The first big change after Jenna moved in was that I had to accept that ‘my home, my rules’ no longer applied in a normal sense. Where I had thought giving Jenna her own mother and baby space might allow a return to some normality in my usually tidy home, it seemed the temporary baby station in the kitchen was to become a permanent feature, the previous clutter only added to by an even larger sterilising unit and even more baby paraphernalia, which was creeping in daily, despite my having moved everything wholesale into her area. When I pointed this out, Jenna simply smiled and shook her head, as if I was asking the incomprehensible. ‘Oh, it makes much more sense for me to have everything in the kitchen,’ she’d explained, as if I’d had a total logic bypass. ‘It’s crazy for me to be going back and forth washing bottles and taking them back into the conservatory all the time.’
Yes, I thought, but that’s not the point.
But I stopped short of pointing it out to her, as to do so would be like saying she wasn’t part of the family – more like a lodger – which was not the message I wanted or should be putting out. She had to feel I was behind her – even as my job was to judge her – because without my support, she could all too easily lose motivation once the reality of looking after two little ones kicked in.
It was a small detail, however, and I needed to get over myself – just as I needed to try not to mind that, at a stroke, wherever I stepped there were now toys underfoot, since I must not now run around tidying up for her. Yes, I could suggest that she might like to make a game with Seth called ‘tidying up’ but to go further would be too much like directing her.
The brutal truth was that, for the first time in my professional life, I had no control over the children I was fostering. I was both Seth and Tommy’s foster carer – the buck stopped with me, I knew that – but Jenna was there too now, and she was their mother, so mother them she must. I could only step in if I thought there was a safeguarding issue. All the mothering, therefore, had to be done by her. The problem was that she was expected to mother them under the scrutiny of another mother, and I had to allow her to look after her children as though she were in her own home with them. That meant cooking, feeding, bathing and, when required, in Seth’s case, tellings-off. I was used to doing all of those things, obviously, had done them for years, but I soon learned that Jenna’s methods were miles from my own. Forget the small differences in method with, say, my grandchildren; Jenna’s methods were light years away.
‘Go away, you little shit!’ I heard her bark at Seth on only the third day she was with us. ‘I mean it, just piss off, I’m on the phone.’
Here was an aspect I could at least pass comment on. Rushing to her makeshift downstairs bedroom, I knocked and then opened the door. ‘Love,’ I said, ‘please, I wish you wouldn’t speak to Seth like that. This is why we’re struggling to get him not to swear.’
It wasn’t the first time she had spoken to her son using that sort of language, but she looked at me as though I were speaking in a foreign one.
‘Like what?’ she asked, looking genuinely puzzled. ‘He can see I’m on the phone to my mate. We haven’t spoken for months and he’s doing my head in!’
So, no mention of her language at all. I noticed that Baby seemed settled in his basket and that he seemed to be enjoying the fact that his mum was rocking him with her foot as she smiled at the screen on her phone. Noticing me looking, Jenna swung the phone round to face me. ‘Say hi to Caitlin,’ she instructed. ‘Cait, this is Casey, who I was telling you about.’ She then turned the phone back to herself, even as the girl was saying pleased to meet you, and continued straight on with her conversation.
‘Come on, Seth,’ I said, holding my arm out. ‘Let’s leave Mummy to talk for a bit. We’ll go get a biscuit and some milk.’
Seth grinned, kicked his mum, ducked away from what could have been a slap around the head and ran after me, sticking two fingers up at his mother on the way out.
‘That’s naughty,’ I scolded. ‘I told you before we don’t have that in this house, and you know that.’
‘Mummy said it’s fine,’ Seth said. ‘It just means fuck off, that’s all, and if I’m mad, I can say what I want.’
Oh, can you? I thought darkly. ‘Well, I said you can’t. Now, what biscuits do you fancy?’
‘Chocolate chip cookies!’ he said, scrambling up onto a kitchen chair.
‘Well, that’s very specific,’ I said, opening the cupboard. ‘And as it happens, you’re in luck. Tyler went and got those very ones only yesterday. They’re his favourites.’
‘I know,’ Seth said. ‘He already told me. But I was hungry. Very, very hungry,’ he added.
I stopped rummaging and turned to look at him. ‘What do you mean, you were hungry? When were you hungry? Seth, have you eaten the cookies?’
He burst out laughing and started to jump around on the chair. ‘Ha ha – you’re so stupid! You were looking for the cookies and I’ve eaten all of them!’
Ignoring him, I turned around and marched back into the conservatory. ‘Jenna, could you hang up the phone, please? I need to talk to you.’
Jenna rolled her eyes before telling her friend, sotto voce, ‘Fucksake, I gotta go, babe, it’s probably Seth kicking off again. I’ll ring you back in a bit, yeah?’ She then threw her phone across her bed and gave me her attention. ‘What’s he done now?’
I perched on the edge of the small wicker sofa. I had no choice; it was the only inch not already occupied with stuff. ‘I know it’s hard, love,’ I said, ‘but you can’t keep giving in to Seth when he’s demanding snacks all the time. This is why he refuses to eat his meals – because he’s filling himself up with rubbish all day. He’s already eaten a full pack of cookies this morning and he knows we wouldn’t allow that.’
Jenna looked at me as if I was talking gobbledegook, then abruptly stood up and unhooked her handbag from the chair it was hanging on. Opening it, she pulled out a handful of coins. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘How much? A pound? Two pounds? What do I owe you for the biscuits?’ Her tone wasn’t sharp – just completely matter of fact. ‘That’s not the point, and you know it,’ I said, ‘but how do you expect us to help with Seth’s behaviour if I’m giving him one message and you’re giving him an opposite one? It’s not helping him at all, love.’
I was aware that throughout our exchange Seth had followed me and was now right behind me, watching and listening to everything. Which made me feel a little stupid. I should have had this conversation with her later, not in earshot, not while he was so interested in the outcome. I’d heard him screaming at his mum for biscuits more than once since she’d arrived, and although she usually started out by saying no, she always gave in eventually.
There was no satisfying him either – he had her measure. If Mike or I were around, she would go to the cupboard and get them herself, but if she got him two out, he wanted three, if she got him three, he asked for four. If Jenna thought we weren’t in the vicinity, she would tell Seth to go get them himself, and with the keys to the kingdom, he didn’t hold back.
Trying to think of a way to salvage the situation, and realising that Jenna seemed unwilling to continue with the conversation as she was now fiddling with her handbag zipper, presumably waiting for more admonishment from me, I decided to continue so that Seth could hear me.
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘neither of us want poor Seth to get poorly from too many cookies, do we? Or to need the dentist because of toothache, so we need to make sure it’s only the grown-ups who can give out biscuits.’ I walked closer to her then, hoping to catch her eye and get her on board. ‘So, could you help me for five minutes, please, and we will get all the things in the treat cupboard moved to one that’s higher up?’
Jenna frowned, but at least seemed to have cottoned on, finally. ‘Okay,’ she said, standing up and seeming to be getting into the swing of things. ‘And then little shits who think they’re clever can’t get to them,’ she added pointedly.
Not exactly what Seth needed to hear, but close enough, I thought, though as we went into the kitchen, I did whisper in her ear. ‘Little monkeys, love, please? We need to help him to stop swearing.’
Not least, I thought, because he needed to be in nursery – something I was still waiting for an update on, despite Christine’s earlier optimism. And there didn’t seem much hope of making further progress on the swearing front anyway – not now Mum was here reinforcing it. At least not yet. True to form, the minute we started to remove biscuits, crisps and other snacks from the cupboard I had always kept them in, Seth started to rage. He ran across the kitchen and tried to kick the cupboard door shut, almost smashing it into his mum’s fingers, and screaming and spitting as he did so.
‘Fucking slags! Get off my stuff!’ he yelled. ‘Fat bitches! My biscuits! My cookies!’
My mood sank to my boots. Yet another explosive outburst. It seemed my hope that he’d change once reunited with his mother was as scientific a theory as the moon being made of cheese. I managed to fend him off as I grabbed the last couple of packs, but the noise and screams were just deafening. And in the middle of it all, Jenna dithered ineffectually, her ‘behave yourself’s drowned out by the volume of his voice.
‘For fuck’s sake!’ she shouted eventually. ‘There are no more fucking biscuits!’ then, to me, ‘God! He’s just like his bloody father!’
That conversation would have to wait for another time obviously. His father who was in prison? His father who might even have been her personal drug dealer? I’d seen that so often down the years – and the future-destroying impact it had on children – that if it turned out to be the case here, I wouldn’t, sadly, have batted an eyelid.
What was Jenna’s story? How had she ended up where she was now? There was so much that I didn’t know, and surely ought to. No, I didn’t have a right to know, because I wasn’t fostering Jenna. But if I was to help her, I needed to understand at least something of her life.
‘You know, Jenna, sometime soon you and I should –’ I began, but was immediately drowned out.
‘I hate you!’ Seth yelled at her. ‘You stink of poo and piss!’
‘Right!’ I said, standing up and brushing crumbs from my joggers. ‘I’ve heard quite enough of this, young man.’
I had, too, and to hell with the rules. I reached out, grabbed Seth’s hand and, though he tried his best to pull away, held on. ‘Jenna, can you go and see to the baby, please?’ I said. ‘And perhaps tidy your room up a bit, and get the washing sorted out. Seth is going to have some time out in his room. Come on, young man, five minutes until you calm down.’
My taking control worked precisely as expected. ‘Okay,’ Jenna said, clearly happy I’d taken it. Happy to be let off the disciplining hook, which she seemed pathologically unable to deal with. Which was not how things were supposed to go at all. And as she walked away, I realised that in order to have any semblance of a peaceful life, I would have to do this. I would have to be the one to take control. At least until I found a way to get the girl to listen, watch and learn, and so step up a bit. And, distressingly, against all the evidence of the last three days, become the adult, and the mother, Seth needed her to be. Time was short here. We needed to step up a gear.
For the next five minutes however, I didn’t feel much like an adult at all. In fact as I sat on the landing carpet, my hand gripped around the bedroom door handle so that it couldn’t be pulled open, and a raging child on the other side of it, booting the hell out of said door so hard that it vibrated through my whole body, I was astonished to find myself crying. I cried quietly, so I must have had some sort of control; it was, I knew, a mixture of exhaustion, pure frustration and feeling sorry for myself. But I was determined to sit this five minutes out, even if they felt like an hour.
I’m so glad I didn’t have my phone with me at that point, because if I had, I’m sure I would have reacted too quickly. I’m sure I would have phoned Christine, or Sam Burdett, or even Mike, and would have confessed that this was all too much. But I didn’t have my phone, so instead I had to sit and allow my conflicted thoughts to fight it out, Casey style, in my head. Searching wildly for the positives, that’s when it really hit me. I couldn’t even take a walk down to the local shop to clear my thoughts and take a breather! Not without dressing both kids and getting Mum to get organised, and then dragging them all along with me. And how would that give me ten minutes’ headspace? I couldn’t nip across town to my parents’ house, for them to give me the pep talk I sorely needed, because, well, how on earth could I take Seth around to theirs?
I had bloody signed up to this, and only now could I see that unless I started to change something, and fast, I was going to become another victim of this family’s chaotic life, and how was that possible? Think, Casey, think, I told myself, furious at the thought of my being trapped inside the claustrophobic bubble of this little family, and there being nothing I could do about it.
The kicks against my back started to get weaker and less frequent, and the screaming had now subsided, so I pulled myself up and took a deep breath before speaking through the door. ‘Okay, sweetie,’ I said, ‘I’m coming in now, because it sounds like you’re deciding to be sensible.’
I pushed the door gently and Seth turned his back and ran to jump on the bed, turning away, curling into a ball and hiding his face from me. I sat next to him and automatically reached out to stroke his now-sweaty head.
‘It’s okay, baby,’ I said, ‘you know, that was really good, the way you got yourself to calm down. Well done, sweetheart. I’m really proud of you.’ I decided then, on instinct, to lay down alongside him and hug him close against me – try to swaddle him in security and warmth. ‘It can’t be nice for you to always feel so angry, I know that, baby. But it’s okay. I just want to help you to be happier, okay?’
Seth turned to face me then, and hugged me right back, which almost set me off all over again. ‘I’m sorry, Casey,’ he whispered. ‘I won’t do it again.’ His eyes bored into mine, glittering with tears. ‘I want be a good boy.’
It was exactly the vitamin shot of hope that I needed. No throwing in the towel. Not today, at least.