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

By the time I’d got to the police station, parked and made myself known to the desk sergeant, my mood had lifted considerably. Yes, Dad was still under the knife and it was major surgery, but he was also fit as a flea and it was a straightforward operation. And I trusted what we’d been told – that he’d be fine.

I plonked myself down on one of the two scuffed chairs in the reception area and pulled out my phone to text Riley and let her know I’d been held up. And by what? I wondered. What sort of kid was John going to introduce me to? A challenging one, definitely, because John had already spelled that out. A kid who’d be difficult to handle. As, of course, he would be, since that was the sort of child Mike and I had been trained to foster. Oh, we’d had the odd sweet, biddable child here and there – and one or two who, notably, had been absolute angels – but that wasn’t our real remit. We were specialist foster carers, and our job was to take on kids who’d run out of their nine lives – certainly those who were deemed too difficult for there to be much hope of a long-term foster home as things stood, usually because of the emotional damage they had suffered in their short lives and the nightmare behaviours they displayed as a consequence. Our job was therefore to put them on an intense behaviour management programme, so they could face up to their demons, learn to control their emotions better and, hopefully, build self-esteem. It was through this, ultimately, that they would become more ‘fosterable’ and, in the long term, better able to cope with life.

We’d been doing it for a few years now – ‘fostering the unfosterable’ as our fostering agency’s strapline had it – and though we’d seen a lot in that time, much of it saddening and deeply shocking, I was always prepared to be surprised anew. So, what sort of child would this boy be, I wondered?

A very angry one, it turned out. ‘Brace yourself,’ John warned, once he’d come out to find me and take me through to the interview room where they were still keeping him. ‘To paraphrase that advert, he’s a bit of an animal.’

He also fleshed out a little of the background for me before we went in. Tyler had apparently brandished the knife – a regular carving one – during a heated argument with his stepmother and proceeded to threaten to kill her. She’d tried to get it from him, apparently telling him she’d batter him with it just as soon as she had disarmed him, which made him thrash about all the more and, according to him anyway, that was how he accidentally stabbed her in the arm.

‘Though her story is different, of course,’ John said. ‘According to her, he most definitely didn’t do it accidentally, and she’s definitely going to be pressing charges.’

‘And is she badly hurt?’ I asked.

‘No,’ John said. ‘Thank goodness. Just a flesh wound, which the paramedics cleaned up before taking her to hospital. Just a couple of butterfly stitches in it now, or so I’m told.’

‘So she went off to hospital and he was brought here by the police?’

John nodded. ‘And she’s saying that’s it, basically. She won’t have him in the house again. No way, no how.’

‘Is there a dad?’

‘Yes there is, and he’s apparently of the same mind. There’s also a half-brother. Bit younger. The stepmother’s boy.’

So there was a situation right there, I thought. We exchanged a look. Obviously John had had the same one.

Deciding to take on a new child should be a carefully thought out business. As a foster carer, you are opening not just yourself but your family and your home up to a stranger. A diminutive stranger, obviously – not a serial killer, or anything – but still a stranger about whom you start off knowing almost nothing, and what little you do know is often subjective. In this case, was the stabbing accidental or not? Without a witness, who were we supposed to believe?

So the normal course of events would usually be a multi-stage affair: an initial meeting, and, if that went okay, a formal pre-placement meeting, which would be attended by the potential foster parents, the link worker, the child in question’s social worker and, of course, the child themselves. Only then, assuming all parties felt comfortable with the arrangements, would the child move in and the relationship become official.

In practice, in my case, it rarely worked that way. Yes, in most cases, the steps happened, but rarely in the right order, and the truth was that, though I didn’t generally say so, I usually made up my mind about a child within minutes, not to say seconds, of making their acquaintance. And, so far, even when every warning bell had been clanging in my ears, I’d come up with the same decision. Yes.

Tyler was a beautiful boy. Inky hair flopping over deep brown and densely lashed eyes, clear olive skin, lean, sinewy build. Romany blood, I wondered? Greek? Perhaps Italian? Whatever his bloodline, he would be a heartbreaker when he was older, I decided. Might even be breaking hearts already. He was wearing a crumpled black T-shirt, low-slung combat trousers (ripped) and a pair of no doubt fashionable but very elderly trainers, all of which should have made him look like any other scruff-bag 11-year-old, but seemed to hang on his wiry frame almost stylishly.

Though there was nothing remotely stylish or, indeed, romantic about what was coming out of his mouth. ‘Get your fucking hands off me!’ he was railing, as John and I entered the interview room. ‘I don’t wanna fucking sit down, okay?!’

‘Sit down!’ the policeman closest to him barked, pressing him bodily back into the wooden chair on which he’d previously been sitting for his interview. He was one of three in the room, two of whom were obviously policemen – though only one was in uniform – with the third being the social worker, whose face I vaguely recognised, probably from a training session or social service gathering of some sort. He was middle-aged, slightly sweaty and looking harried.

‘Ah, John,’ said the nearer officer, who identified himself as PC Matlock and ushered us into the room. He closed the door firmly behind him. ‘And you’ll be Mrs Watson?’

I nodded. ‘Casey,’ I said, shaking the hand he extended.

I was about to add ‘Pleased to meet you,’ but the boy at the epicentre of this small earthquake beat me to it. ‘An’ who the fuck is she?’ he yelled, springing up from the chair again, causing it to crash back onto the floor.

‘Show some respect, lad!’ the same policeman snapped, as Tyler glared at me and John. ‘And pick that bloody chair up, as well!’ But this only seemed to inflame their young charge even further; instead of picking it up he decided to use it as a football, kicking it hard enough to send it skittering across the floor.

The social worker flinched. ‘Tyler, stop it!’ he entreated. ‘Behave yourself! You are just making things worse for yourself, now, aren’t you?’

To which accurate observation Tyler duly responded – by kicking the chair a second time. And then, as if pleased with the effect he was having, he drew his leg back and kicked it a third time for good measure.

The as yet unnamed policeman – this was clearly no time for introductions, much less an exchange of pleasantries – snatched the chair up. Then in one reckless action, narrowly missing the social worker, he swung it round and righted it back beside the interview table.

‘That is enough!’ he bellowed, grabbing the boy’s arm and yanking him towards him, but for an 11-year-old Tyler seemed blessed with an impressive amount of strength, and had soon twisted out of his grasp. He was also still kicking out – though aiming for shins now, rather than chair legs – and with a quick ‘Excuse me’ PC Matlock went round both me and the table, in order to help his colleague restrain their captive raging bull sufficiently that he could be guided back into place.

‘Fuck you!’ Tyler yelled to the first one, as he was pressed back yet again onto the chair. ‘And fuck you an’ all,’ he added to the other policeman. Then, as even John stepped in to try and help the social worker contain him, he used a string of words I’d not heard in a child that age in a long time, finishing with a spit, which again only narrowly missed the social worker, and a heartfelt ‘And fuck you, Mr Burns!’

My response to all this was, to be fair, a bit eccentric. Yes, I was well aware that it was a very serious matter, but there was something so ‘Keystone Cops’ about it all, too – what with the two police officers darting back and forth trying to chase him round the table, while the social worker flapped his hands so ineffectually – that, without consciously realising it, much less wanting to do it, I found myself laughing out loud.

If I was surprised by what had come out of my mouth (where on earth had that come from?) the effect on Tyler was little short of electrifying. I didn’t know what had made me suddenly feel the urge to giggle – perhaps the release of all that stress with Dad’s op? I didn’t know – but it certainly seemed to do the trick.

Because so transfixed was Tyler by this deranged woman they’d brought in to meet him that he stopped thrashing around and let them put him back on his chair. ‘Who the fuck is she?’ he said again.

Robert De Niro, I thought. Yes, he was like a very young Robert De Niro. That was why he’d put me in mind of a raging bull. Though right now this child put me in mind of another character too. A fictional one. I just couldn’t seem to help it.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, trying not to grin too much, and make him cross again. ‘I’m Casey, by the way. But you know, you just reminded me so much of Bart Simpson for a minute there. You know, when you said “Fuck you, Mr Burns!” Sorry,’ I said again. ‘It just made me laugh.’

I glanced at the two policemen then, who, along with the hapless social worker, were looking at me with expressions of incredulity. ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled a third time, ‘I don’t know why I did that.’

Tyler by this time was staring up at me intently. ‘Yeah, that’s because he’s a knobhead,’ he observed, matter of factly.

‘So!’ said John. ‘Where shall we start?’

Chapter 2 (#u6bc4ec3b-87d5-5412-8c53-613b769037e9)

In the end we started, as one usually does (and we hadn’t been able to as yet), with a round of introductions. I learned that the colleague of PC Matlock’s was a rather stressed-looking PC Harper, and that the social worker with the unfortunate name of Mr Burns was actually a duty social worker, called in to manage the emergency as best he could because Tyler’s regular social worker had gone on maternity leave. And, finally, they learned who I was and what I was there for, which was not really news to the adults in the room, obviously, but caused some consternation in Tyler. While the rest of us arranged chairs in a crude semi-circle around the table, he donned the parka-style jacket that had been attached to a wall hook and pulled the hood forwards to try and hide his face. He also pushed his chair back so he wasn’t part of the group. But he was watching me intently, even so.

‘So, moving on. The situation with Jenny,’ John said, referring to his tatty notepad, ‘is that she’s been involved with the family for just over a year now.’ He turned to me. ‘And I’ll let you have a copy of her notes in due course, Casey,’ he added, ‘but in the meantime Will Fisher is going to take over the case.’

I nodded. Another social worker whose name was familiar, though I wasn’t actually sure I’d ever met him. ‘Okay,’ I said, looking at Tyler and smiling. But as soon as we made eye contact, he put his head down.

‘So it’s really just a matter of finding a home for young master Broughton here,’ PC Matlock added, again, mostly to me. ‘As things stand at the moment, the parents can’t take him back.’

I noticed his diplomatic use of the word ‘can’t’, rather than ‘won’t’, which, from what John had already told me, was obviously the truth of it.

‘She’s not my fucking parent!’ Tyler yelled from his seat in the back row. ‘Never was and never will be! She’s a fucking witch who’s always hated me!’

Mr Burns swivelled in his seat. ‘All right, son. Calm down while we talk, please,’ he said.

Oops, I immediately thought, given Tyler’s previous comment. Don’t think I would have said that. And I was right.

‘An’ I’m not your fucking son, neither, dick brain!’ he snapped.

And off we went again. Ding, ding. Round two. Fortunately, by this time Tyler seemed to have run out of energy for physically railing against his captors, but over the next 20 minutes or so, while we continued to talk details, he peppered every contentious comment with his pithy take on things. So though I learned little more about the background (understandably, because there was only so much that could be discussed in front of him) one thing I did learn – and mostly via observation – was that this was a very angry, intensely troubled boy.

Mostly we were waiting, though – for a phone call to come through confirming that they had indeed found respite care for the next few days. And a knock on the door finally confirmed that perhaps it had.

‘All sorted,’ said the receptionist who’d been on the desk when I’d arrived. ‘Couple called Smith. Very nice. Said they’re happy to have Tyler – though only for a couple of days,’ she added, frowning slightly, ‘because they’re off on their summer holiday next week. I told them to come straight down. That okay?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ John said, nodding. ‘Perfect. Thanks very much. Good, so at least we have that bit sorted out.’ He turned to me, then. ‘So, Casey,’ he added, looking at me with a familiar ‘Well?’ sort of expression, ‘any chance I can put you on the spot?’