At Risk: An innocent boy. A sinister secret. Is there no one to save him from danger?

At Risk: An innocent boy. A sinister secret. Is there no one to save him from danger?
Casey Watson

Adam is a fragile and anxious boy whose relationship with his mother starts to unravel. His mother is seen as ‘wonderful’ and ‘devoted’ to Adam who she works hard for, but all isn’t as it seems.Eleven year old Adam is taken in by Casey, following his mother’s car accident which left her with a broken pelvis. Casey is told that Adam is not in the best of health and he attends regular medical appointments for an unknown ‘sickness', but isn’t fazed. Casey takes Adam in, believing all will be well and back to normal, reassuring him as well as herself.Every evening Adam visits his mother and Casey gives them ‘private time’ respecting his and his mother’s time to be alone. Soon enough a pattern begins to emerge as Adam’s health continuously deteriorates after every visit. The level of distress worries Casey who ends up stumbling across the real relationship Adam has with his mother, and Casey finds it’s more sinister than she had known.

(#ub108583c-bdeb-5400-989d-11330e72cf1d)

Copyright (#ub108583c-bdeb-5400-989d-11330e72cf1d)

This is a work of non-fiction based on the author’s experiences. In order to protect privacy, names, identifying characteristics, dialogue and details have been changed or reconstructed.

HarperElement

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperElement 2017

FIRST EDITION

© Casey Watson 2017

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017

Cover photograph © Kelly Sillaste/Trevillion Images (posed by model)

Casey Watson asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at

www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green)

Ebook Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008142728

Version: 2017-03-06

Contents

Cover (#uff1b4c25-124c-5f63-8591-96d9bcacd3b0)

Title Page (#ua806b420-3a98-5716-a82a-3afb70db4f9e)

Copyright (#u726b394c-74d2-5b55-b53c-a5484110c17c)

Chapter 1: Friday (#u34dd5f83-ad50-5a3e-98e2-8e475ca8f11f)

Chapter 2: Saturday (#u31c4139b-1fe4-5801-a870-e72183038a66)

Chapter 3: Sunday (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4: Monday (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5: Tuesday (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6: Wednesday (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7: Thursday (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 8: Friday (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Exclusive sneak peek: The Silent Witness (#litres_trial_promo)

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1

Friday (#ub108583c-bdeb-5400-989d-11330e72cf1d)

It wasn’t like me to have a headache. Headaches had a very specific place in my life. They came via school holidays, chocolate and/or an excess of grandchildren, none of which currently applied. Still, the thumping going on above my head – Tyler packing upstairs, in his usual Tyler fashion – was accompanied by a definite thumping in my head, so I reached into the medicine cabinet that I kept in the kitchen cupboard and popped two paracetamol from their foil sheet.

‘Feeling sorry for yourself?’ Mike asked as he joined me in the kitchen.

‘No,’ I replied tartly. ‘I just have a headache. Must be the change in the season or something.’

He stopped pouring coffee and gave me a hug. ‘Aww – worried about being all on your lonesome, love? Is that it? But you’ll find something to occupy yourself,’ he pointed out, reasonably. ‘So stop looking so miserable. It’s only just over a week. Besides, Kieron and Lauren will no doubt be around with Dee Dee, so –’

‘I am not feeling sorry for myself,’ I said again, firmly. Though, actually, truth be known, I sort of was.

‘Yes you are. But it’s your own fault. You could have come with us.’

I made a ‘tsk’ sound, somewhat irritably, because that was true as well. Except, really? Me on a school skiing trip? In the cold?

There was no getting away from it, of course. That Mike was right – there had been nothing stopping me. It was the last week of the spring term, Easter just on the horizon, and, as Tyler, our permanent foster child, was going on the trip, it wasn’t as if I had anyone to stay home for. And with my daughter-in-law Lauren, David and their kids already en route to Cornwall as we spoke – for ten days, no less – that was doubly true. And it wasn’t as if I didn’t like snow. I loved snow. Just in the right place and time, that was all. At Christmas, and mostly on the outside.

No, it was the time of year when my thoughts turned to beaches and sunshine, and though Tyler assured me his teacher had promised plenty of the latter, the thought of donning ski gear and hefty snow boots, and generally slipping and sliding around the place, held about as much appeal for me as bungee jumping – i.e. none at all.

I still couldn’t quite believe Mike had been so keen on it. That he’d actually agreed to go along to be a helper. After all, who could he actually help? He’d skied precisely once in his life. When he was seven. Perhaps that was why my head hurt – because of the sheer incredulity of it all.