LITMIR.BIZ

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Dedication

      This book is dedicated to the army of passionate foster carers out there, each doing their bit to ensure that our children are kept as safe as possible in such a changing and often scary world. As technology is reinvented and becomes ever more complicated for those of us who were not brought up amid such advances, we can only try to keep up, in the hope that we continue to learn alongside our young people.

Acknowledgements

      I remain endlessly grateful to my team at HarperCollins for their continuing support, and I’m especially excited to see the return of my editor, the very lovely Vicky Eribo, and look forward to sharing my new stories with her. As always, nothing would be possible without my wonderful agent, Andrew Lownie, the very best agent in the world in my opinion, and my grateful thanks also to the lovely Lynne, my friend and mentor forever.

Chapter 1

      Aqua aerobics in February. In February. Had I completely lost my marbles? I couldn’t remember which of my so-called friends had suggested it, but by now I was sorely regretting having agreed to it. Not only was it absolutely Baltic outside, but I had just suffered the most embarrassing incident ever, and as we huddled in our respective changing cubicles in the leisure centre (which were only marginally less Baltic) the same so-called friends – not to mention my sister Donna – were still teasing me about it relentlessly.

      ‘Oh, Casey,’ Donna said, laughing, ‘such a priceless Barbara Windsor moment!’

      ‘I must, I must, improve my bust!’ my friend Kate added, gleefully.

      And all I could do was take the teasing, and grin and bear it. Or should that have been ‘bare’ it? Definitely. It was such a basic error, after all.

Having not gone swimming in any form for a good couple of years now, I no longer had a suitable swimsuit, and given that this wasn’t the time of year for ‘summer holiday essentials’, the stores didn’t have a great deal of choice. Luckily I had spotted a sale rail and found a front-fastening, gold (of all colours) bikini. And were that not enough to mark me out as a rookie, during a rather robust arms-out-to-the side-and-do-a-windmill thrust, my all-singing, all-dancing, shimmering gold bikini had unclasped with a ping, giving me no choice but to do a duck dive, and leaving me scrabbling around under the water, trying to regain both the shreds of my bikini top and my dignity. But not before the whole class, including the instructor, had witnessed it. I was going to have to seriously rethink how I approached this whole ‘me time’ malarkey.

      ‘Okay, okay,’ I called out from my own changing booth. ‘I’m so happy I’ve brightened up your morning. And I’m so happy that mobile phones aren’t allowed in the frigging pool, either, because I can only imagine the pleasure you’d have all taken in capturing it for all time.’

      Amid the ensuing laughter, as if I’d summoned it, my own phone started to ring. Delving into my changing bag – one that would put Mary Poppins to shame, obviously – I found it and saw it was a call from Christine Bolton, my still relatively new fostering link worker.

      Had she called to tease me too? If so, news travelled fast. Quickly drying one side of my face, I put the phone to my ear, first explaining where I was, so she’d understand all the cackles, bumps and bangs.

‘I’m surprised to hear from you again so quickly,’ I added, as I parked my damp bottom on a towel slung on the wooden-slatted bench. I’d only spoken to her the day before and I knew there was nothing on the horizon. Though there had been – up until a few days ago, we’d been earmarked for a particularly difficult teenager badly in need of a calm, stable home. But as often happens in fostering, there was a game-changer. Just a day before all concerned were due in court, a grandparent had kindly stepped forward to offer to take the child in and so the case had been dropped. And to the great relief of all concerned. So we were expecting a lull now – hence all the ‘me-time’. Till another long-term placement came up we were only really doing respite, and that mostly for our most recent child, Miller, who was now in a residential school and with a new primary carer, Mavis.

      ‘I know,’ Christine replied, ‘and I’m so sorry to bother you in the middle of your swimming, but that mini-break you said you and Mike were hoping to jet off on – have you booked anything yet?’

      I immediately wished we had, because I had a hunch I knew what was coming. A lull in the world of fostering was never guaranteed to be anything more than twenty-four hours, and more often than not it wasn’t. I suspected this was the situation here – that an urgent case had presented itself. I wasn’t wrong.

      ‘No, not as yet,’ I said. ‘Shouldn’t I?’

      ‘Possibly not. At least, if you’re up for taking a child on. D’you know Kelly and Steve Blackwell? Live out in the sticks and have two small children?’

‘Indeed I do,’ I said. ‘And pretty well. I was Kelly’s mentor for a year.’

      Mentoring had always been the unofficial practice in fostering, but over the last couple of years it had become an even more important part of the process. One in which longer-term, more experienced carers were expected to take on the role of mentor to new carers just coming into the field. In my case, this meant Kelly, who I’d met up with fairly regularly, to discuss any problems she might be having and exchange ideas on the best strategies to deal with them. We’d also swapped numbers and email addresses so that we could be on hand in an emergency. It was yet another item on our ever-expanding job descriptions, but I didn’t mind. It built relationships, and up to now it had worked well.

      ‘Ah yes, of course you were,’ Christine went on. ‘I remember seeing it on your file, now I come to think about it. Even better then. Because it’ll give you some context. The problem is the young lad they have in at the moment. The top and bottom of it is that they can no longer hold on to him, and we were wondering if you might be able to help out. Either for the short term until we find another long-term carer, obviously, or longer term, if that’s something you’d want to think about.’

      But I was thinking more about calm, capable Kelly. Both she and her husband seemed pretty good carers to me. ‘Kelly can’t take care of him?’ I asked, surprised. She wasn’t usually fazed by much. ‘Why? And how old is he? What’s his story?’

Christine laughed. ‘You remember telling me about how your son can ask twenty questions in the same sentence? Well, now I know where he gets it from, don’t

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