Dustbin Baby Read online

  ‘Not if you don’t want it to happen.’

  ‘Well, I don’t. You mean stop boarding at Fairleigh?’

  ‘That’s maybe not such a bad idea. You’re very bright, April, even though you’ve still got a lot of catching up to do. If you went to a proper secondary school you could take your GCSEs and A-levels and—’

  ‘And read History at university, yeah, yeah, I know. Though I’m not bright, I’m rubbish at heaps of things.’

  ‘And you don’t seem exactly happy at school. You haven’t got many friends, apart from Poppy.’

  ‘I’m OK. I don’t want heaps of friends. Anyway, I’ve got you. If I get fostered I wouldn’t be able to see you at weekends, would I?’

  ‘You could maybe see a lot more of me.’

  ‘How?’

  Marion laughed nervously.

  ‘Maybe you’re not so bright after all, April. I want to be your foster mother.’

  I stared at her. She bravely met my eyes. ‘You probably think it’s a ridiculous idea. It is. I mean, I’m much too old and I’m single – though I’ve had a detailed chat with social services and they seem to think these aren’t insurmountable problems. But of course you should really be with a proper family.’

  ‘I don’t want a proper family!’

  I thought about it, my head whirling. I wasn’t sure I wanted Marion either. She was good as my teacher, fine as my friend – but she wasn’t a bit like a mother. I couldn’t imagine living with her all the time.

  I saw her bite her lip worriedly. I was being cruel keeping her waiting. So I took a deep breath.

  ‘Thank you very much. It’s very kind of you,’ I said politely, as if she’d offered me a cup of tea rather than a permanent home. I struggled harder. ‘It will be . . . wonderful.’

  Marion smiled wryly.

  ‘It won’t be wonderful living with a grumpy old stick like me. I’ll nag you about homework and I’ll lecture you silly and I’ll twitch terribly if you shorten your skirt or wear too much makeup. But I think we could get on well together. I’d love to give it a try. Of course I know I can’t be like a real mother to you, April, but—’

  ‘I don’t want you to act like a real mother.’ I still had one, even though I didn’t have any idea who she was. And I’d had too many foster mothers to want another, even if that had to be Marion’s official title.

  ‘Will I call you Mum or Auntie or what?’

  ‘I think you should just carry on calling me Marion. Though if you’re really bad we’d better go back to Miss Bean!’

  It took a long time to get everything properly sorted out. Marion had to go on a special course. I had to see a new social worker, Elaine. There were lots of meetings about me, nearly all behind my back.

  ‘It’s my life, so why can’t I be there?’ I asked Elaine.

  ‘I know, it does seem stupid, April, but it’s just the way we work,’ she said, playing around with a little bunny on her desk.

  ‘Why is it taking such ages? Marion wants to foster me and I want to be fostered by her so why can’t we just get on with it?’

  ‘I know, it’s such a bore, but we’ve got to proceed carefully, prepare both of you, compile all the reports—’

  I suddenly felt sick. ‘Will Marion have to see all the stuff about me in my file?’

  ‘I think she’s seen it already,’ she said gently.

  ‘I thought that was private! You mean she knows about the times I went out thieving with Gina?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And – she knows about Pearl?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she still wants to foster me?’

  ‘She does.’

  That silenced me. Elaine reached across her desk and patted my hand. ‘Marion understands, April. Don’t worry. I don’t think there’ll be any problems about her fostering you. One of my other clients has recently been fostered by a single woman and that seems to be working well. I’m sure it will all work out beautifully for you and Marion.’

  It has worked. But maybe not beautifully.

  I left Fairleigh. Everyone sang a song for me the last day to wish me luck. Poppy sang an old Shirley Temple song, ‘On the good ship Lollipop’ – she just sang those five words all the way through until the music stopped. I laughed and then I cried and couldn’t stop. I didn’t really like Fairleigh but I’d lived there five years so it was like home. I didn’t fit in but that was nothing new. I didn’t fit in anywhere.

  I wondered if I’d ever fit in with Marion. I had my own blue bedroom, with blue floral curtains and a matching duvet. She’d even bought me a new blue nightie and a blue quilted dressing-gown. I would have liked a brighter blue and I prefer wearing pyjamas and I don’t ever bother with a dressing-gown but I pretended to be very grateful. I tried giving Marion a hug but we’d been teacher and pupil too long. We both found embracing embarrassing.

  Marion hasn’t ever tried to kiss me goodnight but she pats my shoulder and then tucks the duvet tight round my neck and under my chin. I always rear up out of it the moment she goes out the room. I hate anything round my head. If I burrow under the covers by accident in my sleep I always wake up in a panic.

  Maybe I was stuck in that dustbin for hours and hours.

  Of course I can’t remember what it was like. It just seems as if I can. I’m nearly there. I’m off the train, on the tube. There’s no stopping me now. I know where I’m going.

  I have to find The Pizza Place in the High Street. If it’s still there. Even if it is, it’s mad to think there’ll still be the same dustbins round the back. And even madder to think my mother will be there.

  Marion is almost as good as a real mother. She’s been so kind to me. It’s cruel of me to keep her worrying at home, wondering where on earth I am.

  She won’t be really worried. She’ll be anxious, she’ll be concerned, like a teacher when someone goes missing from the playground. But I’ve seen mothers lose their children. I’ve seen that terrible chewed-up look on their faces, heard their high-pitched calling. I’ve seen Cathy and Hannah’s mums the day the school coach got a double puncture and we were all hours late after a trip to the Science Museum. Marion looked perfectly calm and collected. She’d spent her time reassuring everyone that we were all OK, school coaches were forever breaking down and we’d all turn up safe and sound.

  Safe and sound. These are the words that sum her up, though she’d circle them in an essay and say I was using tired language. She’s so safe you can believe everything she says and never feel she’s going behind your back to get rid of you. She’s so sound you know there’s no nasty rotten bit of her ready to turn sour on you. She’s there, safe and sound, if you want her.

  I do want her.

  I want my mum too.

  16

  THE PIZZA PLACE is still there, halfway down the High Street, by a little alleyway. I peer in the window, looking at all the people eating their pizzas. I can’t see anyone on their own. No woman looking out the window, waiting for me.

  I walked past, down the alleyway.

  She’s not here.

  I don’t know why I’m crying. Of course she isn’t here.

  I’m in the right place. There’s the dustbin. Well, it’s not one single silver dustbin the way I’d imagined. There are lots of wheely-bins, large, stinking and unattractive. I don’t know if there was a real dustbin once or whether the journalists fudged things because Wheely-bin Waif has less impact. I stare at the wheely-bins, breathing shallowly. How could anyone stuff a newborn baby in those dank depths? I’ve imagined it over and over and yet I’ve never thought about the smell.

  I must have reeked when that boy raked through the rubbish and found me. Yet he cradled me inside his shirt. That’s what the newspaper said. Maybe it just made a good story.

  It’s my story and I don’t know what’s made up and what isn’t. I’ve made some of it up myself to fill in the gaps. I feel as if I’m not real. Everyone makes up their own version of me.

  I don’t k