Too Hurt to Stay: The True Story of a Troubled Boy’s Desperate Search for a Loving Home

This was a fair point. The older the child was, the more ingrained their behaviours tended to be, and since older kids invariably came with more emotional baggage too (particularly if they’d spent a long time in care) it was a more complex business all round. Spencer was different. He’d only just come into the care system, so John’s thinking would hopefully turn out to be sound. And yet, for all that, he had still been cast as an outsider – by everyone around him, by all accounts. He was so young but had already been disowned by his parents, had a history of petty offences and was a pupil at a special school. How had this young boy managed to get to this place, when the rest of his family were essentially so sound? It didn’t stack up. Quite where was this monstrous child? There must be a lot more going on here than I could see.

We spent another 15 minutes or so going through the rest of the paperwork, and throwing around a few ideas about how to tailor the programme to suit Spencer, then Glenn called him down to say his goodbyes. He looked no less anxious as he came down the stairs to say farewell, and it was clear that even in the short time they’d been acquainted they seemed to have quite a rapport. This was a bonus, as our paths would cross often during this process, and it helped enormously if Mike and I had a rapport with him too.

And there was plenty to like. In his late 20s, I estimated, Glenn seemed both positive and enthusiastic, two qualities that a career in social services could often extinguish all too quickly. You saw too much that you wished you hadn’t, had to make too many difficult decisions and worked in a sector that could often be thankless; damned if you took a child away, and damned if you didn’t. Spencer was fortunate, I thought, to have Glenn on side. And though professional in approach, he also looked approachable. With his jeans and his shades and his cool designer T-shirts, he was the sort of character that kids wouldn’t be intimidated by, which would help them open up to him, which mattered.

And it wasn’t just Glenn who had an eye for designer kit. When I went upstairs with Spencer to help him with his unpacking, the first things I saw were five pairs of expensive-looking trainers, all pristine and laid in a neat row against the wall.

‘Wow, I said. ‘Look at these. You certainly like your trainers, don’t you?’

Spencer nodded. ‘I love ’em. But I only wear this make, because this make’s the coolest.’ He looked at me anxiously, then. ‘Mrs Watson?’

‘It’s Casey, love. Casey and Mike, I told you.’

‘Erm, Casey?’ he asked anxiously. ‘You know you mustn’t put them in the washing machine don’t you? Or they’ll get ruined.’

I grinned. ‘Message received and understood. And don’t worry, love. My son Kieron – you’ll meet him in the next day or two – he’s pretty pernickety about his stuff, as well, so I’ve had lots of practice.’

He looked relieved at this. ‘Glenn said you had other kids. Does he live here?’

I shook my head as I began helping him unpack his clothes, all of which, unusually, were good quality. ‘Both my children are grown-up now,’ I explained, ‘though they live nearby. One of them – my daughter Riley, who you’ll meet too – even has two little ones of her own. Just a little younger …’ I caught the words before they had a chance to run away from me. This was definitely not the time to start mentioning his younger siblings. Time for that later. Right now, it would probably only upset him. ‘… than the last little girl we had to stay with us,’ I quickly improvised. ‘Talking of which,’ I added. ‘Her favourite thing in the whole wide world was pizza. So how about you? If you could have anything you wanted – anything in the world – for your tea tonight, what would it be?’

He seemed to consider for a moment, tapping his finger against his lip. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said eventually. ‘Anything is fine.’

I shook my head. ‘No it isn’t. Come on, think.’

‘I don’t mind, really.’

My heart went out to him. It was obviously proving difficult for him to express a preference, because he’d been taught that that wouldn’t be polite. He was such a mystery, this little boy, this apparent ‘monster’ in our midst, and I wondered quite when we’d be seeing him.

By now we’d almost finished putting away all his clothes, and I was struck again, seeing how carefully he folded them all, at how he seemed so unlike any child in the care system I’d come across; my end of the care system, anyway.

‘I’m afraid I insist,’ I said, mock-sternly. ‘It’s part of the rules. You tell me all the things you like, and then I cook them. No point giving you things to eat that you don’t like, is there? So. We already know about how much you love sprouts, don’t we? So as soon as they’re in the shops, I’ll get lots of them in …’

This seemed to do it. ‘Meatballs with spaghetti?’ he suggested, blinking at me nervously. ‘I really like them …’

‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘Because that’s Mike’s favourite too. And that’s with sprouts, then, is it?’

At which he finally cracked a smile.

The day continued in a similarly positive vein. Mike had gone into work for a couple of hours and I was happy enough to let Spencer play on his computer games for a while, and also rigged up the PlayStation for him. I knew people worried about kids spending too much time glued to screens these days, and I certainly accepted whatever evidence there was, but at the same time I didn’t hold with the often-touted line that this kind of media was always the enemy. In my experience, new kids always seemed to settle better when allowed access to favourite computer games. They needed to be age-appropriate, obviously, but I saw more good than harm in them having some ‘down time’ of this kind. It really did seem to help kids calm down, particularly if they bordered on the hyperactive. Many games also had positive educational benefits, helping kids focus and concentrate.

Whatever the intellectual debates about it, when Mike returned home from the warehouse Spencer seemed a lot more relaxed. He was also less timid now, and a pleasure to sit and chat to, and he turned out, as we sat around the table and ate the spaghetti and meatballs, to be very knowledgeable about football. Which was brilliant, because football loomed large in the Watson family. Both Mike and Kieron loved it and Kieron played it, too. The ritual of Mike going to watch him play every Saturday was one of those commitments that were pretty much set in stone.

The only snag was that Spencer turned out to be a fan of Aston Villa, whereas Mike was a dyed in-the-wool Leeds fan. This naturally resulted in a more heated discussion, in which a string of not very nice names were applied to a long list of people I had never heard of.

‘I think I’ll just clear the table and start the washing up,’ I said, as Mike pointed out to Spencer all the reasons why some player on one of their teams should not have done this, that or the other, and Spencer came back with an equally measured argument about why, in this case, Mike was wrong.

The net result was that both of them completely failed to hear me, so I gathered the plates and took them back into the kitchen. I didn’t mind. There was nothing Mike enjoyed more than a bit of banter about football around the tea table, something he’d really missed since Kieron had left home. And it sounded as if Spencer really knew his stuff, too.

I smiled as I began filling the sink and rolled my sleeves up. I knew how the adage went. ‘No smoke without fire.’ And I wasn’t stupid, either. Little Spencer, delightful as he had seemed to be so far, was living under my roof for a reason. But right now, much as I was braced for whatever was coming, I couldn’t feel anything but positive about him. Just how bad could this boy possibly be?

Chapter 4 (#uc607c84b-48cb-547b-851d-0adaddac6dea)

Wherever this apparent alter ego was hidden, Spencer clearly wasn’t prepared to reveal it to us yet. In fact as the days went by he seemed to be turning into one of the best little house guests we’d ever had. Also, on the face of it, one of the sharpest, which in hindsight should perhaps have made me think.

He was an intelligent boy, and straight away he seemed keen to get to grips with the programme, the idea of which we had sketched out to him the day after he’d arrived. He was particularly fascinated with the whole system of points and levels, and keen to study what he had to do to earn privileges.

‘Right, then,’ he said, one afternoon towards the end of the second week, while he was sitting in the kitchen with me, eating his lunch. ‘So all I need is a hundred points a day, and then I get to watch TV, go on the PlayStation for half an hour and play on my DS.’

‘Or,’ I said. ‘Not “and”. It’s “or”. But, yes, that’s right. And any points you get over the hundred can go towards extra things, like ordering a takeaway meal one night, or renting a movie. Things like that.’

He nodded, and continued to study the lists. There was one detailing how many points each given task was worth, and another detailing what they could ‘buy’. I watched how intently he was studying them, his eyes darting back and forth, when he suddenly clapped a hand down on the kitchen table. ‘Aha,’ he said, a grin spreading across his innocent, cherubic face. ‘So, hang on a minute … there’s nothing here about losing points, is there? Is that right, Casey? I don’t lose points for being naughty or anything? I just get to win points for the good stuff I do?’

He clearly wasn’t interested in having a philosophical discussion about carrots versus sticks and their various merits. He’d spotted something. His expression made that clear. I didn’t like the way this conversation seemed to be going. I thought about my answer before replying. ‘Well, I suppose so,’ I said, finally. ‘But then again, if you were doing bad things, you wouldn’t be earning any points, would you?’

‘I could!’ he said, pointing emphatically at the piece of paper. ‘If I clean my room, get ready for school – when I go back to school, anyway – then do two jobs around the house, and go to bed on time without moaning, that’s almost my hundred points, there.’ He grinned. ‘So then all I’d have to do is to be polite and respectful to some adults and that’s it! Even if I did do something bad, I would still have got my hundred points, wouldn’t I? I mean I’m not going to be bad. I’m just saying.’

I stared at Spencer, who was looking as sweet and innocent as the day is long, and then I looked at the points sheet and pondered. Here he was, an eight-year-old, trying to work out how he could turn things – this entirely new situation – to his advantage, and at first glance he appeared to be right. Surely there must be some mistake. I picked up the points sheet and went through it in my mind. Incredible to think that this had never come up before. Incredible to think I’d never even thought it. And then I saw it. ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘Slow down a bit, Spencer. You are right, in that you wouldn’t lose the points you’d earned that day. But if you had misbehaved on this example day you talk about, then you wouldn’t get the extra points, would you?’

‘Yeah, I would,’ he said. I shook my head. He studied the sheet too. ‘Why not?’

I pointed to the item I’d identified on the sheet. ‘Because if you did something naughty, who would decide it was naughty? An adult. Which means you wouldn’t get the showing respect points, would you? Because it isn’t respectful of an adult’s feelings if you misbehave, is it?’

Spencer took – in fact, almost snatched – the sheet from my hand, so determined was he to prove me wrong. He spent quite a while very obviously searching for a loophole, before slapping it down again and picking up his sandwich, thoroughly cross. ‘Humph,’ he said irritably, before he bit into it. ‘Well, it’s not very clear, that chart, is it?’

I could have ticked him off for his cheek. In fact, it almost made me laugh. Perhaps this was our first glimpse of the real Spencer.

But on the whole he was the picture of perfection, and when Riley and the kids came to visit on the Saturday he even melted my heart a little at the way he was with Levi, who at almost three apparently reminded him of his little brother.

‘Ooh,’ he said, once introduced, ‘you’re just like my little Harvey. Do you wanna come and play with my dinosaurs with me? My Harvey loves dinosaurs.’ He held out his hand and Levi wasted no time in taking it, seeming delighted at having someone new to play with.

Riley pulled out the toy box with the dinosaurs in it, to which Spencer had already added his own stash. Watching, I was taken by his willingness to share. And also his willingness to play with little Levi. Not every child, in my experience, was quite so friendly. It was so obvious he’d come from a home and not a ‘home’ – as in an institution-type home such as the one in which our first foster child had lived.

‘That’s really nice of you,’ I said, as they hauled the box into the middle of the living room. ‘Kind of you to play with Levi. Thanks, love.’

He smiled broadly. ‘It’s fine. I’ll come and let you know when I get bored.’

‘He seems lovely, Mum,’ Riley commented as we went into the kitchen with the baby, leaving the living-room door open so we could still keep an eye on things. There seemed nothing to fear here, but our fingers had been burned; the sort of kids I fostered didn’t always have the usual boundaries, as we’d found out more than once. ‘Really sweet kid,’ she continued, while I cooed over the baby. ‘Shall I sort out some drinks and biscuits for them?’

‘I’ll get the milk,’ I said, hoisting Jackson up onto my hip. ‘You should find some Jaffa Cakes in the treats cupboard.’

She rummaged in my wall cupboard. ‘Nope. There’s half a packet of Jammie Dodgers though. They’ll do.’

‘You sure?’ I asked, joining her. ‘I definitely bought some. You know, I think I’m going mad. That’s about the third time this week that I’ve gone to get something only to find it’s not there.’

Riley laughed. ‘That’s just your age!’

I laughed as well, as she took the snacks in to the children, but it wasn’t. It had happened the day before, too, when I’d brought home a new DVD. I’d looked everywhere – even double-checked the receipt, just to convince myself I’d actually bought it – but having put it down I’d not been able to find it anywhere. I’d asked Mike and I’d asked Spencer, but neither had seen it. And it had been the same with a pair of earrings I’d left by the bathroom basin. And now this. An unpalatable thought began taking shape in my mind.