Casey Watson - The Boy No One Loved - A Heartbreaking True Story of Abuse, Abandonment and Betrayal

I’m mad about Christmas – always have been and always will be – and usually start my Christmas planning way ahead. By December, of course, it’s generally all falling into place – so since at least two weeks before Justin’s arrival in the family, I’d already started my usual Run Up To The Big Day.

We lived in a comfy four-bed semi, with a large back garden, in a small village on the outskirts of a big town. It was the sort of tight-knit community where everyone knew everyone else and it’s probably fair to say that the Watson household was something of a landmark at this time of year. I was never much of a one for gardening – bar a few pots of flowers I kept clustered around my back door – but come Christmas I was like a woman possessed. I loved this time of year and I didn’t care who knew it. My Christmas tree was already up and twinkling gaily – Riley had wittily remarked that it looked like a fairy had thrown up on it (she’s such a wag, my daughter) – and I had festooned fairy lights and decorations pretty much everywhere else. Outside, I’d continued to indulge my obsession by putting up an inflatable Santa, another tree with flashing lights, plus a neon reindeer complete with a present-laden sleigh. I’d also found some more fairy lights to drape over the front hedge, and the net result was that, entirely as usual, my house looked the tackiest on the street.

What Justin thought of all this, I didn’t know. It was naive of me, perhaps, given the wealth of my experience with troubled kids, but I think I just got carried away with making everything super special for him – to try and show him how family life could be. One of the things that was uppermost in my mind was that on Boxing Day Justin had an important visit to make. Mike was to drive him for a few hours to where his mother and young brothers now lived. It was to be an overnight visit – his first, we’d been told, since around three months before we’d met him; around the time she’d apparently got herself a new boyfriend.

We knew so little about it all, but what we did know was that such visits were sporadic, at best, and appeared to always coincide with new boyfriends. She tended to want to see him whenever she hooked up with a new one, only to drop him again as soon as he’d served his purpose; to show her as being sufficiently ‘motherly’. It was heartbreaking stuff, even in the telling. How could she do that to her own child? How could any mother treat her flesh and blood in that way? I knew the pressure of it must have been hanging over Justin. After my small outburst on the night of his arrival, I had got my head back together and was beginning to feel more positive about Justin again. Though schools were now closed for the holidays, I’d been able to get in touch with the local education authority and had secured a place for him in our local secondary, so he could start straight away in the new year. It was handy that I’d previously worked there, of course, as I already had a good relationship with the head and the support staff; something I had an inkling might come in very useful now we were fostering the kind of children that would probably need them. Also, because the papers showed that his educational level had fallen so far behind the norm, he’d been given an ELAC (Education for Looked After Children) worker, who was called Helen King, and who seemed really nice. She’d also allocated a school budget for an extra learning support worker for him so he could get the help he needed to catch up – something I could have done with back in my unit, for sure.

So it was all shaping up well, and though Justin’s food anxieties needed addressing in the short term (I’d now, at his request, put up a chart in the kitchen, detailing exactly what food we were having each day, and at what time) he seemed to be slowly settling in. Though he seemed to oscillate between being over-excited about Christmas one minute and negative and scowling about the whole thing the next, I felt overall that we were making progress. So much so that, at the end of the week, I felt confident enough to take him out on a Christmas shopping trip, with me and Riley.

‘How big is big?’ he asked me, as our train to the shopping mall sped through the snowy countryside. He’d been chatty and in good spirits and had been animated throughout the journey. He told us he’d never been to a big city-centre shopping mall before.

‘Big,’ I said. ‘Lots and lots of shops. Around fifty of them, most probably.’

This news seemed to enthral him. ‘And will they have a Christmas tree?’ he asked.

‘Definitely,’ I said, grinning. ‘Several of them. Really big ones, I expect, with loads of lights and baubles.’

He seemed pleased at this, too, even though I recalled that his last comment about our one had been that my ‘stupid fucking fairy lights’ gave him a migraine. Today, though, was definitely an ‘up’ day. So far, so good.

‘I want DVDs for Christmas,’ he went on, at Riley’s cheerful prompting about what Santa might be bringing him. ‘I’d like lots of DVDs to watch, and a new games console and lots of games. And some plastic toy soldiers that I can play with in the bath.’ Riley raised her eyebrows slightly, her meaning immediately obvious. Wasn’t he just a little old to be playing with toy soldiers in the bath?

I nodded anyway. He might have had to grow up way, way too fast in some respects, but in others, understandably, given his life experiences, he’d probably still be very immature. ‘And what else, besides soldiers?’ I asked him.

‘Toy guns,’ he said. ‘Toy guns and a Swiss army knife.’

From one end of the spectrum to the other. ‘I think you’re still a little bit too young for one of those,’ I told him gently. ‘Perhaps when you’re a little older …’

But the change in Justin as I said this was both immediate and dramatic. Thwarted, his mouth narrowed straight away into a thin angry line, his eyes darkened and his whole face was now set in a scowl. He refused to engage with either of us for the remainder of the journey. And there was absolutely nothing either of us could do about it.

Once we arrived, however, it seemed Justin was once again too excited to be angry with us any more, and looked up in wonder at the decorations, the shop fronts and the huge crowds of people. He seemed particularly ecstatic about the food court on the top floor, and the fact that there were so many different fast-food places you could choose to eat from. Paradoxically, however – and it felt I was learning all this far too slowly – he got really upset again when I suggested he might like to be the one who chose where we’d have lunch.

‘It’s not fair, Casey!’ he railed at me. He was unnervingly articulate and seemed palpably distressed again. ‘You know I love all these places! You shouldn’t have brought us here if you can’t make your mind up about it. I feel sick now, and it’s all your fault!’

I quickly chose one, and we diffused things, and lunch happened fairly peaceably but a similar thing happened when we started going round the shops. We were given a specific allowance for Justin by our fostering agency, which we could give to him as pocket money, and I’d brought along thirty pounds for him to buy presents for his mother and two little brothers.

Not wishing to smother him or seem prescriptive over what would be personal choices, I then sent him into a shop alone, while Riley and I waited outside. He was gone a long time, and when he did finally emerge, empty handed, I could see that the dark expression had overtaken him again.

‘It’s shit in there!’ he shouted, as he stormed across the concourse to where we were sitting. ‘There’s too much in there. I don’t know what to buy!’ He then turned to Riley, and I could see he was close to tears now. ‘Please,’ he said to her, ‘can you choose for me?’