Free Crying for Help by Casey Watson Page A

email John,’ I decided. ‘Get it all down. Everything that’s happened. And I’ll copy it to her social worker, too. And log it. In fact, I think I’ll do that now.’ I kept a detailed daily record of events for the children we fostered. It was part of our training to make sure we recorded everything. It formed an important record that could be filed for future use. Shame some of the other branches of social services we dealt with were less conscientious about doing such things, I thought wryly.
    ‘Good plan,’ Mike agreed.
    ‘And let’s hope they move her,’ Kieron said. ‘Because she’s weird. I fully expected her head to start spinning! She sounded like something out of The Exorcist !’
    ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Kieron, it wasn’t that bad. The time to worry is when she starts spouting Latin and spewing green slime!’ It was inappropriate and unprofessional, but the words just came out of me and both Mike and I laughed. But it was a release of tension more than anything, because this really wasn’t funny. We were all of us, I think, a little spooked. I pulled myself together. ‘Love, she’s just a child . A child with a lot of emotional problems. And emotional problems can manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.’
    ‘I know that,’ he said. ‘But she scares me, even so. Dad, can you put a lock on my door?’
    ‘Don’t worry, son,’ Mike reassured him. ‘We’ll get everything sorted. As Mum said, she’s just a kid. Nothing to be scared of. Okay?’
    ‘Exactly,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s not get over-dramatic, eh?’
    But even so, I was troubled. I was almost 100 per cent certain that Sophia had no idea she was saying those words out loud. And if that was the case … well, surely someone at social services knew more than they were telling us. I knew the info on her illness mentioned this ‘brain fog’ symptom, but even so it just didn’t stack up. I went to bed that night, deep in thought, determined to get to the bottom of it. And it seemed I wasn’t the only one unable to put it out of their minds. After an hour of fitful tossing and turning, Mike nudged me.
    ‘You awake, love?’ he said.
    I grimaced. ‘What do you think?’
    I rolled over to find him staring at the ceiling. ‘You know, love,’ he said. ‘I think that kid has really got to Kieron. I know we all made light of it, but did you see him when we were watching TV earlier?’ He turned to face me. ‘He was chewing all the skin off his fingers.’
    I had noticed, even though I hadn’t said anything. And Mike was right. It was a sign. Kieron hated change and found stress and upheavals hard to deal with. The way he was, if someone so much as moved any of his carefully catalogued DVDs, he could get anxious and upset. We all knew that, of course, because it had been like that all his life, so as a family we just worked around it. Kieron had never been the sort of boy for whom you’d arrange a surprise party. He needed routine and order and no surprises. He’d managed so well to adjust to and become close to Justin, but Sophia was a very different prospect. And him chewing his fingers was a sure indication that he was even more stressed by her being with us than he was letting on.
    I wasn’t worried about the chewing itself – our doctor had told us it was quite common in people with Asperger’s – but I was definitely worried about the welfare of my son. Our decision to foster could only work long term if it didn’t adversely affect our own kids, after all.
    ‘I know,’ I said to Mike. ‘I did notice it. Let’s hope it’s something that will settle once she’s been to see her mum. Maybe it’s the thought of it; maybe it flips some mental switch … We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed, won’t we? But I’m definitely going to go into Sherlock Holmes mode in the morning. And if I find out they’re holding stuff back …’
    ‘You mean Monday,’ Mike said. ‘We’ve got the whole of the bloody weekend to