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into the party without arguing?’

      Marley Mae, my daughter Riley’s youngest, opened her mouth in indignation. She was never one to shy away from giving the world the benefit of her opinion, but clearly thought better of it having caught my expression. So instead she sighed heavily, as if having been forced to concede a great military defeat.

      ‘Well?’ I asked.

      ‘Yes, Nan,’ she said finally, reaching around to wrap her cousin in a bear hug and mumbling the requisite ‘sorry’ as she did so.

      My son Kieron’s daughter Dee Dee, now three, was a year younger than her bossier cousin, and though they loved one another, they were both very competitive, so managed to find an argument in just about anything. Today’s anything was a pink balloon, which both had laid claim to, and, in the ensuing scuffle, it was a miracle it hadn’t already popped. Perhaps better that it had, to stop them squabbling over it. As it was, I had tethered it to the bannisters instead, telling them that if they couldn’t share nicely then neither of them could have it. ‘And I don’t want to hear any more about it,’ I told them sternly. ‘This is Jackson’s birthday party. Which means it’s his special day. So no more of this arguing. You both got that?’

      They both duly nodded, keen to rejoin the party. So I opened the door and ushered them back into the dining room, where a game of musical bumps had just started.

      ‘You should have left both of them on the naughty step, Mum,’ Riley said as I rejoined her in the kitchen area. ‘Marley Mae gets four minutes at home when she carries on like that. She needs to learn to share better.’

      ‘Oh, she will,’ I told my daughter. ‘School will sort her out in no time. It’s only because she has two older brothers who give into her all the time because they want a quiet life.’

      ‘Maybe,’ she said, though she sounded unconvinced. ‘I wish she could go full-time. She’s more than ready. And so am I! September seems a very long way away still.’

      ‘Problems?’ Kieron asked, as he passed me his empty coffee mug. ‘Well, they all look as if they’re having fun. I can’t believe Jackson is ten already. Can you?’

      Kieron has Asperger’s, which is a mild form of autism, and one of his special talents is asking questions, making statements and issuing instructions all at once. It’s been the same since he was little; as if he makes these mental lists of every passing thought, before opening his mouth.

      ‘No problems we can’t handle,’ I told him. ‘And yes, they are having fun. And, yes, time flies – I can’t believe Jackson is ten already either. And yes, I’ll make more coffee. Anything else?’ I added, laughing at his confused expression.

      ‘Oh, yes,’ he said, handing me my mobile, which I hadn’t spotted. ‘Here you go. John Fulshaw’s on the phone.’

      ‘Oh Kieron, honestly,’ I said, snatching it from him. ‘You could have started with that, couldn’t you? Sorry, John,’ I added, as I put the phone to my ear. ‘As you probably noticed, you’ve caught me mid-party. Hang on, let me find somewhere quieter to talk.’

      I wove a path through a dining room full of small people, and some unfamiliar adults, into the conservatory, en route to the back garden – the one place, because of a heavy April shower earlier, we had opted to make out of bounds. I’d happily agreed to Riley’s suggestion that we hold Jackson’s party at our house – it was a good bit bigger, so it made sense – but I’d forgotten just how many friends the average ten-year-old simply must invite to their parties. These days, a whole form’s worth, plus a couple of extras, seemed to be the norm. Throw in a couple of cousins, and friends from various clubs and activities, plus half their parents (did they not have anything better to do?), and there didn’t seem an inch of our downstairs that wasn’t occupied by a human, and the house seemed to be creaking under the strain of it all.

      Literally, I thought, as I clacked across the squeaking floorboards.

      ‘You sound a bit ruffled, Casey,’ John said, once I’d shut both the door and noise behind me. ‘I could always call back later if you’d rather?’

      ‘No, no,’ I said, perching myself on an upturned log at the bottom of the garden. ‘It’s just a birthday bash for one of the grandkids, and it’s a good excuse to escape for a few minutes, to be honest. I think I’m getting a little old for all this mayhem. But nothing that won’t be over within the next hour or so. Anyway, long time no speak. To what do I owe the pleasure? Have you got a child for us?’

      In reality, it had been no more than three weeks or so, but John, being our fostering link worker, was so much a part of the regular fabric of our lives that three weeks was actually quite a while. We’d been in limbo for the last three months or so – ‘recuperating’, for want of a better word, after our last long-term child had left us.

      Though Keeley hadn’t been a child, quite. She’d turned sixteen while she was with us. And had taken us down some intense, uncharted waters. Since then, Mike and I had quite enjoyed being on the back burner. We’d been doing respite work – where you step in short term to support other full-time foster carers – a few days here, a week there, nothing too challenging. And though we had experienced the odd trauma (one weekend visitor, for instance, was so fond of absconding that she arrived complete with a tracking bracelet on her ankle, and decided to abscond anyway), these were short bursts of fostering activity in a largely calm, family-orientated landscape, for a change. And with four grandchildren now, I was kept pretty busy as it was.

      I never thought I’d say it, but I wasn’t feeling the usual tug that always used to happen when I didn’t have a child in. And I also had Tyler, our permanent foster son, to think about. He had GCSEs coming up in a few weeks now, and we wanted to support him as well as we could.

      ‘Actually, no,’ John said, surprising me. ‘It’s news of a slightly different kind. News I wanted to share with you and Mike before it becomes public knowledge. So I was wondering if I could pop round for half an hour in the next day or so.’

      ‘What kind of news?’ I demanded.

      He chuckled. ‘I’d rather tell you face-to-face.’

      ‘Oh, don’t go all coy on me, John. What?’

      ‘When are you free?’

      ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake,’ I said. ‘But okay, you win. This evening?’ I looked at my watch. ‘Mike will be home within the hour – on pain of death, I might add – and we should have cleared everyone out soon after. Why don’t you come over around seven? Assuming you’re in the office, that is?’ John was famous for never leaving work much before that.

      ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll let you get back to the party.’

      His tone was bright and chirpy, so why did I fear bad news so much?

      ***

      ‘Because it will be?’ Mike said, as he shovelled the last of the paper plates into the recycling.

      He had narrowly avoided being hung, drawn and quartered by showing up a full twenty minutes before the designated end time and entertaining the kids with some high-octane rough and tumble, while Riley and I divvied up the birthday cake and wrapped sticky slices to shove into the thirty-five-odd party bags. Yes, they’d leave hitting the ceiling with over-excitement, but once they’d calmed down they would all sleep well tonight.

      Now it was just a case of sluicing down and tidying up. ‘He didn’t sound as if it was,’ I said. ‘But my antennae are twitching.’

      ‘And definitely not a new child?’ Mike asked.

      ‘He said not. Though there’s a thought. Perhaps an old one?’

      This did happen sometimes; you thought a child had moved on from you successfully, only to have things break down – perhaps at home, or with a ‘forever’ foster family – months or even years down the line. It hadn’t happened to us, but that wasn’t to say it couldn’t.

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