Kitabı oku: «Daddy’s Boy»

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Epilogue

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Casey Watson

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About the Publisher

Chapter 1

Mike groaned as he heaved our bulging suitcase from one of the carousels in baggage reclaim at our local airport. ‘Back to grim reality,’ he moaned. ‘Goodbye sunshine, hello grey British skies.’

‘Oh, stop being so melodramatic, love,’ I said, laughing, shaking my head at his hangdog expression. ‘It’s not even June yet. We still have the whole summer to look forward to! Just be grateful we’ve been able to have this little break.’

I took the laptop bag from him while he tried to guide the misbehaving case through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ area without looking shifty. Personally, I did feel grateful – enormously so – for our impromptu mini-break in Minorca, which had been a last-minute bargain, courtesy of my mum and dad, who’d just sold their caravan and treated us as a surprise.

‘It’s all right for you,’ Mike grumbled. ‘There’s Tyler off to another footie camp, and you’ll be doing fun stuff with the grandkids … And there I’ll be, as bloody per, nose to the grindstone at work, while you guys have all the excitement.’

I grinned as we emerged into arrivals. I knew he was only trying to wind me up. Though he was right, of course. Tyler was off to his football camp – his second one this year, in fact. He was becoming quite the little footballing superstar. Or, as he put it, the ‘next Gareth Bale’, whoever he was.

And, no, I didn’t have any ‘proper’ job to go back to, not in that sense, because my job was being a foster carer (and Mike’s second job as well, if we were going to split hairs), so there were times when I was between jobs, and this was one such.

I knew it wouldn’t be for long – it never was – but he was wrong about the ‘excitement’ part. Yes, it was true. I had time to indulge the grandkids. We had four now, all living close by (my daughter Riley’s three, plus son Kieron and his girlfriend’s brand new baby daughter, Dee Dee), so there was never a dull moment in that regard. But much as I loved being a nana, there was always a part of me that didn’t feel quite right when I wasn’t fostering. Yes, I could keep myself busy, and time with grandkids was always to be cherished – but I was still only 49 and when I didn’t have a foster kid in, I very quickly felt very old and very useless.

And ‘having a foster child’ no longer included Tyler. Yes, that was what he was, officially, because that’s how he had come to us, but it no longer felt like that – couldn’t feel less like that, in fact – because, for one thing, we were committed to care for him permanently now and, for another, it just didn’t. He felt like ours.

And, as Mike had pointed out, he’d be off on Monday morning anyway, in pursuit of footballing greatness. No, all things considered, I decided as we headed in search of our car, I rather hoped we’d get a call sometime soon.

Because it had, by now, been quite a while. Our last long-term foster child, Flip, had left us a couple of months ago, and apart from a brief and eventful placement involving an eight-year-old boy called Connor, it had all been a bit quiet on the western front. I knew that was partly because of the mini-break (it wouldn’t have been appropriate, or even workable, to book a holiday abroad with a new foster child just installed), but now we were back I had ants in my pants.

No, I thought, as we made the short journey home, much as I couldn’t wait to see my family, I was also crossing my fingers that a call would come from our link worker, John Fulshaw, pretty sharpish. I said as much to Mike.

‘Glutton for it, you are,’ he said. ‘You do realise, Casey, don’t you, that most women would love a nice long break from looking after kids?’

‘Oh, give over,’ I said. ‘You miss having a rowdy house just as much as I do.’

‘I’m just saying,’ Mike said. ‘Be ca–’

‘Yes, yes, I know,’ I interrupted. ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

Which made us both laugh, because those half-dozen words had been said by one or other of us so many times now, and, almost without exception, they’d proved to be the right ones, as well.

When you spend a fair few of your waking hours in the company of little people during the school holidays, it’s odds on that, when a phone goes, it’ll be one of them that answers it. And so it was that, come the Sunday morning – the beginning of the late spring half-term – Marley Mae, Riley and David’s youngest, aged two-going-on-seventeen, sashayed to my smartphone, and also managed to unlock it, before I’d even properly heard it ring.

There are few things more arresting than being at the wrong end of your forties and realising that your grand-daughter can work your technology better than you, despite being only just properly out of nappies. And what she couldn’t quite manage, her older brothers certainly could. Though, on this occasion, their help clearly wasn’t required.

‘Gangad! It’s me, your cheeky monkey!’ Marley Mae shouted gleefully into it. ‘We’re having yoghurt and crisps!’

I gently removed the phone from my grand-daughter’s iron grip. ‘Hey, love,’ I said. ‘How are you doing? Bearing up?’ Mike had not only to go into work, but had to do so a day early due to staff sickness. About which he wasn’t terrifically happy.