I’d known an Ellis who’d been in foster care, once. She must be about the same age as this one.
More significantly, I’d known her big brother.
I scanned straight to the box where people could add the details of their birth partner, my heart sinking – in either relief or disappointment, I wasn’t sure – at the unfamiliar name.
The truth was, I’d not simply known him. He’d been my first kiss. The love of my life.
Loving him had nearly destroyed our family.
Losing him had almost destroyed me.
3
THEN
Growing up in a family who fostered, you got used to waking up to strange children sitting at the breakfast table. And alongside my nice, geeky, middle-class friends who enjoyed swimming lessons, Girl Guides and youth group, I learned to love all different kinds of strange.
To keep things simple, our foster siblings were mostly girls. The few boys that we did welcome were always several years younger than me. My parents specialised in emergency or bridging placements. That was, children who needed somewhere to stay for anything from a few nights up to a year until the court made a decision about their long-term care.
Mum and Dad had been fostering for nearly twenty years, although they’d taken a year off when each of their daughters was born. To date, they’d seen thirty-nine children come and go, either alone or with a sibling. And now, on my sixteenth birthday, I’d mooched into the kitchen in my ratty old pyjama shorts and vest top to be confronted with the fortieth. Who also happened to go to my school. Oh, and did I mention that this was ahe?
‘Libby, this is Jonah,’ Mum said in her chirpy, let’s-act-like-this-is-all-totally-normal voice, placing a stack of pancakes in front of him.
‘Hi.’
I already knew that this was Jonah King. Every one of the eight hundred pupils at my school knew.
I had an uncomfortable flashback to the one and only time that we’d acknowledged each other’s existence.
I was waiting in Reception at the local primary school. Mum had nipped to the head’s office to discuss the girl we were fostering, and as usual she’d ended up taking forever. On the other end of the row of four chairs sat Jonah, head buried in a fantasy novel. We ignored each other until he turned a page and a clump of other pages fell out, drifting onto the floor in front of him.
‘You must really love that book,’ I said, handing him the few that had ended up closest to me.
He shrugged, face intent on reassembling the pages. ‘It’s my only one.’
‘Right.’ I waited until the book was back in order and he’d started reading again before I replied. I mean, offering advice to the notorious new boy was not on my to-do list for today, but I couldn’t bear to think of someone being limited to one book. ‘You could try the library.’
He didn’t take his eyes off the page. ‘You need a form signed and stuff.’
I didn’t question why his parent couldn’t sign a form for him. I’d met enough kids in similar situations.
‘Here.’ It was automatic, digging out my purse and finding my library card. ‘You can have mine.’
‘No. I couldn’t.’ He frowned, turning away slightly, but not before I’d seen the hunger glowing in his eyes. They were a dark amber. A wolf’s eyes. A sudden question burst into my head– what would it be like to have that hunger turned on me? Swallowing away that mortifying thought, I stretched over and poked him with the card.
‘It literally pains me to see a book falling apart like that. Please, take it for my sake.’
‘Thank you. I can give it back to you on Monday.’ He reluctantly took the card, holding it for a few seconds before slipping it into the pocket of his battered leather jacket.
‘Keep it. I can use my sister’s. She never goes to the library, so she won’t care.’
A couple of days later I saw him at the back of class reading the next book in the series. A few weeks after that I got an email from the library informing me thatThe Twinkletown Fairies Save Christmaswas a week overdue.
Now, on my birthday morning, Mum pulled me back into the present with a full-body scan before her eyes fixed on mine with a look that said, ‘That is not appropriate clothing, which you know full well.’
No lounging about in strappy nightwear in a foster fam, even if it was ridiculously warm for early March. I surreptitiously glanced at Jonah, his tall frame hunched over the table. No surprise to see him in his black leather jacket, the hood from a dark-grey sweatshirt covering chin-length, light-brown hair. It looked as though he’d slept in his clothes. I guessed he probably hadn’t slept at all.
The scowl I threw back at Mum said, ‘It’s mybirthday. One of the rare days you never say yes to someone new staying, meaning I don’t have to do a risk assessment on whether my favourite pyjamas areappropriate.’
