Please Don’t Take My Baby and I Miss Mummy 2-in-1 Collection
Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author and foster carer Cathy Glass’ heartbreaking memoir I Miss Mummy now combined in a single volume with her inspiring new title Please Don’t Take My Baby, about a pregnant teenager desperate to keep her child.In Please Don’t Take My Baby, Jade, 17, is pregnant, homeless and alone when she’s brought to live with Cathy. Jade is desperate to keep her baby, but little more than a child herself, she struggles with the responsibilities her daughter brings.Cathy knows that Jade loves her daughter with all her heart, but will she be able to get through to Jade in time to make her realise just how much she might lose?I Miss Mummy is the true story of Alice, aged four, who is snatched by her mother the day she is due to arrive at Cathy's house. Drug-dependent and mentally ill, but desperate to keep hold of her daughter, Alice's mother takes her from her parents' house and disappears.
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Cathy Glass
THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
Please Don’t Take My Baby and I Miss Mummy
Contents
Damaged
Hidden
Cut
The Saddest Girl in the World
Happy Kids
The Girl in the Mirror
I Miss Mummy
Mummy Told Me Not to Tell
My Dad’s a Policeman (a Quick Reads novel)
Run, Mummy, Run
The Night the Angels Came
Happy Adults
A Baby’s Cry
Happy Mealtimes For Kids
Another Forgotten Child
Contents
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
1 Stranger at the Door
2 New Arrival
3 Awkward
4 First Evening
5 Jade’s Story
6 Jackie
7 Testing Boundaries
8 Silly, Silly Girl
9 Hurt by Dishonesty
10 ‘Like You See on the Telly’
11 ‘Smelly Baby’
12 Worth It
13 Assessment
14 Error of Judgement
15 Not an Ogre
16 A Police Matter
17 Shaken to the Core
18 Too Late
19 ‘Please Don’t Take My Baby’
20 Prolonging the Agony
21 Tuesday
22 Last Chance
23 Broken Rules and Promises
24 Moving On
Epilogue
Exclusive sample chapter
A big thank-you to my editor, Anne; my literary agent Andrew; and Carole, Vicky, Laura and all the team at HarperCollins.
England has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in the developed world. Last year nearly 40,000 teenage girls gave birth and nearly 60,000 terminated a pregnancy. These figures are truly shocking. And while some of the girls’ stories have happy endings, many do not.
We’d just sat down to our evening meal when the doorbell rang. I sighed. Why did salespeople always manage to time their calls with dinner? Double glazing, cavity-wall insulation, religion, new driveway, landscape the garden or fresh fish from Grimsby: whatever they were selling, 6.00 p.m. seemed to be the time they called, I supposed because most people are home from work by then and it isn’t so late that people won’t answer their front doors.
‘Aren’t you going to see who it is, Mum?’ Paula, my eight-year-old daughter, asked, as I didn’t immediately leave the table.
‘Yes,’ I said as the bell rang for a second time.
Standing, I swallowed my mouthful of cottage pie and went down the hall to the front door, ready to despatch the salesperson as quickly as possible.
‘And don’t be rude!’ Adrian called after me.
As if I would! Although it was true I usually sent away cold callers efficiently and effectively, which to Adrian, aged twelve, could be seen as rude and certainly embarrassing.
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ I returned, as I arrived at the front door.
It was dark outside at six o’clock in January and, as usual, before answering the door at night, I checked the security spyhole, which allowed me to see who was in the porch. The porch was illuminated by a carriage lamp and gave enough light for me to see a lady in her early thirties, dressed smartly in a light-grey winter coat, and whom I vaguely recognized from seeing in the street. I guessed she was collecting either money for a charity or signatures for a petition on a local issue: traffic calming, crossing patrol, noisy pub in the high road, etc.
‘Hello,’ I said with a smile as I opened the door. The cold night air rushed in.
‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ she began. ‘You’re Cathy Glass, aren’t you?’ I saw she wasn’t carrying a charity-collection tin or a clipboard with a petition to sign.
‘Yes,’ I said, surprised she knew my name. I certainly didn’t know hers.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you. My name’s Meryl Dennis. I work at Beachcroft School. I’m the games mistress – I teach PE. I expect you’ve seen me around? I live at number 122.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. Number 122 was at the very bottom of the street.
I smiled politely and wondered why she was telling me who she was and about her school, which was on the other side of the county. Adrian, who’d started secondary school the previous September, attended a local school and Paula was still at our local primary school. I smiled again and waited, aware that the cold air was chilling the house and my half-eaten dinner was on the table going cold.
‘You foster, don’t you?’ Meryl asked a little nervously.
‘Yes. Although I don’t have a child at present.’
‘I thought not. I pass your house in my car on the way to work and I used to see you setting off on your school run. I thought your routine had changed.’
I smiled again and nodded, and continued to look at Meryl, still with no inkling as to why she was here or why she’d taken such an interest in my routine. Donna, the girl whose story I told in The Saddest Girl in the World, had left us in November and I’d taken Christmas off and was now waiting for another foster child to arrive. I didn’t yet know who it would be. But what any of that had to do with Meryl I had no idea.
‘Is it possible for me to come in for a few moments?’ Meryl asked. ‘What I have to say is confidential. I’m so sorry to trouble you like this.’
