Daddy’s Boy

Daddy’s Boy
Casey Watson

Bestselling author and foster carer Casey Watson tells the heartbreaking true story of little Paulie, who is just five when he’s taken into care, in what looks like a tragic family breakdown.Already excluded from his nursery school, and deemed too immature yet for the infants, he’s already lashed out at his 18 month old half-brother, and now, after attacking and killing the family’s pet rabbit, he’s been given up by his mother and step-dad.Casey’s not used to fostering little ones, but keen to help, she agrees, and gets to meet the strangest 5 year old she’s ever known. He swears like a teenager, has tantrums like a two year old, and the only positive in his life seems to be his love for his real dad, a troubled ex-SAS soldier who he no longer sees.The plan for Paulie is simple; to try and find a way to get him back home with his family, but the more they get to know Paulie, the more they begin to realise that perhaps ‘home’ isn’t going to be the best place for him after all…

(#ub3fffa7f-6d41-53c4-a1ad-c64d689227f9)

Copyright (#ub3fffa7f-6d41-53c4-a1ad-c64d689227f9)

Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates,

have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.

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 2016

FIRST EDITION

© Casey Watson 2016

A catalogue record of this book is

available from the British Library

Cover image ©Shutterstock.com

Cover layout ©HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

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 2016 ISBN: 9780008142704

Version: 2016-04-15

Contents

Cover (#u413725eb-4af3-5bc6-99bf-559f94ea4fa7)

Title Page (#ulink_44724c72-7bf8-5efa-9ec9-4da6561ce096)

Copyright (#ulink_ad8dff69-61a9-54e2-8178-58d839fb982a)

Chapter 1 (#ulink_39fa52b7-f138-59ff-81c4-2d2862887322)

Chapter 2 (#ulink_58eea70b-f3d5-598a-ae41-1d73581dd3f9)

Chapter 3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 4 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

If you like Casey Watson … (#litres_trial_promo)

Casey Watson (#litres_trial_promo)

Moving Memoirs eNewsletter (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 1 (#ub3fffa7f-6d41-53c4-a1ad-c64d689227f9)

Mike groaned as he heaved our bulging suitcase from one of the carousels in baggage reclaim at our local airport. ‘Back to grim reality,’ he moaned. ‘Goodbye sunshine, hello grey British skies.’

‘Oh, stop being so melodramatic, love,’ I said, laughing, shaking my head at his hangdog expression. ‘It’s not even June yet. We still have the whole summer to look forward to! Just be grateful we’ve been able to have this little break.’

I took the laptop bag from him while he tried to guide the misbehaving case through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ area without looking shifty. Personally, I did feel grateful – enormously so – for our impromptu mini-break in Minorca, which had been a last-minute bargain, courtesy of my mum and dad, who’d just sold their caravan and treated us as a surprise.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Mike grumbled. ‘There’s Tyler off to another footie camp, and you’ll be doing fun stuff with the grandkids … And there I’ll be, as bloody per, nose to the grindstone at work, while you guys have all the excitement.’

I grinned as we emerged into arrivals. I knew he was only trying to wind me up. Though he was right, of course. Tyler was off to his football camp – his second one this year, in fact. He was becoming quite the little footballing superstar. Or, as he put it, the ‘next Gareth Bale’, whoever he was.

And, no, I didn’t have any ‘proper’ job to go back to, not in that sense, because my job was being a foster carer (and Mike’s second job as well, if we were going to split hairs), so there were times when I was between jobs, and this was one such.

I knew it wouldn’t be for long – it never was – but he was wrong about the ‘excitement’ part. Yes, it was true. I had time to indulge the grandkids. We had four now, all living close by (my daughter Riley’s three, plus son Kieron and his girlfriend’s brand new baby daughter, Dee Dee), so there was never a dull moment in that regard. But much as I loved being a nana, there was always a part of me that didn’t feel quite right when I wasn’t fostering. Yes, I could keep myself busy, and time with grandkids was always to be cherished – but I was still only 49 and when I didn’t have a foster kid in, I very quickly felt very old and very useless.

And ‘having a foster child’ no longer included Tyler. Yes, that was what he was, officially, because that’s how he had come to us, but it no longer felt like that – couldn’t feel less like that, in fact – because, for one thing, we were committed to care for him permanently now and, for another, it just didn’t. He felt like ours.