Casey Watson - Skin Deep

No, Kieron just needed to know there was a safety net, that was all. ‘So, like I said,’ I repeated, ‘if Lauren can’t sort it, get your phone out and call me. And, I tell you what. How about I call you from time to time in any case. You know, just to see how you’re doing?’

‘Would you, Mum?’ he asked, and I knew right away that this was what he needed. Better for me to keep in touch with him than for him to de-stress himself by reaching for his mobile to call me every five minutes. Just knowing I’d be popping up on his screen at every stage would probably be enough to keep him on top of his anxiety, but without the added anxiety of feeling Lauren would think he was being silly, even though I knew she wouldn’t. Oh, it was a game, it really was, fathoming it all out.

‘Course I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll be like the BT woman, ringing up with alarm calls. Except they’ll be “un-alarm” calls, because there won’t be any alarms, I’m sure of it, as Lauren will have everything under control. And if anything unexpected does happen, you can call me, like I say. Except nothing will, I promise.’

He looked 100 per cent happier. ‘Thanks, Mum. Just till we’re there and settled and that, anyway.’

‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘You’re just anxious about the travelling, love, which, trust me, is perfectly normal.’

And my ‘un-alarm’ calls had clearly done the trick. We’d spoken four times on the Saturday, three on the Sunday, and now, when I told him I’d got to go as John was due at any moment, he’d hung up before I’d barely taken the phone from my ear, leaving me secure in the knowledge that they were having a good time, and free to concentrate on my young visitor.

Who seemed to be arriving even as I put my mobile back on its charger. With all the windows open, in order to counteract the sweltering heat, I could hear a car pulling up outside the house even before I saw it. I felt the usual stirring of intrigue. It wasn’t quite excitement; that was the wrong word to use in such a circumstance – this was a child who’d been taken into care as an emergency, after all. But there was still a certain frisson; I’d opened several front doors by now, to several different children, and perhaps because ours was a kind of fostering that often took place at short notice I really had to be unshockable when I pulled it back to greet whoever was standing nervously on our front doorstep.

In this case, however, it was only John. And he didn’t look nervous in the least. Just very hot.

‘Oh,’ I said, looking beyond him towards the car. ‘Are you on your own, then?’

‘Only for a little bit,’ he said. ‘They’ve had to go back. For a forgotten Barbie doll. Shouldn’t be long.’

I ushered him inside. ‘Come on in, then. Do you want a cold glass of something? Or an ice pop?’ I said, grinning. ‘We’re very well stocked with those currently, as you can imagine.’

‘Just a large glass of water,’ he said, loosening his tie, and following me into the kitchen. ‘I’m parched. Like a flipping furnace, my car is, in weather like this.’ He grinned ruefully as he placed a manila folder on my kitchen table. ‘Actually – hmm – under the circumstances, perhaps I’d better rephrase that.’

It took me half a second to work out what he was on about. Of course. The fire . ‘Sorry,’ I said, placing a pint glass of water down beside the files. ‘Bit slow on the uptake there, wasn’t I? Sit down, I’ll’ – I stopped and went over to the window, which was being liberally sprayed with a blast from one of the water guns. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Tyler! Will you STOP that!’ I called out of the window. ‘Sorry, John. Think the heat’s getting to the boys, too. They’re both completely manic.’

John chuckled. ‘Enjoying the holidays, then? Sounds like young Ty is, anyway. Actually I could use that kind of dousing right now.’

‘Be my guest,’ I said, waving an arm towards the door out to the conservatory and garden, before pulling out a chair to sit on myself. ‘Though not till you’ve given me some detail on our new arrival. What’s the lowdown? How’s the mum? Badly burnt?’

John shook his head. ‘Apparently not. She’s still in hospital, but it’s mostly smoke inhalation they’re treating her for. A lucky escape.’

‘And the little girl’s okay?’

‘Yes, absolutely fine. Completely unharmed, which is something of a miracle, by all accounts. The blaze all but gutted the entire house, and the mother was lucky to get out alive. Philippa – Flip – was found quite a bit later, by all accounts, hiding in a wardrobe upstairs. Rescued by the lady next door, it seems, while the fire crew were attending to the mother. I just met her, as it happens – she’s become something of a local hero.’

‘I’m not surprised. How did it start? Do they know?’

‘I’m not sure they know for definite, but the assumption is that the mother fell asleep with a cigarette in her hand. Alcoholic,’ he added, opening his files.

I smiled. John had dropped the word into the conversation as if it was something bland and innocuous, like her hair colour or job description or star sign. As he would, because these were the conversations we tended to have. Ah, I thought. So we were getting to the nub of it now. There had to be something , after all. A child could and often would go into care as the result of a major house fire. If their home was gutted, the parent or parents hospitalised, and with no family or friends to take them, a child would invariably end up in temporary foster care. I imagined the little girl on her way to us was coming from temporary foster care herself; an emergency placement, while social services sorted out what needed to be done in the longer term, be it to keep the child there till the responsible adult was in a position to have them back again or, if they’d been orphaned, to find them adoptive parents.

But in this case they were moving her on to us, which meant it was slightly more complex than that. Mike and I, however, weren’t those regular kinds of foster parents. We were trained to foster children who were tending towards being ‘unfosterable’; our specialist programme was designed to modify the behaviour of the most challenging children in the care system, in order that they could be socialised sufficiently to have a hope of going into mainstream foster care and/or being put up for adoption.

Yes, from time to time we did respite care, to help the fostering agency out, just as Riley and David were doing at the moment, but, generally speaking, if a child needed to come to us there was usually an extra problem, and I already knew, from John’s initial call, that there was a reason why he wanted us to have Flip. And this was apparently it.

Well, half of it. The mother being an alcoholic wasn’t the whole story, I was sure. No, there would have to be some sort of challenge to address with the little girl as well.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘And?’

‘And she’s a long-standing alcoholic. Well known to social services. As is the daughter, because she has foetal alcohol syndrome. Something you’ve probably –’

At which point he stopped, because there was a rap on the front door.

If I’d finished his sentence correctly, John was right. I had heard of foetal alcohol syndrome (commonly known as FAS), because we’d touched on it in training. ‘Touched’ being the operative word; we’d touched on lots of things in training, but with so many ways in which a child could be damaged by the things life had thrown at them, if we’d done more than touch on most of them we’d still be in training all these years later. So, as I walked to the front door, it was with the usual thing in mind – that what I didn’t know I would now simply learn, on the job, so to speak.