Can I Let You Go?: Part 3 of 3: A heartbreaking true story of love, loss and moving on
Can I Let You Go? is the true story of Faye, a wonderful young woman who may never be able to parent her unborn child.Faye is 24, pregnant, and has learning difficulties as a result of her mother’s alcoholism. Faye is gentle, childlike and vulnerable, and normally lives with her grandparents, both of whom have mobility problems. Cathy and her children welcome Faye into their home and hearts. The care plan is for Faye to stay with Cathy until after the birth when she will return home and the baby will go for adoption. Given that Faye never goes out alone it is something of a mystery how she ever became pregnant and Faye says it’s a secret.To begin with Faye won’t acknowledge she is pregnant or talk about the changes in her body as she worries it will upset her grandparents, but after her social worker assures her she can talk to Cathy she opens up. However, this leads to Faye realizing just how much she will lose and she changes her mind and says she wants to keep her baby.Is it possible Faye could learn enough to parent her child? Cathy believes it is, and Faye’s social worker is obliged to give Faye the chance.
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Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the children.
HarperElement
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First published by HarperElement 2016
FIRST EDITION
© Cathy Glass 2016
A catalogue record of this book is
available from the British Library
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photograph © plainpicture/Westend61/Valentina Barreto (posed by models)
Cathy Glass asserts the moral right to be
identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780008153748
Ebook Edition © September 2016 ISBN: 9780008153755
Version: 2016-08-04
Contents
Chapter Sixteen: Teaching Faye
Chapter Seventeen: An ‘Off Day’
Chapter Eighteen: Excited and Concerned
Chapter Twenty: Second Thoughts
Chapter Twenty-One: An Impossible Decision
Chapter Twenty-Two: Saying Goodbye
Chapter Twenty-Three: A Revelation
Chapter Twenty-Four: A Loving Legacy
Chapter Sixteen
The following morning, Saturday, once Faye was up and dressed and had finished her breakfast, she was eager to learn how to make up a bottle of milk. It was ten o’clock, Adrian had gone to work and Paula and Lucy were wandering around in their dressing gowns, taking their time getting up, as it was the weekend. Faye came with me to the kitchen where I set the two instruction sheets in their plastic sleeves side by side on the work surface. I carefully explained what each was for.
‘You can do that one,’ Faye said, pointing to the sheet for sterilizing the bottles. ‘I want to put the milk in the bottles.’
‘You have to learn to do both,’ I said. ‘All the bottles must be washed well in warm water and sterilized before you make up the milk.’ I’d explained this when we’d gone shopping for the sterilizer, but as with many new things Faye had to hear it a number of times before it was committed to memory. ‘If you don’t sterilize the bottle, germs could make your baby sick,’ I emphasized. ‘So what is the first thing you do?’ I pointed to number one on the step-by-step instructions for sterilizing the bottles.
‘One. Wash all the bottles in warm water,’ she read slowly, as a young child might.
‘Good. Go on then. There are the bottles and the bottle brush in the sink ready. Just run the hot water and add a squirt of washing-up liquid. I know the bottles aren’t dirty, but they will be once you start using them. Always take off the tops of the bottles – the teats – to wash them.’
‘I’m good at washing up,’ Faye said. ‘I do it at home for Gran.’
‘Excellent.’ I stood to one side and watched as she slowly and rather laboriously began cleaning the first bottle. ‘That’s right, push the brush right down to the end of the bottle and turn it round and round,’ I said. ‘Great. Now the next one.’ She carefully set the first bottle on the draining board and picked up the next. ‘When you’ve had your baby and you are doing this for real, you’ll need to have bottles cleaned and sterilized in plenty of time so you always have a feed ready, but we’ll cover that another time.’
It took Faye a good ten minutes to wash and rinse the four bottles and teats and place them on the drainer. She set the bottle brush beside them and then carefully tipped the water from the bowl. She turned to me with a big smile of satisfaction from a job well done. ‘Can I put the milk in the bottles now?’
‘Not yet,’ I said, passing her the towel to wipe her hands. ‘We have to do something else first. Something very important. Can you remember what it is? If not, read number two on the list.’
She returned to the work surface and studied the instruction sheet for the sterilizer as I stood beside her. ‘What does number two say?’ I asked gently. ‘Do you know?’
‘I can read some of it,’ she said. ‘Two. Fill the …’ She didn’t know the next word.
‘Measuring jug,’ I read, then helped her with the rest of the sentence, ‘with two hundred millilitres of water. Here’s the jug,’ I said, passing it to her. ‘Can you see the line on the jug for two hundred mils?’
She studied the side of the jug and then pointed to the correct line.
‘Excellent,’ I said.
Pleased, she stood there looking at me, the jug in her hand.
‘What do you do now?’ I asked. She continued looking at me. ‘If you’ve forgotten, look at the instruction sheet again. I’ve written it to help you.’
