed him, feeling in five kinds of shock, which was ridiculous. That an eight-year-old child could pull the wool over my eyes so completely. That I could be so blind as to not notice how stressed Tyler had been. That I’d the confidence – no, the arrogance – to forget all my training, and think I could swoop in and be bloody superwoman where others had failed.
I comforted him and reassured him and promised him things would be fine. That he could go off with Denver secure in the knowledge that when he returned things would be back to normal.
I thought about my log and the email I’d already sent, and it took a while for me to settle down again. All I had to do now was expedite it, knowing even as I thought it that EDT might well have already acted upon my message, i.e. not acted, no longer being in any sort of rush.
I also had a lot of thinking to do. Not least analysing what an idiot I had been. Thank goodness I’d heeded Mike and not given Connor so much as an inkling that he could stay with us. Only thing was that I now had a potential situation in which we had no choice but to keep him, at least for those few days I’d breezily promised and which I could now repent at my leisure.
And even the hardening in my heart was a tricky one. Much as I’d felt angry that Connor had duped me so effectively, there was a part of me that felt the extent of his pain even more. To be just eight years old and to see the world as a place where your fellow human was reduced to being a ‘player’ or being ‘played’. And why wouldn’t he try to play us? He’d glimpsed a different sort of life with us. One where the transient carers that he was used to in the various children’s homes were replaced by a home and a loving, caring family. Did it matter that he felt not a flicker of emotion for us? No, it didn’t. It was a far superior billet than his previous one and, being so ‘streetwise’, I didn’t doubt he knew would be superior to his next.
The behaviour, not the child. That was the mantra I tried to stick to. And, who knew? As his unguarded words about Sammy and the Porn Queen had already hinted at, there always remained the hope that Connor could be redeemed in some way. So, yes, a part of me, though my head said we couldn’t be his redeemers, still felt bad that the alternative was looking so bleak.
It took me a long time to fall back to sleep.