Girl Alone: Joss came home from school to discover her father’s suicide Read online

  Copyright

  Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.

  HarperElement

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published by HarperElement 2015

  FIRST EDITION

  © Cathy Glass 2015

  A catalogue record of this book is

  available from the British Library

  Cover photograph © Deborah Pendell/Arcangel Images (posed by model)

  Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2015

  Cathy Glass asserts the moral right to

  be identified as the author of this work

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008138257

  Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008138264

  Version: 2015-07-11

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One: Unsafe Behaviour

  Chapter Two: I Thought You Loved Me

  Chapter Three: Contract of Behaviour

  Chapter Four: No Daddy Doll

  Chapter Five: Eric

  Chapter Six: Deceived

  Chapter Seven: Letter from the Police

  Chapter Eight: Out of Patience

  Chapter Nine: On Report

  Chapter Ten: A Positive Sign?

  Chapter Eleven: No Progress

  Chapter Twelve: Not My Father

  Chapter Thirteen: End It All

  Chapter Fourteen: Turning Point?

  Chapter Fifteen: Doing the Right Thing

  Chapter Sixteen: Failed to Protect Her

  Chapter Seventeen: Remorse, Guilt and Regret

  Chapter Eighteen: Lying?

  Chapter Nineteen: Alone

  Chapter Twenty: Monday

  Chapter Twenty-One: Waiting for News

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Missing

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Endless Wait

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Unbelievable

  Chapter Twenty-Five: And She Wept

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Bittersweet

  Epilogue

  Suggested topics for reading-group discussion

  Exclusive sample chapter

  Cathy Glass

  If you loved this book …

  Moving Memoirs eNewsletter

  About the Publisher

  Acknowledgements

  A big thank-you to my family; my editors, Holly and Carolyn; my literary agent, Andrew; my UK publishers HarperCollins, and my overseas publishers, who are now too numerous to list by name. Last but not least, a big thank-you to my readers for your unfailing support and kind words.

  Chapter One

  Unsafe Behaviour

  I hate you!’ Joss screamed at the top of her voice. ‘I hate you. I hate your house and your effing family! I even hate your effing cat!’

  Our beloved cat, Toscha, jumped out of Joss’s way as she stormed from the living room, stomped upstairs and into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

  I took a deep breath and sat on the sofa as I waited for my pulse to settle. Joss, thirteen, had arrived as an emergency foster placement twelve days earlier; angry, volatile and upset, she wasn’t getting any easier to deal with. I knew why she was so angry. So too did her family, teacher, social worker, previous foster carers and everyone else who had tried to help her and failed. Joss’s father had committed suicide four years previously, when Joss had been nine years old, and she and her mother had found his lifeless body. He’d hanged himself.

  This was trauma enough for any child to cope with, but then, when Joss was twelve, her mother had tried to move on with her life and had remarried. Joss felt rejected and that her mother had betrayed her father, whom she’d been very close to. Her refusal to accept her new stepfather as her younger brother had been able to had seen family arguments escalate and Joss’s behaviour sink to the point where she had to leave home and go to live with an aunt. The aunt had managed to cope with Joss’s unsafe and unpredictable behaviour for a month, but then Joss had gone into foster care. Two carers later, with Joss’s behaviour deteriorating further, she’d come to live with me – the day after Danny, whose story I told in Saving Danny, had left.

  It was felt that, as a very experienced foster carer, I’d be able to manage and hopefully improve Joss’s behaviour, but there’d been little progress so far. And, while I felt sorry for her and appreciated why she was so upset and angry, allowing her to self-destruct wasn’t going to help. Her present outburst was the result of my telling her that if she was going out she’d have to be in by nine o’clock, which I felt was late enough for a girl of thirteen to be travelling home on the bus alone. I’d offered to collect her in my car from the friend’s house she was supposedly going to, so she could have stayed a bit later, but she’d refused. ‘I’m not a kid,’ she’d raged. ‘So stop treating me like one!’

  It was Friday evening, and what should have been the start of a relaxing weekend had resulted in me being stressed (again), and my children Adrian (sixteen), Lucy (thirteen) and Paula (twelve) being forced to listen to another angry scene.

  I gave Joss the usual ten minutes alone to calm down before I went upstairs. I wasn’t surprised to find Paula and Lucy standing on the landing looking very worried. Joss’s anger impacted on the whole family.

  ‘Shall I go in and talk to her?’ Lucy asked. The same age as Joss and having come to me as a foster child (I was adopting her), Lucy could empathize closely with Joss, but I wasn’t passing the responsibility to her.

  ‘Thanks, love, but I’ll speak to her first,’ I said. ‘Then you can have a chat with her later if you wish.’

  ‘I don’t like it when she shouts at you,’ Paula said sadly.

  ‘I don’t either,’ I said, ‘but I can handle it. Really. Don’t worry.’ I threw them a reassuring smile, then gave a brief knock on Joss’s door and, slowly opening it, poked my head round. ‘Can I come in?’ I asked.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Joss said moodily.

  I went in and drew the door to behind me. Joss was sitting on the edge of her bed with a tissue pressed to her face. She was a slight, petite child who looked younger than her thirteen years, and her usually sallow complexion was now red from anger and tears.

  ‘Can I come and sit next to you?’ I asked, approaching the bed.

  ‘Not bothered,’ she said.

  I sat beside her, close but not quite touching. I didn’t take her hand in mine or put my arm around her to comfort her. She shied away from physical contact.

  ‘Why do you always stop me from having fun?’ she grumbled. ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘Joss, I don’t want to stop you from having fun, but I do need to keep you safe. I care about you, and while you are living with me I’ll be looking after you like your mother.
’

  ‘She doesn’t care!’ Joss blurted. ‘Not for me, anyway.’ This was one of Joss’s grievances – that her mother didn’t care about her.

  ‘I’m sure your mother does care,’ I said. ‘Although she may not always say so.’ It was a conversation we’d had before.

  ‘No, she doesn’t,’ Joss blurted. ‘She couldn’t care a toss about me and Kevin, not now she’s got him.’

  Kevin was Joss’s younger brother. ‘Him’ was their stepfather, Eric.

  ‘I know it can be very difficult for children when a parent remarries,’ I said. ‘The parent has to divide their time between their new partner and their children. I do understand how you feel.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Joss snapped. ‘No one does.’

  ‘I try my best to understand,’ I said. ‘And if you could talk to me more, I’m sure I’d be able to understand better.’

  ‘At least you have time to listen to me. I’ll give you that. She never does.’

  ‘I expect your mother is very busy. Working, as well as looking after her family.’

  Joss humphed. ‘Busy with him, more like it!’

  I knew that with so much animosity towards her stepfather it would be a long time before Joss was able to return to live at home, if ever. However, we were getting off the subject.

  ‘Listen, love,’ I said, lightly touching her arm. ‘The reason you were angry just now wasn’t because of your mother or stepfather; it was because I was insisting on some rules. As you know, when you go out I expect you to come in at a reasonable time. The same rules apply to everyone here, including Adrian, Lucy and Paula.’

  ‘Adrian stayed out later than nine last Saturday,’ she snapped. ‘It was nearly eleven when he got back. I heard him come in.’

  ‘He’s two years older than you,’ I said. ‘And even then I made sure he had transport home. Lucy and Paula have to be in by nine unless it’s a special occasion, and they only go out at weekends sometimes.’

  ‘But they don’t want to go out as much as I do,’ Joss said, always ready with an answer.

  It was true. Joss would be out every night until after midnight if I let her, as she had been doing with her aunt and previous foster carers.

  ‘I don’t want you going out every night, either,’ I said. ‘You have school work to do and you need your sleep. It’s not a good idea for a young girl to be hanging around on the streets.’

  ‘I like it,’ she said. ‘It’s fun.’

  ‘It’s unsafe,’ I said.

  ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘Trust me, love, a teenage girl wandering around by herself at night is unsafe. I’ve been fostering for fifteen years and I know what can happen.’ I didn’t want to scare her, but she had no sense of danger and I was very concerned about her unsafe behaviour.

  ‘I’m not by myself. I’m with my mates,’ Joss said. ‘You’re paranoid, just like my aunt and those other carers.’

  ‘So we are all wrong, are we, love? Or could it be that, being a bit older and having more experience, we have some knowledge of what is safe and unsafe?’

  Joss shrugged moodily and stared at her hands clenched in her lap.

  ‘I’m still going out tonight,’ she said defiantly.

  ‘I’ve said you can. It’s Friday, but you will be in by nine o’clock if you are using the bus.’

  ‘What if I get a lift home?’ she asked.

  ‘I offered that before and you refused.’

  ‘Not from you – one of my mates’ parents could bring me back.’

  I looked at her carefully. ‘Who?’

  ‘One of my mates from school, I guess.’

  ‘Joss, if you are relying on a lift then I would like to know who will be responsible for bringing you home.’

  ‘Chloe’s parents,’ she said quickly. ‘She’s in my class. She’s a nice girl. You’d like her.’

  I continued to look at her. ‘And Chloe’s parents have offered to bring you home?’

  ‘Yes. They did before, when I was at my last carer’s. You can ask them if you like.’

  On balance, I decided she could be telling the truth, and if she wasn’t, questioning her further would only back her into a corner and make her lie even more.

  ‘All right, then,’ I said. ‘I trust you. On this occasion you can come in at ten o’clock as long as one of Chloe’s parents brings you home.’

  ‘Ten’s too early if I have a lift,’ she said, trying to push the boundaries even further. ‘Eleven.’

  ‘No. I consider ten o’clock late enough for a thirteen-year-old, but if you want to raise it with your social worker when we see her on Monday, that’s fine.’

  ‘It’s not fair,’ she moaned. ‘You always fucking win.’

  ‘It’s not about winning or losing,’ I said. ‘I care about what happens to you and I do what I think is best to protect you. And Joss, I’ve told you before about swearing and that you’d be sanctioned. There are other ways to express anger apart from swearing and stomping around. Tomorrow is pocket-money day and I’ll be withholding some of yours.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ she snapped. ‘It’s my money. The social services give it to you to give to me.’

  ‘I will be giving you half tomorrow, and then the rest on Sunday evening, assuming you haven’t been swearing. If you do swear, I’ll keep the money safe for you and you can earn it back through good behaviour.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever,’ she said, and, folding her arms, she turned her back on me.

  I ignored her ill humour. ‘Dinner will be ready in about fifteen minutes. I think Lucy wants to talk to you. Is that OK?’

  ‘I guess.’

  I went out of Joss’s room, called to Lucy that Joss was free and then with a sigh went downstairs to finish making the dinner. I knew I’d have another anxious evening worrying about Joss, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have doubts that I’d made the right decision in agreeing to foster her. I was especially concerned about the effect her behaviour could be having on my children. But I hadn’t really had much choice. I was the only experienced foster carer available at the time, and the social services couldn’t place Joss with an inexperienced carer, as they had done the first time. Joss had been that carer’s first placement and she’d only lasted two weeks. I hoped she was given an easier child for her next placement, or she might lose hope and resign.

  Once dinner was ready I called everyone to the table. Adrian had stayed in his room while Joss was erupting, and now greeted her with an easy ‘Hi’. There wasn’t an atmosphere at the meal table as there had been on Tuesday and Thursday when I’d stopped Joss from going out at all. Now she was happy at the prospect of a night out and ate quickly, gobbling down her food and finishing first.

  ‘I’m going to get ready,’ she said, standing and pushing back her chair.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like some pudding first?’

  ‘Nah. I need to get ready.’

  ‘All right. Off you go, then.’ Normally I encouraged the children to remain at the table until everyone had finished, as it’s polite. But with a child like Joss, who had so many issues, I had to be selective in choosing which ones I dealt with first. I couldn’t change all her behaviour at once, and coming home at a reasonable time for her own safety and not swearing were more important than having exemplary table manners.

  It was the beginning of June and therefore still daylight at seven o’clock when Joss yelled, ‘Bye. See ya later!’ from the hall and rushed out. I was in the living room drinking a cup of coffee, with the patio doors open and the warm summer air drifting in, thinking – worrying – about Joss. I’d thought about little else since she’d arrived. Although I’d been fostering for a long time, Joss was possibly my biggest challenge yet. I was also thinking about her mother, Linda, whom I would be meeting for the first time on Monday. Judging by what I knew from the social services, Linda had been a good mother and had done her best for Joss and her younger brother, Kevin, supporting them through the tragic loss of their fathe
r and then, more recently, gradually and sensitively introducing them to her new partner, Eric. I certainly didn’t blame Linda for wanting to move on with her life and remarry. I was divorced, so I knew what it was like bringing up children alone, and it’s not easy. Yet, sadly, it had all gone horribly wrong for Linda – by introducing Eric into her family she’d effectively lost her only daughter.

  I never completely relaxed while Joss was out in the evening, but there was always something to do to occupy myself. I cleared up the kitchen, sorted the clean laundry and then returned to the living room and wrote up my fostering log. Foster carers are required to keep a daily record of the child or children they are looking after, which includes appointments, the child’s health and well-being, significant events and any disclosures the child may make about their past. When the child leaves, this record is placed on file at the social services. Once I’d finished, I watched some television.

  Lucy, Paula and Adrian were in their rooms for much of the evening; the girls were doing their homework so that it wasn’t hanging over them all weekend, and then they chatted to their friends on the phone, and Adrian – who was in the middle of his GCSE examinations – was studying. By ten o’clock all three of them were getting ready for bed and I was listening out for Joss. I prayed she wouldn’t let me down this time. If she hadn’t returned by midnight I’d have to report her missing to the police, as I had done the previous Saturday. Then, doubtless, as before, she’d arrive home in the early hours, having wasted police time, and be angry with me for ‘causing a fuss’. I hadn’t given Joss a front-door key as I’d learnt my lesson from previous teenagers I’d fostered who’d abused the responsibility. My policy – the same as many other carers – was that once the young person had proved they were responsible, then they had a key, and it gave them something to work towards. But, of course, not having a key was another of Joss’s grievances that she would be telling her social worker about on Monday. Joss wasn’t open to reason; she felt victimized and believed she was invincible, which was a very dangerous combination.

  At five minutes past ten the doorbell rang. I leapt from the sofa and nearly ran down the hall to answer it, grateful and relieved she’d returned more or less on time.