Читать книгу A Boy Without Hope: Part 2 of 3 - Casey Watson, Casey Watson - Страница 7

So. Casey nil. Miller – what must it be now? Around twelve? Because over the next dozen or so days, I had failed to make progress – either on getting him to sleep through the night, on any night, or in getting him out of the house.

Most frustratingly however, the rot was setting in, because, despite throwing everything at the problem, and pretty forcefully, I’d made little inroad in addressing the number-one issue: Miller’s obsession with staying in his room, playing computer games all the time. It would have been easy to regret having got him the PlayStation in the first place, but, in truth, without it, I don’t know how things would have panned out. Without it – and we rationed it regularly and frequently – he would simply get into bed and roll himself up in his duvet, and no form of inducement or threat of sanctions would winkle him out. We tried offering incentives, such as the purchase of a new game a few days hence, to reward good behaviour, but he seemed incapable of understanding the ‘jam tomorrow’ concept. Miller was only interested in the here and now. And if we tried sanctions – no getting the controller back until he spent an hour downstairs with us, say, watching TV together, getting to know each other – he would simply assert that he didn’t care if he never got it back; he was not ‘hanging out’ with us, and that was that.

In fact, the only time he seemed able to amuse himself differently was in the small hours of the night, when he’d while away his time playing with the assortment of distractions in his suitcase.

It was obvious that Miller had an addiction to playing computer games – and in that, he was far from alone. But I also had to factor in the control aspect of his make-up; with no one to control, because the household was asleep (well, in my case, more often than not, tactically feigning sleep), there was no incentive to exert his considerable will, because it would achieve nothing, manipulate no one.

It was also impossible, without him having a daily spell in formal education, to get him started on our strict behaviour modification programme, as so much of its effectiveness relied on the daily routines around education: getting up at a set time, getting washed, dressed and fed, then, in the evenings, doing any homework he’d been given without making a fuss, and going to bed at a time that had been agreed.

Without these simple daily rhythms – part and parcel of any childhood – we were in limbo, and had been for way too long a time now. It was only half-jokingly that I’d quipped to Mike one night that I half-wished he would bloody abscond.

Not that I’d been stuck in every day, all day. The day after Kieron’s visit, he’d been on a late shift, and had, to my immense gratitude, come over for the morning so I could have a couple of hours to myself. I’d like to have been able to report to Libby that this had proved a help to Miller, but, on my return it had been to hear that the nearest Kieron and Miller had got to ‘bonding’ was Miller’s grudging acceptance of Kieron sitting in his bedroom, and being ‘permitted’ to sit and watch him play his game.

‘Mum, he’s weird,’ had been Kieron’s considered view after spending a little time with him, echoing Tyler’s thoughts. ‘His face when he’s killing things is plain creepy.’

And it was an impression that hadn’t changed for Tyler either. He seemed happiest skirting around Miller wherever possible, and as he was knee-deep in revision for his coming exams, I wasn’t about to try and coax him to do more. Not least because I could feel the tension crackle between them whenever they were in the room together; I had this strong sense that Ty, though he’d never actually said so, would much rather his home hadn’t been invaded by Miller – our Ty, who, because of his own difficult background, had a huge amount of sympathy for difficult kids as his default. And I really didn’t want him to have to deal with any stress; not with his exams coming up.

Ditto Mike, despite him similarly being happy to do his bit. We were supposed to be a team, after all. But of all the kids I’d ever fostered – and this struck me as weird myself – Miller felt very much my responsibility. My personal cross to bear.

And my self-inflicted personal bête noire as well? It was becoming to seem so. ‘Love, just make him go out with you,’ Mike had said, more than once. But no tool in my toolbox seemed up to the job. Short of lassoing him and dragging him bodily to the car, kicking and screaming, I had no means of doing so, did I? Not with a child who knew exactly the way things worked; that physically dragging him anywhere could so easily be ‘spun’ into an official allegation of assault.

And that was the confounding crux of it all. Most kids, in my experience, at least have some fear of consequences. The bar might be set high with damaged, vulnerable children, but there would usually be some point, even if way beyond normal boundaries, when they’d pull back, frightened about what might happen to them if they tried to go further. Miller, however, displayed no fear at all. Indeed, it often felt as though he pushed us because he welcomed the consequences, because they fitted with his world view. Certainly, when he got them – almost exclusively to lose the right to play computer games – he would smile, almost knowingly, as if his hunch had been right: that adults couldn’t be trusted; that all they wanted was to make his life difficult.

Still, today was Saturday, which at least meant I had a little company.

Though right now, not of the pleasant kind, it seemed.

I was just easing into another day, sitting sipping my second coffee in the kitchen, when I heard a furious yelling coming from the top of the stairs. Not Miller, but Tyler, who was decidedly unhappy.

‘Mum! What the hell is going on with this internet?’

I pushed my chair back and pulled my dressing-gown cord a little tighter, then went out into the hall to see what was going on. Though things ‘going on’ when it came to anything internet-related were about as far from my area of expertise as it was possible to be. I was still at the same ‘bash the telly to see if the picture improves’ stage I’d been at since about 1973.

He was standing at the top of the stairs, fuming. ‘What’s up, love?’ I asked. ‘Has it gone off again?’

Tyler’s face was a picture of barely contained anger. ‘Yes it has. And if I’ve lost my assignment I’m going to go so mad,’ he said. ‘It’s the third time this morning and it’s driving me nuts. I was halfway through some coursework, which I haven’t even saved yet, and all the bits of research I had opened have gone!’

‘Well you can still save the work you’ve done, love,’ I said, trying to be helpful. ‘And Dad’ll be home from work before too long, won’t he? I’m sure he’ll know what to do. But if he doesn’t, we’ll get on to the internet company and find out what’s happening, okay?’

Tyler sighed theatrically, and slapped his hands against his sides. Then glared pointedly towards Miller’s closed bedroom door, before stomping off into his own room. I saw his point. It had gone off suddenly a couple of times one night in the week, and we’d already visited the idea that it might been something to do with Miller. But Mike had interrogated, investigated, and run all kinds of checks, and declared it to have been ‘just one of those things’, reassuring me that while Miller could control lots of things, our entire domestic internet wasn’t one of them. Not without us realising, anyway.

Even so, it now occurred to me that if the internet was off again, then Miller couldn’t be playing on the PlayStation, could he? So why wasn’t he kicking off as well? He had ants in his pants if he had to wait five minutes to eat a sandwich, if it meant losing some precious game time.

So what was he up to instead? I headed upstairs to find out.

I was surprised to see him sitting quietly on his bed, writing something on a large unlined notepad. It wasn’t one I recognised. Perhaps something from his case? I wondered if the little train I’d read about was somewhere in there too. Though now obviously wasn’t the time to ask him.

The TV screen was also blank. ‘First time I’ve see that thing off,’ I remarked mildly. ‘You not playing on your game this morning?’

Miller didn’t look up from his writing. He simply shrugged. ‘I was. I can’t play it right now, though. It’s off.’

Again, a completely uncharacteristic lack of concern.

‘Because of the internet going off again?’ I asked. ‘I’m going to try unplugging it and reconnecting it. See if that works. It often does.’

‘I wouldn’t bother,’ Miller said. ‘It’ll be back on again in ten minutes.’

It would be wrong to say alarm bells rang in my head. They didn’t need to.

‘And how exactly would you know that?’ I asked him, perching on the bed.

Silence. ‘Miller, answer me, please. How do you know that?’

The pen left his hand and whistled across the bedroom. ‘Oh my God,’ he said, as it clattered against the opposite wall and fell to the floor. ‘You moan when I’m on my game and now you’re moaning when I’m not! It’s fine. Everything is fine. We’ve just been hacked, that’s all.’ Hacked? ‘But it’s only for half an hour and then he’ll put us back on. So there’s no need to go off on one. It’s fine.’

‘Hacked?’ I spluttered. ‘What on earth do you mean, “We’ve been hacked”? Miller, what on earth have you done?’

‘God. There you go. Straight away blaming me. I told you. It wasn’t me. It was a hacker!’

There were so many levels on which this whole exchange was wrong – in fact, on every level – that I hardly knew where to begin. With the pen that had narrowly missed me? With the cheek and disrespect? Or with the fact that he’d just told me our home computer network had been hacked? Probably that one, for starters, though there was one important point. I didn’t really have the first clue what he was talking about. ‘Hacked’ was one of those terms that just pushed all the buttons. Like ‘scammer’, or ‘identity theft’, or ‘virus’.

‘So you just said,’ I went on. ‘But what I don’t understand is why a hacker would suddenly want to interrupt our internet service.’ I paused. ‘But something tells me you do, Miller.’

Miller threw the pad down as well now, and I could see what he’d been writing. Or, rather, couldn’t. It just looked like rows of weird hieroglyphics. Then he sighed and scratched his head, then rolled his eyes, as if despairing. Of the situation, or of my ability to understand anything he might say?

‘Look, I just chucked the wrong guys out of a game and stole their money. And because the moderator of the game knew my IP address, he hacked into our system and got us chucked off to pay me back. But he’s putting us back on again. It’s no biggie.’

I still didn’t have a proper grasp of what he was saying, but one thing I did know was that he didn’t have access to my laptop – anyone’s laptop for that matter – so how did he know that? ‘How the heck did this guy know our IP address?’ I demanded. ‘Even I don’t know that, Miller. How do you?’

‘Because I gave it to him!’ I turned to see Tyler standing in the doorway. ‘God, Miller, you little shit!’

He turned to me then. ‘Sorry, Mum, but he really is! You told me you needed it to reset the PlayStation!’ he said, jabbing a finger in Miller’s direction. ‘God, why didn’t I think of that? Listen, you’ve got to stop whatever it is you’re doing, get out of that game and change your player ID, and pronto. Because this won’t stop, Mum.’ He turned back to me. ‘Trust me, it won’t. Not unless he stops messing around with other players. And he knows it.’ Another jab of the finger.

I had even less idea what was going on now, and absolutely no idea what Tyler was talking about, but Miller clearly did. He looked suddenly nervous. Even slightly afraid. Tyler wasn’t a particularly big lad for sixteen, but a few years make a world of difference at that age. So, for all that he’d take us on over every tiny thing, sheer physicality still held sway over Miller, clearly. I put a hand on Tyler’s arm. Felt the anger in him. ‘So at least you know what’s going on round here, then. Good. So, Miller,’ I went on. ‘You need to sort this out, now. And if we have any more of it, I will disconnect the internet, full stop. No more online gaming, period. Are we clear?’

In answer, Miller picked up his control pad, flicked a switch, and his TV sputtered back into life again. ‘It’s all back on now anyway,’ he said, pointing to the PlayStation. ‘Drama over.’

‘No, mate, it’s not,’ Tyler said, ‘and I mean it. You need to stop hacking and just play like everyone else does. It’s not fair and it’s causing big problems for everyone. I mean it. You knock it off. You hear me? I’m sick of your nonsense!’

‘Fine!’ Miller huffed at him. ‘Whatever!’

***

‘You really need to get some schooling sorted out for him, Mum,’ Tyler said as I followed him back across the landing to his own room. ‘He’s a menace, he really is. And too clever by half. And he doesn’t know the half of what he’s dealing with, trust me. And why the hell is he still hanging around here all the time anyway? Why isn’t he in school? It’s not like he’s special needs or anything, is it? Or did he just get excluded from everywhere?’

‘Something like that,’ I told him.

‘But they shouldn’t put all this on us. It’s not fair.’

‘I know, love,’ I said. ‘And I’ll be on to Libby pronto.’ Much good that would do, I thought but didn’t say. ‘Look, you get back to your revision, eh? I’ll have Dad have some stern words with him later.’ I grinned. ‘No point me doing it when I don’t know what half of them mean, is it?’

His shoulders lowered slightly. ‘True dat,’ he said. ‘But Dad really needs to give him hell.’

‘And he will,’ I said. ‘Promise.’

So, crisis over. At least I hoped so.

Except perhaps not. Or, at least, another one brewing. ‘Tyler,’ I said, ‘did you see the stuff he was writing? You know, on that pad? What’s that when it’s at home?’

‘Oh, that’ll be code. Code from the dark web, most probably. He’s in some sort of hacker group from when he had his own laptop. I think he’s trying to get back in but he can’t till he gets it back from his previous foster family. Seriously, Mum, he’s up to all sorts. Or would be, I’ll bet, given half a chance.’

I still only understood about one word in six, but if Tyler thought Miller was up to ‘all sorts’ then he probably was. And though I didn’t know exactly what made that mad, bad or dangerous, I had heard of the dark web, and didn’t like the sound of it – and I definitely didn’t want it entering our house. Wasn’t the dark web what terrorists used to plan attacks, and paedophiles to organise their evil gangs?

I went downstairs and called Jenny, Miller’s previous foster carer, to find out about the laptop I hadn’t heard about.

‘Ah, yes,’ she said immediately. ‘And I’m loath to give it back. Though I suppose I must. I’ll drop it round to Libby for you, shall I?’

‘But why do you still have it? I’d have thought it would be welded to his side, day and night.’

‘Because we confiscated it,’ she told me. ‘When he smashed the screen on ours.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Why?’

‘Bit of a long story,’ Jenny said. ‘From back at the start, when he would actually leave the house with us. But the short version is that he’d been watching a movie on his own laptop and the power went. We were camping at the time and didn’t have access to anywhere to plug it in, so we allowed him to continue watching it on ours. We were outside the tents with some friends who had met up with us, at the time – Miller, of course, had stayed inside. And when I went to check on him, I saw that he was actually looking at bloody porn! Can you believe it? Anyway, when I tried to drag it away from him, he got angry and threw it across the tent, smashing it into a gas bottle.’

I was happy she’d only told me the short version as I don’t think I could have taken all the gory details just at that moment, but I did make a mental note to check the search history on my own and Tyler’s computers.

And to redouble my efforts to get a commitment to provide us with more support. With all the budget cuts, I knew I’d have a fight on my hands, but I was in the mood to fire off a few stern emails. And sterner than usual, given what I’d just found out. People needed reminding just how much I was out on a limb, and, given how Miller preferred to spend his time – and with whom – on the internet, how pressing was the need to get him back into education. And if they couldn’t offer any education in its normal setting, then I needed, badly needed, an alternative. Something that would get Miller out of the house for a couple of hours every day. Something to inspire him to get up and get dressed.

Something more concrete than Libby’s empty promises – certainly of more substance than her ‘Yes, ELAC have something sorted’ had turned out to be. Which, as far as I could tell, was nothing more than the promise of a possibility to get Miller into a ‘new project’ they’d bought into – whatever that meant – and which so far had amounted to nothing. Well, bar what seemed like the social service term of the moment – the oft-repeated ‘just give us a few days’.

I was just trying to put all that into ‘acceptable’ wording, when the door opened and the means of my salvation came in. Not in the form of an email, but my husband.

Mike didn’t mince words. One of the reasons I loved him. ‘Go on, Case,’ he said, ‘get your coat and your car keys, and have a few hours shopping, or whatever it is you do in town.’

I could have kissed him, and probably would have, but for a meek little Miller-shaped voice from behind me. ‘Would it be alright if I come to town with you, Casey?’

We both gaped. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or frustrated. On the one hand I felt like I had just been given the keys to my jail cell, but on the other, I couldn’t shake the feeling that taking Miller with me just might help me with the key to him. If he didn’t do a runner on me, that was.

Because that was obviously a clear and present danger. Miller’s long history of absconding might not have been an issue up to now (quite the opposite – he was stuck to home like glue) but perhaps he’d been operating a watch and wait policy. Who knew what went through his mind? I certainly didn’t. But if, for whatever reason, he’d decided to make today his bid for freedom, there would be little chance of me stopping him once we were out and about. And if he did decide to scarper, precious little I could do about it either. Just the grim prospect of calling up the cavalry and all the hassle that would ensue. Reporting it to the police, to the emergency duty team, becoming part of the search party, and all the resources and time and energy that would involve.

None of which I relished, but it was a chance I’d have to take. After all, I wasn’t, and couldn’t be, his jailor – either legally or emotionally. Plus I wanted to get to know him – something I felt I’d hardly done at all, despite us spending so much time cooped up together. It was as if we were just co-existing; separated by an invisible film. One that crackled with resistance every time I tried to push past it with a friendly greeting or an affectionate gesture.

‘Course you can, love,’ I trilled, to Mike’s obvious surprise. ‘That would be lovely. Go comb your hair and grab your hoodie. Five minutes, okay?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I need eight,’ he corrected, before turning around and running back upstairs.

Another crackle. And, to my shame, I was tempted to mutter ‘six’. As in ‘six of the best’. The traditional teacher’s threat. One that, back in my day, invariably worked. I held my tongue, though. Definitely not in today’s protocol.