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I nodded. “The foster family I was with didn’t really want me there at Christmas. They hadn’t bought me anything and I was lucky they even let me sit down to lunch with them. I think the wife felt a little guilty, so gave me one of the dolls they’d bought for their own daughter.”
Maya gasped. “No way. That’s awful, Will. Did that happen a lot? You going to foster families that didn’t really want you?”
“One or two. To be fair to them, I was an emergency placement, seeing as I’d pissed my last foster dad off big style when I threw a brick through his car windscreen. He said he didn’t care that it was two days away from Christmas—I wasn’t welcome any longer.”
Maya’s eyes filled with emotion, and I took her hand in mine.
“I was my own worst enemy, Maya. Don’t feel bad for me. I threw the brick just because he asked me to tidy my room.”
“I just feel awful that you were brought up in the system.” She frowned. “How are you so together?”
I laughed, not sure that was true. “If I am, which is debatable, it’s down to Mrs Powell.”
“The lady who fostered you as a teenager?”
“Yeah. She was brilliant. She was an incredible grandma to Maddy, too.” I sighed heavily. “We both still miss her a lot.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Not much to tell, really.”
“There must be,” she argued, poking me in my side. “I’ve told you about my family, so you tell me about yours.”
I thought about Mrs P and her shiny blue eyes that twinkled when she smiled and went steely when she was telling me to stop being a dick. For a long time, I’d just seen her as another adult who told me what to do, but I’d been so wrong. Within six months she’d managed to change me from a moody, insolent brat into a… moody, well-mannered brat who did whatever I could to gain Mrs P’s approval. I did all that because she listened to me, she gave me a hug when I needed it, a bollocking when it was deserved, and she encouraged me at every opportunity.
“She was the mum I hadn’t had since I was a little kid,” I told Maya. “Never once was I made to feel unwanted by her. She knew that I wasn’t particularly academic, so helped me to think of jobs that I would be good at, like bar work. Well, actually she suggested retail or even care work, but I wasn’t sure that looking after other people was my thing.”
“How did you get into bar work then?”
“Started washing glasses in a pub, and then when I was eighteen they offered me a shift behind the bar, and I loved it. Loved that my feet were always wet and that my clothes stunk of beer.”
“And the women flirting with you?” she smirked.
I shrugged. “It helped. I never looked back really. Took one bar job after another, and with each one, took on more responsibility. Until finally I got my own place. I wouldn’t have done any of that without Mrs Powell.”
“You never called her, Mum?”
“It had never crossed my mind to, mainly because even though I’d mostly grown up in the system, my mum had tried her best and she’d loved me.” I shrugged. “I had a mum.”
Maya licked her lips, and while I knew it wasn’t meant to be a turn-on, it was, and I had to concentrate hard not to kiss her.
“What happened to your mum, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Heart attack.” As always the word came out full of indifference. It had been over twenty-five years since she’d died and with each passing year, she’d faded more and more into the past. Memories of her had become fainter. “She was only thirty-two but had a congenital heart condition.” Maya’s eyebrows rose. “Maddy and I are both fine, we’ve been tested.”
She exhaled and nodded. “That’s good.”
“Mrs Powell got me tested, and then I got Maddy tested when she was about four. And before you ask, I never knew who my dad was. He disappeared before I was born. All I have of him is a letter to her saying he wasn’t interested in being a dad. Mum did her best, worked a couple of jobs and provided for me as much as she could. I was clean and fed and happy. I was a little shit, but I was happy. It was just us seeing as her mum kicked her out at sixteen and then moved away without telling her where she was going. She was a good mum to me, though, from what I remember.”
“And then she died.”
Her words were said with sadness, and I hated it. I’d stopped feeling sad. Yes, I loved my mum, but I barely knew her, and she’d become a kind of a myth a long time ago.
“She did and then I eventually found Mrs P.” I grinned, still wondering how I’d been so lucky.
“No wonder you’re so dedicated to Maddy.”
“I just want her to have as normal a life as possible, even if it is with only one parent.”
