‘You make it sound so bland, so boring,’ Dad chides him gently.
‘It is bland and boring,’ Preston replies.
‘Oi,’ Jamie says sharply. ‘Mind it.’
‘What? It’s just a—’ Preston catches the look on Jamie’s face. ‘Whatever,’ he gripes, shoving a couple of chips into his gob.
There are two dinner rituals we’ve followed ever since I can remember, long before my parents began fostering. On Sundays, we have a roast: beef, chicken, lamb or pork, Yorkshire puddings, crunchy roast potatoes with fluffy insides, rich gravy and cauliflower cheese – the works. And on Fridays, anything goes. The table is laden with options: pizza, fish fingers, sausages, burgers, chips, garlic bread… It’s junk food night and everybody loves it.
I feel a pang of pity for Joanne. No amount of cajoling by my dad could convince her to join us.
‘So you want me to plant a tree?’ George asks.
He has an unhurried manner about him, but I don’t think he’s ‘slow’, as such. His voice is quiet and deep.
‘You don’t simply plant a tree; first you choose a tree,’ Dad says as Nia lets out a loud shout and starts to bash her spoon against her high-chair tray. The spoon goes flying, ketchup streaking the dark wooden floor. Mum and Dad don’t even look down. We no longer have carpet to worry about, thankfully.
‘Here you go, honey,’ Mum says patiently, passing Nia a clean spoon. Her big brown eyes widen as she takes it. She has the longest lashes I’ve ever seen on a baby.
‘There’s a tree nursery not far from here,’ Dad continues. ‘We go, you choose a tree you like the look of, and we plant it with the others in the lower paddock. We’ve got a bit of a wood going on now, haven’t we, kids?’
I think the only child who doesn’t have a tree is me.
My parents would be horrified if they knew that this bothered me, but the fact that I know they’d rectify it if I asked them to helps.
* * *
The next morning, Dad takes Preston and Joanne with him to the market in Masham. Mum has her hands full with the little ones so she asks Jamie and me to give George a tour of the farm.
The weather has held out all week and it’s a cool clear day with barely a cloud to be seen. April has always been one of my favourite months. The skeletal tree trunks of winter are beginning to show signs of life, bright splashes of sunshiny colour from the daffodils break up the monotonous green of the verges, and the blackthorn blossom is out, its frothy white flowers dominating the thorny branches.
‘Where are you from?’ Jamie asks George as we trudge uphill.
‘Leeds.’
‘Me too. Which part?’
‘Pudsey.’
‘Ah, right. I’m from Hunslet.’
Jamie is good at talking to the teenagers who come here. His casual, friendly manner relaxes them and gets them to open up. I’ve always thought he’d make a great counsellor, but he has other plans.
‘How long have you been here?’ George asks him.
‘Since I was thirteen, so almost five years.’
‘When do you turn eighteen?’
‘Couple of months, but Carrie and Ivan have said I can stick around.’
We reach the field gate and Jamie goes to open it, squelching through the mud that’s thick at its base.
‘After you,’ I say to George, smirking at his boots.
He didn’t fit into any of our spare wellies so Mum bought him some new ones. They’re black and shiny and oh so clean.
‘No, go on,’ he replies to me, and his dry tone makes me wonder if he’s purposefully mimicking our exchange on the bus.
‘I insist,’ I say sweetly, feeling gratification at the sight of his lips twitching as he turns away.
He walks forward and I’m seized with an impulse to jump into the puddle behind him. Mud splatters up his boots.
‘How childish?’ George remarks, pressing his lips together as I hoot with laughter.
Jamie chuckles with amusement and holds the gate open for us to pass through, securing it again after us. He’s carrying a red bucket full of a fine grey dust called diatomaceous earth, and as soon as the alpacas spot it, they come running, their fluffy tails waggling excitedly like long-limbed oversized puppy dogs.
Alpacas don’t wash – they’re naturally dirt repellent – but there’s little they like more than rolling around in this dust. That and having the sprinkler put on them when it’s thirty plus degrees and they’re baking.
‘It’s all right, they don’t bite,’ Jamie assures George, who’s gone rigid. ‘They’ve only got bottom teeth.’
This makes eating certain things difficult. My mum will stand up here, hand-feeding them apples. I have no idea how she finds the time.
George watches as Jamie shakes the bucket’s contents into the hollows in the ground. The alpacas take turns rolling around, bodies wriggling this way and that with as much excitement as a toddler in a ball pond. I watch as Hazel puts her right foot in and out, does a bit of a bum wiggle, gets down on her knees and stands back up again. A proper hokey-cokey routine.
George is now watching with amusement, which is the best reaction we could hope for under the circumstances.
We’ve long since learned that most of the children and young people who come here have never heard of alpacas, let alone seen them in the flesh. If they have, they often mistake them for llamas, but alpacas are smaller, with stubbier noses and shorter ears.
Jessamine spreads her legs and does a massive wee, setting the others off. They love a synchronised wee.
‘It’s their spit you need to worry about,’ I tell George as he backs up against the drystone wall. ‘Right, Jamie?’ I flash him a mischievous look.
‘Don’t know what you’re laughing at, Snow White, she got you too,’ he points out.
‘Yeah, but at least I was wearing a hat.’
George frowns at us. ‘What are you talking about?’
I indicate a white female whose hair has grown so long on her head that her big dark eyes are half hidden behind crimpy white fleece.
‘That’s Daisy. Last year, her cria, Lily, got pneumonia, and when she came home from the vet, she had to have daily injections. Jamie administered them and, the first time he did it, Daisy stood behind him and spat green goo all over his head. She thought Jamie was hurting her baby. I got caught in the crossfire when I tried to cover him with a towel. You moved further away from her the next day, didn’t you, bro?’
‘Too right I did,’ he replies.
‘You gave her the injections?’ George seems surprised. ‘Not the vet?’
Jamie shrugs. ‘Carrie and Ivan would’ve normally done it, but they let me. They obviously knew I had it coming,’ he adds with a grin.
‘Jamie wants to be a vet,’ I explain. ‘Nothing fazes him when it comes to animals.’ If I sound proud, it’s because I am. ‘You even stuck around to watch a couple of castrations recently, didn’t you?’
‘Ouch,’ George says.
The operation is totally grim. It must be harder to watch if you’re a boy.
Wethers – castrated boys – have nicer, softer fibre than ‘intact’ boys. They can no longer be used for breeding, but the two in question were being overly aggressive, so it was an easy decision to make.