This Poor Kid
Child X is an eight-year-old boy of mixed race, and his story is true. It's not as tragic as many Gulf War stories, thank God, but as it's a lot closer to home it kind of hit us a little bit harder.
Pennie and Mark are close friends of ours and Child X is their nephew. Child X also has a younger brother. Pennie and Mark have three sons already, one who's our boy's age and the others both under two years.
Pennie's sister (Child X's mother) is separated from his father and last summer moved up to Wolverhampton to live with another man. Child X and this man didn't get on, so she agreed to send him down to Kent to live with his father, a man who has only seen him about twice a year since he was born.
Child X lived with his father for a while, until one day his father's girlfriend took him off with her "somewhere" and didn't come back. The father informed the police, who eventually tracked down the girldfriend. However, the police wouldn't hand Child X back over to his father again as he's not his legal guardian. So the mother came down from Wolverhampton, took Child X from the police and handed him straight back to his father again.
Nobody loves this kid.
But it gets worse.
A few days later Child X's father took an overdose. He was found in time to save his life, and at this stage we're still not too sure whether it was Child X himself who found him or not. And to top it all, it turns out that the girlfriend is a prostitute.
Nobody knows exactly what this kid has witnessed or even been subjected too.
Child X's mother finally came to her senses and agreed to have the kid back.
Too late. Social Services put him in care in East London. Which is where Pennie and Mark come in. After extensive checks they've been allowed to take Child X home with them. They picked him up yesterday, while we looked after their two youngest.
And, of course, a thought should also be spared for Pennie and Mark. With a family of five already it's no trouble to feed an extra mouth, but they can no longer go on simple family trips because they only own a five-seater car. They have a holiday booked, which they've been loooking forward to but may have to cancel and lose money on. And Child X has precious few clothes. Two carrier bags to be precise. They also have to get him into a local school.
And they have the influence on their own family of a boy who's led a pretty rough life, and possibly knows and understands things about the world that an eight-year-old shouldn't. He was stealing money from his mother berfore she sent him packing.
The kid is going to take a lot of patience and a lot of discipline. And no small measure of love. Let's hope things work out for him, because yesterday he demonstrated a lot of good qualities.