Nowhere to Go: The heartbreaking true story of a boy desperate to be loved

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

A Note to the Reader (#litres_trial_promo)

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Casey Watson (#litres_trial_promo)

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Dedication (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9)

Dedicated to all those in a position to help our children lead productive and fulfilling lives, and to those children who have lived through dark days and find the strength to make it.

Acknowledgements (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9)

I would like to thank my agent, the lovely Andrew Lownie, for continuing to believe in me; Carolyn and the wonderful team at HarperCollins for their dedicated and hard work; and as ever my very talented friend and mentor, Lynne, for always being there. A special mention this time to Vicky at HarperCollins, who is taking some special time out for a while. I wish her all the very best and look forward to hearing from her soon.

Chapter 1 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9)

It’s so easy to take your parents for granted, isn’t it? Not consciously, maybe, and not in the sense that you don’t value them. Just in that perhaps it goes with the territory that you try not to spend too much time thinking ahead to a time when they won’t be there, do you? But not today. Today I had no choice in the matter. So I was doing exactly that, and it was scary.

I was scared because I had just taken my father into hospital to have major surgery on his bowel. It would be straightforward, they told us, and we should try not to worry, but how can you not in that situation? Mum was terrified he might die under the anaesthetic – i.e. before they even started – and for all my reassurances and positivity, she had so many ‘what if?’ scenarios (all of them negative, obviously) that it had been a real job to try and keep her calm.

As it was, I’d left her there with her knitting – she was busy making a cot blanket for her newest great-grandchild – and the promise that I’d be back as soon as Dad was out of theatre, after which, assuming all was well, I’d bring her home.

And it had been fine. Well, at least until I walked back out through the double doors, when it was all I could do not to burst into tears, run back inside for a cuddle and have them both do what they always did whenever life got tough: say ‘Don’t worry love, it will all be okay.’

It had been seeing Dad in the hospital bed that had been the worst. Never a big man – it’s from him that I get my five-foot-nothing stature – now he looked painfully small. Not frail, exactly, but definitely diminished. Weakened, as you’d expect in a man in his seventies who’s been struggling with an illness for a long time.

Stop it, I told myself sternly, blowing my nose. Get into the car, take yourself home, go and see your daughter, drink coffee, but most of all stop it. He’ll be fine.

And I had very nearly talked myself into believing he would too, except perhaps not as completely as I’d kidded myself I had, because when my mobile phone rang, just as I was coming off the dual carriageway, my first thought was Oh, God, what’s happened?

Nothing, you stupid mare, I told myself as I took the first left turn and found a safe place to pull in. He’d barely even have had his bloods taken yet, would he? So perhaps it was Mum, with some last-minute anxiety-reducing request or other – like spare hankies or Dad’s second best set of pyjamas or the current week’s copy of The People’s Friend.

But it wasn’t Mum, and I found myself smiling as I read the display; it was a missed call from my fostering link worker, John Fulshaw. We’d not spoken for a while, as I’d been having a bit of downtime from fostering; we’d come out of a long placement, which had finished the previous summer, and with my daughter Riley pregnant, and Dad having been so poorly, we’d made a decision as a family to take a bit of a break. We’d only done a little respite care since.

But now it was late May – almost a year since our last child, Emma, had left us, and with Riley’s daughter Marley Mae having arrived safely in April, and Dad finally getting his date for surgery, I’d already spoken to my husband Mike about suggesting to John that, come summer, we’d be back in the game.

I touched the call button, thinking how mad it was he should call at that moment. What was he, psychic or something?

Possibly. ‘Ah, Casey!’ he greeted me, as if I’d just returned from Mars. ‘Thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly. I was worried you were on holiday –’

I laughed. ‘Chance would be a fine thing, John.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good. Well, not in that sense, of course, but good that you’re around. Are you free?’

‘Well, Mike and I were only recently saying …’

‘No, no. Now. I meant “now” as in are you free right this minute? Only we have a bit of a situation.’

‘Well, I was just heading home, actually.’ I explained about Dad.

‘Oh, I’m sorry, Casey – this really isn’t a good time for you, is it? No, look, sorry – I’ll have to see if I can rustle up someone else.’

He sounded crestfallen. ‘No, no, John, go on. Tell me. What is the situation?’

‘Really, Casey? You really want to know?’

‘Really,’ I confirmed, conscious of the new tone in his voice, which, after our many years of association, I had already analysed as the verbal equivalent of him crossing both his fingers and his toes. ‘John, if I can help at all, I will. You know that. And to be honest, this is a good time because it’ll take my mind off things – I’d only be pacing up and down, fretting about Dad, wouldn’t I? So, go on – what is the situation?’

‘I’m at the police station,’ he told me.

‘The police station? So that’s what it is, is it? You want me to come and pay your bail?’

‘A get out of jail free card might be helpful,’ he mused. ‘But not for me. For a boy who’s here with me, name of Tyler. Eleven. Stabbed his stepmother. Nowhere to go.’

‘Oh, dear,’ I said, my brain already cranking into action. ‘That doesn’t sound too good.’

‘No, it doesn’t, does it? And it isn’t, hence the social worker getting me down here. He’s already been charged and processed and now they want shot. Only trouble is, to where?’

‘So you need respite?’

‘No. Well, I mean, yes, if needs be – someone’s on to that currently – but we mostly need you and Mike to take him on, because this is right up your street. I don’t think he’s the sort of lad we can just place, ahem, anywhere. But … look, you know, you really can say no to this, Casey, if you have a lot going on in your life right now …’

‘He’s that bad, is he?’

‘I’m not going to dress it up for you. He’s likely to be challenging, so …’

So that was precisely why he had called me. As opposed to someone else. ‘So shall I come down there?’ I said.

‘You sure?’

I laughed. ‘I’m not sure about anything right now, John. And even if I was, I’d obviously have to speak to Mike first. And there’s no way I could take him now this very minute because I obviously need to know my dad’s safely out of surgery first.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ John said. ‘Not a problem at all. I completely understand.’

‘But in principle … Well, there’s no harm in me meeting the lad, is there?’

Well, yes, actually, there was, I thought to myself as I started the engine and pulled out into the road again, police station-bound. I knew how my mind worked and it was already working overtime. An 11-year-old boy, a stepmother, nowhere to go. I was drawn like a moth to a flame.