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mentioned that,’ Mike said, ‘because it might be a bridge we have to cross. Suppose Jenson turns out to be with us for longer than we thought? I’m just trying to make you see all the angles, love, that’s all.’
    Which was fine. That was his job, and it was good that I had him to do it. But, at the same time, I had my job. To look always on the bright side. And, being well practised now in such situations, I had answers good and ready for all his supplementary questions as well.
    ‘After all,’ I said gaily, when Mike finally allowed me to call John back, ‘how difficult can two little boys be?’
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Prologue
    His little brothers, the boy saw, were both covered in shit. They’d removed their full nappies and smeared each other in it, while their mother’s dog – a spiteful brown terrier – was busy licking what remained from the bars of their shared cot.
    He shooed the dog away and, gagging now, lifted both boys out, and then went to fetch a quilt from his mother’s bedroom. Where had she gone this time? Why was she never there?
    He took the boys downstairs, used the quilt to wrap them up warmly on the couch, and tuned the TV to a channel that was showing cartoons. ‘We’re hungry,’ the older one kept repeating plaintively. ‘We’re hungry, Justin. Please Justin. Find us some food.’
    There was nothing. There never was. Though he looked for some anyway. In all the cupboards. In the drawers. In the big dirty fridge. He felt tears spring in his eyes. And he also felt anger. He looked at his little brothers, at their hopeful, expectant faces. What was he supposed to feed them with? What was he supposed to do?
    Then, suddenly, in that instant of despair, there came clarity. He didn’t have to think. He knew
exactly
what to do. As if on autopilot now, he took his brothers out into the front garden, sat them down on the grass – still wrapped in the grubby quilt – and told them to stay where they were.
    He then returned to the house and looked around the living room for the lighter. Picking it up, he calmly flicked it at the couch. He continued to do this till the couch began burning and then he went and set fire to the curtains.
    The dog came downstairs then, its face all smeared with the contents of the brothers’ nappies. The boy ran to the kitchen, to the cupboard under the sink, where there was a container of fluid which he knew was for the lighter. Grabbing this, he returned to the living room again, and squirted the fuel all over the animal’s filthy face.
    Taking one last look around, he walked out of the front door, closing it carefully behind him. He then joined his brothers under the quilt, on the grass, and calmly watched while both home and dog perished.
    His mother was located, by the police, three hours later. She’d apparently spent the day at a friend’s house. The little boy was just five and a half years old.
    Chapter 1
    Funny the little details that tend to stick in your mind, isn’t it? The day Justin, the first foster child to ever be placed with us, was due to arrive – a bright but chilly day on the last Saturday before Christmas – all I kept going back to were the same old two things. One of them was just how desperate the social worker seemed to be that we should agree to have him, and the other was the fact that I had black hair.
    And it wasn’t just me either. My daughter Riley, now 21 and so supportive of the whole project from day one, had the same head of black hair that I did. We’d both of us inherited our raven locks from my mother and one thing I knew – and I really knew so little about Justin – was that he had a very powerful aversion to women with black hair.
    I straightened his England football-team-themed duvet cover for the umpteenth time that morning, and tried to put the negative thoughts right out of my mind. I was trained to do