The Boy No One Loved and Crying for Help 2-in-1 Collection

‘Fuck the points,’ he growled at me. ‘And fuck you too. You said I could trust you!’

‘But you can!’

‘No I can’t! You’re a liar. A fucking liar! Why did you have to tell them? Why? I’m not staying here.’ He kicked the chair out of his way. ‘I’m not staying! You’re just like my mother!’

He then grabbed his plate – smash. It hit the kitchen wall, hard, and I ducked out of the way simultaneously, instinctively, even though I could see that, thank God, he hadn’t actually aimed it at me. That sort of aggression, I reflected, even in the midst of what was happening, might have proved a step way too far to get back from. But then, I’d yet to know what was still to come.

He started punching the table now, with clenched fists, making the rest of the things on it dance and clatter across the surface, like flotsam and jetsam on a stormy sea.

I snatched up my own plate, before it too was smashed into pieces. ‘Justin!’ I had raised my voice now. I had to stay calm but in charge. ‘Go to your room until you’re calm! I will not speak to you while you’re reacting like this.’ I picked up his milk glass, as well. ‘I know you’re angry,’ I went on. ‘I understand that. And I’m sorry you feel that way, I really am. But I will not have you speaking or behaving in this manner. Go on!’ I finished, trying to inject my voice with maximum authority. ‘Move it, okay. Move it now!’

Please, I thought, watching him decide whether to obey me. Please, I thought, don’t make this any worse. Just go. But I could sense his indecision so I rammed my point home again. ‘Justin, I am not going to talk to myself here! Room!’ I jabbed a finger towards the door. ‘Room, now!’

That did it. He stormed to his room, slamming every door he walked through, screaming obscenities as he went.

I touched my chest. My heart was pumping like a train. It was as if the whole fabric of the house was shuddering.

After I’d cleared up the broken crockery and re-established some sort of order, I sat in the kitchen for some time, feeling terrible. I had had to tell – it was my job to pass on things like this – but I felt I’d gone about things all wrong. Surely I could have prepared Justin more, or found a better way to tell him what had had to happen. It really brought it home to me how much I still had to learn about this new career I’d chosen – Mike and I had both chosen – not to mention having a very stark and physical reminder of what an incredibly big and demanding job it was.

I took a deep breath and stooped to collect a small piece of broken plate under the table, which I’d missed, surprised to see that I was physically shaking. In all my time in the school unit, I’d never felt quite so vulnerable and shaken up. How the hell had an eleven-year-old reduced me to this? I reached for my cigarettes on autopilot and went outside to light one. But I couldn’t because my hands wouldn’t stay still long enough to make the lighter work.

How could this be? I had worked with some of the most difficult children for years, and I tried hard to look back and think of a comparable event. I was angry with myself, and with the situation too. It seemed that the one time, in fact, the first time, that I had an ‘in’ to Justin, I’d had to – through no fault of my own – then destroy it. Yes, it was the protocol, but it was bloody hard to swallow, and I wasn’t sure I trusted the protocol any more.

It took me a long time to calm down, and once I had, I tried to call Mike, but he obviously had no signal at the football ground because his phone was going straight to voicemail. I knew he wouldn’t be back till teatime either, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I thought about asking Riley to come over but I was worried that might just make Justin worse.

I spent some time feeling completely undecided, just standing in the conservatory, smoking, staring out into the garden. Should I go up to him and see if he’d calmed down, or should I not? In the end, I opted not to because I thought it might just exacerbate the situation and ignite a further confrontation. I was also nervous and wary about facing him again, alone. He’d scared me quite a bit and I had knots in my stomach just thinking about going up there. Best to just leave him and hope he stayed put and had calmed down by the time Mike got home.

In the meantime, I needed to get on with something, so after I’d cleared the last of the mess up and binned the remains of Justin’s sandwich, I set about preparing that evening’s tea. I’d planned home-made chicken korma with rice – one of Kieron’s favourites, and now methodically pulled the ingredients from the fridge. Chicken breasts, peppers, onions and garlic, all of which I assembled and started chopping and crushing. It was strangely therapeutic, doing this rhythmic, mindless task and, minute by minute, I felt the tension in my shoulders begin to ease. I even began to wonder, as I steadily grew calmer, if perhaps I was over-reacting to what had just happened. After all, I had expected an outburst from him hadn’t I? And maybe it was justified, too.

I’d been at it for about half an hour when Justin suddenly reappeared in the kitchen, startling me, as I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs. He said nothing; just took up his place at the table once more. Taking his lead, I decided to say nothing either. I just smiled but he immediately turned his face away.

It seemed he was determined to get my attention, for all that, because he began tapping cutlery against the table top. Not for long though; he soon tired of that, and got up once again – coming over quite close beside me, at the worktop. Here he picked up the flat knife – the one I’d just used to crush the garlic cloves – and started running it up and down the worktop. He then put it down and went over to the cooker, where the frying pan of chicken was sizzling. Now he picked up the wooden spoon that was resting in the pan and began tapping it rhythmically against the side of it. The growing tension was once again almost palpable.

‘Can you stop doing that please, Justin?’ I asked him levelly. But he ignored me and simply carried on. I left it for a minute then asked him again. ‘Justin, can you please stop that?’ I repeated, this time more firmly. But once again he carried on regardless.

I was well aware something was building again, but was entirely unprepared for what happened next. Even before I could properly see what was happening, Justin suddenly lunged for my knife block, grabbed a knife out of it, then leapt up, in a single bound, onto the worktop.

Both astonished at his agility – so much for his apparent lack of athleticism – and also terrified, as he was now towering over me, I watched horrified as he brandished it, his face set in that scary rictus mask again, screaming obscenities at me and becoming more and more incoherent, as the words tumbled out – he hated me, he was going to stab me, I was a fucking crap mother. But when he yelled that I preferred the dog to him, it really brought me up short – we didn’t own one – and I realised he was talking as if he was confusing me with his mother. I wasn’t even sure he was fully compos mentis at that moment, and I knew I had to think fast, and on my feet.

‘Put the knife down,’ I said firmly. ‘Justin, just put the knife down.’ But he was almost blue in the face now, and I could see he wasn’t hearing me. He had completely zoned out and gone to that other place. It was then, in a flash, that I had an idea. One that definitely wasn’t by the book. Not any foster-carer’s handbook I’d ever seen, anyway.

Having considered two things – that Justin had picked up the smallest knife in the block, and also his great love of films, and one film in particular – I lunged myself for the biggest one, which I whipped from its slot and brandished every bit as menacingly as he had.

Then, in my very best Australian accent, I said, ‘Call that a knife? That’s not a knife. This is a knife!’ And then paused, my breath held waiting for his response.

He just stared, now stock still, looking incredulously at me, then, to my mingled shock and immense relief, he burst out laughing.

Astonished almost as much as I had been thirty seconds earlier, there was a second or two when I had no idea how I should react, and then it came to me; I smiled, and then I laughed along with him. ‘Now get down from there, you little madhead!’ I admonished, still grinning. ‘And put your pathetic excuse for a knife back as well!’

Incredibly, he did both things without a murmur.

I still felt shaky, and also slightly stunned by what had happened. Who’d have thought I’d end up diffusing a dangerous situation by using a line out of Crocodile Dundee?

We did manage to talk about what happened, in the end. Seizing the initiative – and what felt like at least a version of the upper hand – I then changed my mind and suggested he might like to help me, and put the knife to better (and slightly less terrifying) use by chopping some tomatoes and cucumber for a salad. After all, I pointed out, if he loved food so much, it made sense for him learn how to feed himself properly. I even pointed out, remembering Mike’s words about Justin’s view of ‘women’s work’, that some of the best chefs in the world had started out by helping in the kitchen, just like this. And as we worked, and I felt it safe to broach it again, I talked about the different jobs that people had to do: some people were chefs, other people were policemen, and some people – me and Mike being a good example – had decided to make their job one of helping children. Children like him who had had bad things happen, and who needed lots of love and care to help them feel better about things.

I explained again about the reality of my situation; that as his carer, I worked with other people, and had rules I had agreed to, and one of those rules was that I mustn’t keep secrets. Just like chefs had to obey all sorts of rules about hygiene in the kitchen, so that the people who ate their food didn’t get sick, so I had to follow the rules I had been given. Which weren’t put there to hurt him – absolutely the opposite. I had people who were there to support us – us and him – but who could only do so if I told them the truth. Which meant I had no choice – none at all – but to do as I had done.

He seemed to digest all this, nodding at intervals as he stood and chopped beside me, and I felt so much happier that he’d taken it on board now. Even so, I wasn’t stupid, and knew he still felt hurt and betrayed. You could be given all the explanations in the world, after all, but you couldn’t just conveniently switch your feelings off, could you?

‘And there’s nothing you can do about it,’ Mike reminded me that night, as once again I lay in bed, fretting. ‘All you can do is to keep doing what you’re doing, love. You’ve made progress. He’ll get over this blip. You’ll keep making progress.’

‘You think so?’ I really hoped so, but I wasn’t convinced. Maybe it was just too late for Justin.

‘I know so,’ Mike said. ‘Look, love. Try to look at it this way. The fact that he felt betrayed – and he will get past that, I honestly do believe that – is precisely because he’s made progress. It’s precisely because he’s bonded with you; with all of us, with the family, that this – well, this reality check, if you like – has hit him so hard. Must be bloody hard, when you think about it, having your life dictated by a bunch of adults who keep turning up and interfering in your business. I don’t know …’ Mike shrugged. ‘But maybe he’d forgotten about all of that, you know, having got so settled in here. Which he has. He really has.’

‘Yeah, and then he gets grassed up. By me.’

‘Tsk! Listen to you! Case, come on, I mean it. You’ve got to stop this!’ He reached an arm out and put it around my shoulder, then pulled me close and hugged me. ‘You’re doing great. You’re a great mum and a brilliant foster mum, too. It’ll come right. I promise. It really will.’

I knew Mike talked sense – he always did – that was why I loved him. But it was dispiriting, even so, to see the change now in Justin. Within a day, all the stuff he’d got out and started leaving around his bedroom – books, toys, computer games, the football rug, a couple of the puzzles – had once again been banished to the back of the cupboard, and the blue throw had been reinstated over the bookcase. Once again, the room looked just like a prison cell. Except, if anything, even more spartan.

This time, though, I noticed something else as well. I had nipped in to pick up the laundry a couple of days later and noticed that his TV had been left on. I picked up the remote to turn it off and realised that the cartoon that was playing was in black and white. Thinking that the TV was broken, I called Mike to take a look. ‘No,’ Mike said, taking the remote from me and pointing it. ‘There’s nothing wrong with it. Look.’ He pressed a button and the colour returned. ‘See? You just have to put the colour back on with the remote.’ He handed it back to me. ‘He’s done it before.’

‘What, made the television black and white?’

Mike nodded. ‘Yes. I’ve been in before and seen he’s done it.’

‘But why would he do that?’

Mike shrugged. ‘Search me. But then he does do a lot of odd things, doesn’t he?’

I shuddered. And maybe this was what he did when he wanted the TV to match his black moods. This kid just seemed to get stranger and stranger.

And also, it looked like, more and more determined to punish the world for what had happened to him by completely refusing to engage with it. Both John and Harrison came to visit, on separate occasions, and though I wasn’t present – I couldn’t be, because that was not the protocol – they both reported that they’d got absolutely nowhere. Justin had clammed up; draped that blue throw metaphorically over himself, too, his only response to their gentle questions about what he’d told me being a series of stony looks and silent shrugs.

At least, I thought, at least he would be off to school now. Maybe the change of scenery, the new environment and new people might help. Perhaps he’d even make a friend or two, who knew?

But in that, it seemed, I was probably being seriously naive. He’d been there only a few days when I got a call from the school, one lunchtime.

‘Mrs Watson?’ a male voice said. ‘It’s Richard Firth, Head of Year Seven at the high school. I’m calling about Justin Reynolds. I believe you’re his foster mother, yes?’

I felt my stomach lurch. ‘Yes. Yes, I am. Is everything alright?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have to exclude him from school.’

‘Oh, no. Why?’ I said, mentally saying but not adding the words, what, already?

‘For throwing another pupil down some stairs.’