Daddy’s Little Princess
Internationally bestselling author and foster carer Cathy Glass tells the story of one of the first children that she fostered.Little Beth, aged 7, had been brought up by her father after her mother left when she was a toddler. But when he’s suddenly admitted to hospital with psychiatric problems Beth is taken into care.Beth is a sweet-natured child who appears to have been well looked after. But it isn’t long before Cathy begins to have concerns that the relationship between Beth and her father is not as it should be. They clearly love each other very much and Derek spoils his daughter, treating her like a princess, but there is something bothering Cathy, something she can’t quite put her finger on.But, despite Cathy flagging her concerns to the social worker Jessie, no action is taken. Until Jessie accompanies Beth to the hospital to see her father… Then, suddenly, everything changes. All contact is stopped and Cathy is left to help pick up the pieces as poor Beth struggles to understand what her daddy has done wrong.
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HarperElement
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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Cathy Glass 2014
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014
Cover photograph © www.abitofsas.com/Getty Images (posed by model)
Cathy Glass asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 9780007569373
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2014 ISBN: 9780007569380
Version: 2017-01-17
Contents
Chapter Three: The Photographs
Chapter Nine: Sexualizing the Innocent
Chapter Ten: Calm Before the Storm
Chapter Thirteen: Two-Parent Family
Chapter Fifteen: Loyal to Abuser
Chapter Sixteen: Are You Happy Here?
Chapter Seventeen: Special Present
Chapter Eighteen: Sudden Turn of Events
Chapter Twenty-One: The Telephone Call
Chapter Twenty-Two: Icing on the Cake
Chapter Twenty-Three: She Must Hate Me
Chapter Twenty-Four: A New Friend
Chapter Twenty-Five: The Decision
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Postcard
To write this book – Beth’s story – I need to go back in time, to when Adrian was six and Paula was just two. I had only been fostering for a few years, and back then foster carers were given little in the way of training or support, or background information on the child. They were ‘thrown in at the deep end’ and left to get on with it, either swimming or sinking under the strain of it all. Looking back now, I shudder to think of some of the unsafe situations my family and I were placed in, and I also wonder – with the benefit of hindsight from years of fostering and training – if I would have handled situations differently. Some, maybe, but not with Beth. I am sure I would have made the same decisions then as now, for some behaviour is never acceptable and has to be stopped to save the child.
Chapter One
I was starting to think that they weren’t coming after all. Beth’s social worker had telephoned me during the afternoon and had said she would bring Beth to me at about ‘teatime’. It was now nearly seven o’clock – well past teatime – and Adrian, Paula and myself had eaten. I’d make Beth something fresh to eat if and when she arrived. It was a cold night and little Beth would be upset enough at being parted from her father without arriving tired and hungry. I knew that plans in social care often change unavoidably at the last minute, but I thought the social worker might have telephoned to let me know what was going on. A little while later I told Paula it was time for her to go to bed. We were in the living room, at the rear of the house, snug and warm, with the curtains closed against the cold, dark night. Paula and Adrian were sitting on the floor; Paula had been building a castle out of toy bricks and Adrian was poring over a large, beautifully illustrated book on vintage cars and motorbikes he’d been given as a Christmas present three weeks previously. Toscha, our lazy, lovable cat, was curled up on her favourite chair.
‘I thought that girl was coming?’ Adrian said, glancing up from his book.
‘So did I,’ I said. ‘Perhaps her father isn’t as ill as they thought and she was able to stay at home. I hope so.’
Adrian, aged six, had some understanding of what fostering meant from having children stay with us previously, while Paula, aged two, wasn’t really old enough to understand, although I’d tried to explain that a girl aged seven who was called Beth might be coming to stay with us for a while. All I knew of Beth, other than her age, was that she lived with her father and that he was now ill and likely to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. That was all the social worker had told me when she’d telephoned and I’d hoped to learn more from her when she arrived with Beth.
