Czytaj książkę: «Girl Alone: Part 1 of 3: Joss came home from school to discover her father’s suicide. Angry and hurting, she’s out of control.»

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

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.