A Last Kiss for Mummy by Casey Watson Read Free Book Online Page A

had to be supervised and managed, and our home address guarded as if it were a state secret. The risk to us, from some of the families whose children we took in, was very real and could not be underestimated. Though this was different. Well, as far as we knew, anyway. Emma’s mum had always put her in care voluntarily. And she was only with us now because of the baby. This wasn’t one of our ‘last chance saloon’ troubled kids, where violence and criminality were family norms.
    ‘Leave it with me, love,’ I said to Mike. ‘I’ll check with Maggie tomorrow morning. I know we wouldn’t normally allow it, but perhaps it’s not the issue it normally is in this case. Plus she might feel more secure having her phone close to her.’
    Mike wasn’t convinced, though. ‘Or to conduct a whole life that we’re not privy to, more likely. You know what teenagers are like, love – always good at giving you the edited highlights of what they’re up to.’
    Yes I did, and I’d known a fair few of them too. But that had been in my last job – not when it came to the ones we fostered. And that was precisely because mobile phone use was controlled. I still thought he was being just a little over-cautious, and we also mustn’t forget that Emma was a young mum – she had adult responsibilities now so we should at least grant her a few adult benefits. But I’d call Maggie anyway, just to put his mind at rest. Even if I knew he was worrying about nothing.
    But it turned out that Mike was perhaps a little more perceptive than I was. It was in the small hours, around two, when I woke up that night. Woke up with a start, moreover, confused by what I was hearing. Was that a baby crying? Disorientated by the sound, I thought I was imagining it for a moment, and then my brain caught up – of course it was. We had a baby in the house now, didn’t we?
    I didn’t stir, however, because my brain registered another thing as well – that the cry had come from downstairs, which meant that Emma had taken him down there, presumably to warm up one of the bottles she’d made up for him before going to bed.
    But something was wrong. The crying wasn’t stopping. I lay in bed listening for what seemed like several minutes, at first smiling wryly at the memory of those interminable night feeds – both mine and Riley’s – but gradually becoming more and more agitated. How long did it take to warm a bottle? Not this long, surely. I glanced at the display on the alarm to find that it was approaching two-thirty. What on earth was she doing down there?
    When the baby’s cries were so plaintive I could almost feel his distress personally, I flipped the duvet from over my legs and dragged on my dressing gown, before shuffling out of the bedroom and trudging downstairs. Perhaps she was having a problem with the microwave or something.
    The crying was coming from the front room, however – not the kitchen – so that’s where I headed, and as I took in the scene I felt a wave of pure maternal anger. The baby was in his pram, screaming, kicking his little legs in frustration, while Emma, the sound conveniently muffled by a pair of earphones, was sitting cross-legged on the sofa, tapping away on – no, my eyes hadn’t deceived me – my laptop! And at her side, I belatedly noticed, was a large measuring jug, half full of water, in which a bottle of milk was bobbing, presumably cooling after having been heated up too much.
    Presumably now cooled, in fact. I snatched it up, wiped it on my dressing gown and placed the teat in Roman’s open mouth, and while he sucked lustily – I held it in place for him as he fed – I turned my attention to Emma, who seemed almost completely oblivious. She’d seen me come in, of course – she’d even glanced at me – but she was doing that oh-so-teenagerish thing of finishing whatever she’d been doing – the furious typing of what was presumably some vital message – before deigning to pull out her