Cathy Glass - Girl Alone - Joss came home from school to discover her father’s suicide. Angry and hurting, she’s out of control.

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

HarperElement

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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 © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2015

Cathy Glass asserts the moral right to

be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780008138257

Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008138264

Version: 2016-08-10

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

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About the Publisher

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.

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.