Will You Love Me?: The story of my adopted daughter Lucy
This eleventh memoir and latest title from the internationally bestselling author and foster carer Cathy Glass can either be read as a full eBook or in 3 serialised eBook-only parts. Will You Love Me tells the true story of Cathy’s adopted daughter Lucy.Lucy was born to a single mother who had been abused and neglected for most of her own childhood. Right from the beginning Lucy’s mother couldn’t cope, but it wasn’t until Lucy reached eight years old that she was finally taken into permanent foster care.By the time Lucy is brought to live with Cathy she is eleven years old and severely distressed after being moved from one foster home to another. Withdrawn, refusing to eat and three years behind in her schooling, it is thought that the damage Lucy has suffered is irreversible.But Cathy and her two children bond with Lucy quickly, and break through to Lucy in a way no-one else has been able to, finally showing her the loving home she never believed existed. Cathy and Lucy believe they were always destined to be mother and daughter – it just took them a little while to find each other.
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Certain details in this story, including names, places and dates, have been changed to protect the family’s privacy.
HarperElement
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
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London SE1 9GF
First published by HarperElement 2013
FIRST EDITION
© Cathy Glass 2013
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016
Cover photograph © Urban Zone/Alamy (posed by model)
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
Cathy Glass asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007530915
Ebook Edition © September 2013 ISBN: 9780007530922
Version: 2018-04-06
Contents
Chapter Four: Too Late to Help
Chapter Seven: No Chance to Say Goodbye
Chapter Nine: ‘I Hate You All!’
Chapter Ten: ‘A Family of My Own’
Chapter Thirteen: ‘Do Our Best’
Chapter Fifteen: ‘I Don’t Want Her Help!’
Chapter Sixteen: Testing the Boundaries
Chapter Eighteen: ‘I’d Rather Have You’
Chapter Nineteen: Happy Holiday
Chapter Twenty: ‘Will You Love Me?’
Chapter Twenty-One: ‘No One Wants Me’
Chapter Twenty-Two: A New Year, a New Social Worker
Chapter Twenty-Three: ‘She’s OK for a Girl’
Chapter Twenty-Four: Special Day
Chapter Twenty-Five: Thunderstorm
Chapter Twenty-Six: ‘I’ll Try My Best’
A big thank-you to my editor, Holly; my literary agent Andrew; and Carole, Vicky, Laura and all the team at HarperCollins.
‘Every time I hear a newborn baby cry …
Then I know why,
I believe.’
‘I Believe’ by Ervin Drake
I heard Pat, Lucy’s carer, knock on Lucy’s bedroom door, and then a slight creak as the door opened, followed by: ‘Your new carer, Cathy, is on the phone for you. Can you come and talk to her?’
There was silence and then I heard the bedroom door close. A few moments later Pat’s voice came on the phone again. ‘I told her, but she’s still refusing to even look at me. She’s just sitting there on the bed staring into space.’
My worries for Lucy rose.
‘What should I do now?’ Pat asked, anxiously. ‘Shall I ask my husband to talk to her?’
‘Does Lucy have a better relationship with him?’ I asked.
‘No, not really,’ Pat said. ‘She won’t speak to him, either. We might have to leave her here until Monday, when her social worker is back at work.’
‘Then Lucy will have the whole weekend to brood over this,’ I said. ‘It will be worse. Let’s try again to get her to the phone. I’m sure it will help if she hears I’m not an ogre.’
Pat gave a little snort of laughter. ‘Jill said you were very good with older children,’ referring to my support social worker.
‘That was sweet of her,’ I said. ‘Now, is your phone fixed or cordless?’
‘Cordless.’
‘Excellent. Take the handset up with you, knock on Lucy’s bedroom door, go in and tell her again I would like to talk to her, please. But this time, leave the phone on her bed facing up, so she can hear me, and then come out. I might end up talking to myself, but I’m used to that.’
Pat gave another snort of nervous laughter. ‘Fingers crossed,’ she said.
I heard Pat’s footsteps going up the stairs again, followed by the knock on Lucy’s bedroom door and the slight creak as it opened. Pat’s voice trembled a little as she said: ‘Cathy’s still on the phone and she’d like to talk to you.’
There was a little muffled sound, presumably as Pat put the phone on Lucy’s bed, and then I heard the bedroom door close. I was alone with Lucy.
Lucy and I believe we were destined to be mother and daughter; it just took us a while to find each other. Lucy was eleven years old when she came to me. I desperately wish it could have been sooner. It breaks my heart when I think of what happened to her, as I’m sure it will break yours. To tell Lucy’s story – our story – properly, we need to go back to when she was a baby, before I knew her. With the help of records we’ve been able to piece together Lucy’s early life, so here is her story, right from the start …
Chapter One
It was dark outside and, at nine o’clock on a February evening in England, bitterly cold. A cruel northeasterly wind whipped around the small parade of downbeat shops: a newsagent’s, a small grocer’s, a bric-a-brac shop selling everything from bags of nails to out-of-date packets of sweets and biscuits, and at the end a launderette. Four shops with flats above forming a dismal end to a rundown street of terraced houses, which had once been part of the council’s regeneration project, until its budget had been cut.
