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

by Cathy Glass

  My heart was pounding and my legs were like jelly. I hate confrontations, but this one had been essential.

  ‘I’ve done what is right to keep you safe,’ I said. ‘If I tell you you’re not going out, I mean it.’

  ‘They’ll all be laughing at me,’ Joss moaned. ‘And why didn’t Zach stick up for me?’

  ‘Because he’s not the friend you thought he was?’ I offered gently.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ Joss snapped. ‘It’s you. You’re ruining my life. I want to see my friends and have fun.’ We turned and began back down the street.

  ‘I’m not trying to stop you from having fun, Joss, but I’m very concerned that the type of fun you’re having at present isn’t safe. Why not invite a friend of your own age home? You could watch a film and eat takeaway pizza.’ This was the type of fun a thirteen-year-old should be having – innocent, age-appropriate fun – but Joss, with all her problems, was missing out on that and trying to bury her sorrow in drink and drugs.

  ‘Chelsea wouldn’t come,’ Joss said moodily as we walked.

  ‘Well, invite another friend, then. Perhaps someone from your class?’

  ‘I haven’t got any other friends,’ Joss said gloomily. ‘Chelsea is my only mate.’

  ‘I’m sure that isn’t true,’ I said. ‘You’re a nice person – when you’re not angry,’ I added with a smile.

  ‘No one wants to be my friend,’ Joss said, sadness now replacing anger. ‘They think I’m bad news because I’m always in trouble. Their parents tell them to keep away from me.’

  Which I could understand. ‘There is a very obvious solution, Joss,’ I said. ‘Stop getting into trouble, behave yourself and then make some new friends. You don’t have to keep breaking all the rules. It’s not big and it’s not clever. You can change if you want to. Miss Pryce said she’s hoping that after the six-week summer holiday you’ll go back to school and start afresh.’

  Joss shrugged despondently. I felt sorry for her now. ‘If I’m still there,’ she said. ‘They might have put me in lock-up by then.’

  ‘Not if you stop your unsafe behaviour,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to help you do that.’ I pushed open the front garden gate and Joss followed me through. I paused on the doorstep and looked at her. ‘I know you’ve suffered, love, but don’t keep punishing yourself. You can start afresh and have a great life.’

  ‘What’s the point?’ she said. ‘We all end up dead anyway.’

  ‘Oh, Joss.’ I touched her arm reassuringly. ‘Let’s go indoors and have a talk. You shouldn’t be feeling like this.’

  I unlocked the front door and we went in. I thought Joss might want to talk now and open up a little, but once inside she said, ‘Are Lucy and Paula in?’

  ‘Yes, they’re in the front room on the computer.’

  ‘You can come and join us if you like,’ Lucy called, having heard.

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ Joss disappeared into the front room, all animosity gone.

  She spent most of the evening with Paula and Lucy, so it wasn’t until bedtime that I had a chance to talk to her again. Although Joss never wanted a hug or a kiss goodnight, I always looked in on her to make sure she was all right. She was propped up in bed, flipping through a magazine. She loved her girly magazines and seemed to be spending most of her pocket money on them.

  ‘You had a pleasant evening in the end,’ I said, standing near her bed.

  ‘It wasn’t bad,’ she returned, concentrating on the magazine.

  ‘You know what you said about friends?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Paula and Lucy are your friends.’

  ‘Yeah, good,’ she said without looking up.

  ‘Can we talk?’ I asked.

  ‘What about?’ She turned a page.

  ‘Anything you like. I was worried by your comment earlier about not seeing any point in life. It sounded as though you might be depressed.’

  She glanced up briefly. ‘Nah. I’m OK.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I hesitated. ‘You would tell me if you were feeling very low, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  I hesitated. What else could I say? She didn’t want to talk to me. I couldn’t force her. ‘Well, goodnight then, love. You know where I am if you want me.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  I came out and closed her bedroom door, but I was worried. Being a teenager can be difficult enough with all the confusing emotions and decisions that have to be made, without the baggage Joss carried. However, I couldn’t make her talk or seek counselling if she didn’t want to. She knew it was on offer, so, frustratingly, all I could do was be on hand, ready for if and when she needed me.

  The following day was Wednesday, and the contract of behaviour, which we still hadn’t received a copy of or signed, and which Amelia said may now need updating, stipulated that Joss had to stay in on Wednesdays. Joss accepted this without argument and appeared a little relieved that the decision had been made for her. She did an hour’s homework and then after dinner she spent some time in Paula’s room playing with her doll’s house, while Paula sat on her bed reading Joss’s magazines. Wonderful, domestic harmony, I thought, and hoped we’d enjoy more evenings like this. Teenagers often appear grown up and in control of their lives, but inside they are children trying to find a way into adult life. It’s a bit like buying a new outfit: you try on different clothes until eventually you find something that suits you and feels comfortable. So teenagers try different personas until they find the one that fits them best, but during the process they need a lot of direction. It’s not cramping their style; it’s helping them choose a good outcome.

  Unfortunately, the glimpse of domestic harmony I’d seen earlier, when Joss had been playing with Paula’s doll’s house, hid a more sinister picture, one that served as a harrowing reminder of just how disturbed Joss really was.

  It was nearly nine o’clock. Joss was in the bath and I was downstairs talking to Lucy, who’d just returned from a friend’s house where she’d been working on an end-of-year presentation for school, which they could do in pairs. Paula was in her bedroom getting ready for bed when suddenly I heard her footsteps running down the stairs.

  ‘Mum, come quickly!’ she cried, arriving in the living room, her face pale from shock. ‘Come and see what Joss has done. It’s horrible.’

  ‘Whatever is it?’ I asked, immediately on my feet.

  ‘You need to see. Come.’

  Lucy and I ran down the hall behind Paula and upstairs to her room.

  ‘Go and look,’ Paula said, standing just inside the door and pointing to her doll’s house.

  Lucy was there before me. ‘Oh, my God!’ she gasped. ‘That’s horrible.’

  I joined her at the front of the doll’s house and my heart lurched. Like many doll’s houses, the front of this one opened to show all the rooms with their furniture and doll people inside. The garage was at the bottom to the right, and the daddy doll, which Paula had previously told me Joss never played with, was now hanging by its neck with a piece of string from the roof of the garage. Its head had been bent grotesquely to one side in a parody of a broken neck, and the corpse dangled beside the car as though it had jumped off the bonnet. This was obviously a grizzly reproduction of what Joss had seen when her father had committed suicide in the garage, and it was truly disturbing.

  ‘Why would Joss do that with the doll?’ Lucy asked, still staring at the corpse.

  My family knew that Joss’s father had died in distressing circumstances, but they didn’t know the details.

  ‘Joss’s father committed suicide,’ I said.

  ‘By hanging himself in the garage?’ Lucy asked, clamping her hand over her mouth in horror.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I reached in and unpinned the doll from the ceiling and then untied the string from its neck. Paula was still by the door, watching from a
distance, and I returned the daddy doll to the miniature sofa in the living room. ‘That’s better,’ I said, hiding my shock and trying to restore normality.

  ‘I’m not letting Joss play with the doll’s house again,’ Paula said, clearly upset.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Lucy agreed.

  ‘I’ll talk to Joss when she’s finished in the bath,’ I said, closing the front of the house. ‘But you know, girls, perhaps this is a positive sign that Joss is getting ready to talk about what happened, which would be a very good thing.’ Although I wished she hadn’t used Paula’s doll’s house to express it. The atrocity had sullied its childlike innocence, and I knew the taint would remain for some time.

  When Joss had finished her bath and was in her bedroom, I knocked on her door and went in.

  ‘What?’ she asked, already on the defensive. I guessed she knew what I wanted.

  ‘Paula is upset by what she found in her doll’s house,’ I said gently.

  ‘Not half as upset as I was!’ Joss snapped, referring, I assumed, to her father’s actual death.

  ‘I appreciate that, love. It must have been absolutely horrendous for you. I can’t imagine how you coped.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she said, climbing into bed. ‘But shit happens. There’s nothing you or anyone can do about it. And before you ask me, no, I don’t want to talk about it.’ She picked up a magazine and pulled it open.

  I waited. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right, I’ll leave you to it, then, but you know where I am if you need me.’

  Joss gave a small nod and I said goodnight and came out of her room.

  That night she had a nightmare. It was about her father. As I soothed her back to sleep, she whispered, ‘Daddy. Daddy gone. Dead.’ And a tear slipped from the corner of her eye. It was heartbreaking. I knew she had all that hurt buried deep inside her and it was trying to find a way out. Interestingly, the following morning she remembered some of her dream, which she didn’t usually.

  ‘I had a really bad dream last night,’ she told me.

  ‘Do you remember what it was about?’ I asked carefully, aware I needed to handle this sensitively.

  ‘It was about my daddy,’ she said quietly. ‘I think, the day he died.’

  ‘Do you remember anything else?’

  ‘Not sure. Were you there?’

  ‘I heard you call out and came into your room to make sure you were all right. I always check if I hear one of you call out in the night. You went back to sleep quite quickly.’

  She shrugged. ‘I don’t really remember. It’s a blur.’

  Joss didn’t offer any more and I left it at that, but my amateur psychology told me that Joss hanging the doll and then starting to remember her dreams could mean that the shocking memories of her father’s suicide were starting to work their way to the surface to be dealt with.

  That afternoon Jill came for one of her scheduled four-weekly visits – to make sure I was fostering Joss to the required standard, to give support and advice as necessary and to sign off my log notes. I updated her on events since the last time we’d spoken on the phone, finishing with the incident of the doll and Joss’s most recent nightmare.

  ‘I’m no psychiatrist,’ Jill said, ‘but it could certainly be a positive sign. Keep doing what you have been doing – providing a safe and supportive environment – and Joss may feel able to start counselling before long and address her demons. Once she comes to terms with what happened and stops blaming herself, she’ll be less angry and her behaviour should start to improve.’

  I greatly valued Jill’s opinion, so I was pleased to hear this, but what happened next showed Joss still had a very long way to go.

  Chapter Eleven

  No Progress

  It was Friday morning, and at 9.30 a.m. I received the now familiar telephone call from the secretary at Joss’s school, informing me that Joss hadn’t arrived and that when she did she would be given an hour’s detention at the end of the day. I apologized for her lateness, confirmed that she’d left for school on time and thanked the secretary for letting me know. If a child who usually arrived at school on time suddenly went missing I would be very worried, but Joss arriving late for school was a regular occurrence, so I knew from previous experience that it wouldn’t be long before the school secretary telephoned again to say Joss had arrived. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later the telephone rang – however, it wasn’t the secretary, but a man with an accent whose voice I didn’t recognize. ‘Is that Mrs Glass?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ I assumed it was a telesales canvasser, but what he said next scared me rigid.

  ‘I have your daughter, Mrs Glass.’

  ‘What? What do you mean?’ My heart began drumming loudly in my chest.

  ‘I have your daughter, Joss, here with me. You need to come and collect her. She is a very naughty girl.’

  ‘Who are you? What are you talking about? Where is Joss? Put her on at once, please.’

  There was a muffled sound as the handset was passed over and then Joss’s voice came on, subdued and without her usual bravado. ‘Cathy, please come and get me – he’s scaring me.’

  ‘Where are you? Who is he? What’s going on?’ My concerns grew.

  ‘He’s making me stay here with him until you come. He wants to see you.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘The paper shop on the corner of South Road.’

  ‘The newsagents there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I knew where it was, although I’d never been in. It wasn’t the newsagents below the flat where Chelsea lived, but one close to Joss’s school.

  ‘And he won’t let you leave?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  Joss didn’t answer.

  ‘I’ll call the police,’ I said.

  ‘No! Don’t do that! Please, Cathy,’ Joss pleaded. ‘I’m in enough trouble already. Don’t get the police involved.’

  ‘What’s going on, Joss? He can’t keep you there against your will. It’s illegal. Are you hurt?’

  ‘No. Just come and collect me, please. I’m in his sitting room at the back of the shop.’

  ‘And you can’t tell me what’s happened?’

  ‘He wants to tell you when you come for me.’

  ‘Put him back on, please.’

  His voice came on the line again. ‘Mrs Glass, I was going to call the police, but your daughter begged me not to, so I insisted I call you instead. She’s done wrong and I’m not just going to let her get away with it. Are you coming or shall I call the police?’

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  ‘Very well. My wife will sit with her while I return to the shop. I will see you soon. Goodbye.’ The line went dead.

  I had my shoes on and was out of the door and in the car in an instant, still thinking I should call the police. Joss had pleaded with me not to and she’d said she wasn’t hurt, but then perhaps he was standing over her with a knife and forcing her to say that? I’d been fostering for long enough to know that anything was possible, and that unbelievable and horrific events did occur. I was sick with fear and drove faster than I should have done. All teenagers can be volatile and reckless at times, but when it’s your own child whom you know well, you have a fair idea of what they are capable of – good and bad. Joss was another matter entirely, and try as I had I still didn’t have a clue what she was capable of. All manner of thoughts crossed my mind, including that the man might be a dangerous psychopath who was planning to hold me hostage too.

  I parked in the side street next to the shop, got out and walked swiftly round to the front door, my stomach churning. A large handwritten notice in the shop window stated: Only two school children allowed in together. I opened the door and a bell clanged from inside, and then again as the door closed behind me. A woman customer left the shop and another was looking at a stand containing a display of greeting cards. With my mouth dry a
nd my heart pounding, I went up to the counter at the far end of the shop. A smartly dressed middle-aged Asian man was standing behind the counter, looking at me as I approached. I realized then that I hadn’t asked the man who’d telephoned for his name. ‘Are you the person who telephoned me about Joss?’ I asked. ‘I’m Mrs Glass.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ he said sternly. ‘This way, please.’ He lifted the counter top to allow me to pass through. ‘Your daughter is in here,’ he said, lowering the counter again behind me.

  I followed him down a short, dimly lit hall, which led into a small, cramped sitting room. The curtains were closed and the room was lit by a single bare bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling. Cardboard boxes were stacked around the edges and the room smelt musty, so I guessed it was usually only used for storage. Joss sat in one of two old-fashioned armchairs, the only furniture, and a middle-aged woman dressed in a sari, whom I took to be the man’s wife, sat opposite her. She stood as we entered, said something to her husband in another language and then went into the shop, closing the door behind her.

  Joss stood. ‘Can I go now?’ she asked the man.

  ‘Not yet. I need to talk to your mother first.’ He turned to me. ‘Do you know how much stock I lose every week from stealing? It’s robbing me of my livelihood. I struggle to support my family as it is. It is not easy, owning a shop. I work all the hours God sends me and then I have the little I earn taken away from me by people like your daughter.’

  I now had a good idea what this was all about.

  ‘I telephone the school and tell them that their pupils are stealing,’ he continued. ‘I’ve even been in to see the headmistress, but nothing happens. She tells me she can’t be held responsible for what their pupils do once they’ve left the school premises. If I call the police, they come eventually, take a statement, and then I see the same kids in here again the next day, and they’re laughing at me. They think stealing from under my nose is a joke. I blame the parents. I have two children of my own and they would never steal. I have brought them up properly. They are trustworthy and polite teenagers. If they are naughty, they know what’s coming. I have taught them respect and honesty, Mrs Glass. Something you need to teach your daughter.’