Dustbin Baby Read online

  Whenever we have History and we have to imagine what it would feel like to be a Roman centurion or a Tudor queen or a London child in the Blitz I can always pretend I’m there and I can write it all down and Mrs Hunter gives me excellent marks. Even though I’m imagining so hard I forget about paragraphs and punctuation and my spelling goes all to pot.

  But it’s OK at this school. Everything’s fine. I’ve caught up. It’s not like some of the other schools where they thought I was really thick or mad or they knew all about me and the teachers whispered and raised their eyebrows and the kids teased me and called me names. Oh God, I sound as if I should be playing my violin, sooooo sorry for poor little me.

  I’m not poor, though I am little. No-one knows about me at this school. I’m just April and I’m in Year Nine and people only know me because I’m the girl with the long fair hair who goes round with Cathy and Hannah. No-one thinks I’m odd, although I get teased a bit for being a crybaby. I howled in class the other day when we were told about destitute child refugees, without their parents. I was still blubbering at breaktime. Cathy had her arm round me and Hannah was mopping my eyes with a wad of tissues when a teacher walking past got all fussed and asked if I was unwell. Hannah said, ‘It’s just April, she’s always crying,’ and Cathy said, ‘We call her April Showers.’

  That’s my nickname now. It’s better than April Fool.

  It’s much, much better than Dustbin Baby.

  That’s the real me. I was in the newspapers. I suppose it’s a special claim to fame. Not many people make the front page the day they’re born. But not many people get chucked out like rubbish. One look and it’s, ‘No way, don’t want this baby, let’s chuck her in the dustbin.’

  Funny kind of cradle. A pizza box for a pillow, newspaper as a coverlet, scrunched-up tissues serving as a mattress.

  What kind of mother could dump her own baby in a dustbin?

  No, I’m not being fair. I don’t think it was just that she couldn’t stand the sight of me. She was probably scared silly. Maybe no-one else knew about the baby and she didn’t dare tell anyone?

  Imagine.

  Why doesn’t she want me? She’s on her own. She can’t look after me. She’s very young. That’s why she can’t keep me.

  So the pains start and she doesn’t know what to do. Maybe she’s still at school. She clutches her tummy and gasps and the girl next to her asks if she’s all right. She can’t say, ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’m just having a baby and it’s absolute agony.’ So maybe she just shakes her head and says she’s got a bad stomach ache. Maybe she makes out it’s that time of the month. Maybe that’s what she really thinks! Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s having a baby?

  No, she does know, deep down, but it’s so scary she’s not let herself think about it. She hasn’t made any plans at all because she can’t face up to it. Even now, when she can feel me struggling to get out of her, she doesn’t quite believe that I exist.

  It doesn’t seem real at all, sitting in her lesson at school. I wonder what she likes best? Is it History, like me? Is she clever? Does she have a lot of friends? Maybe not. Not a friend close enough to tell. Maybe she’s quite a big girl and no-one’s really looked at her closely and noticed that she’s put on a lot of weight. She’s worn large, loose jumpers and skived off PE and somehow got away with it.

  What about at home though? What about her mum?

  Maybe her mum doesn’t bother about her much. Maybe she’s scared of her dad. That’s why she hasn’t told. She isn’t close to anyone at home.

  That’s how it happened. She isn’t the silly sort of girl who sleeps around. She’s quiet and shy. She’s not really popular with boys but a while ago – OK, nine months ago – she was at a party, feeling a bit out of it, all set to make some excuse about having to go home early, but then this boy she’s never seen before, someone’s cousin, comes and sits down beside her, talking to her as if he really wants to get to know her.

  They can scarcely hear each other because the music is so loud so they go in the kitchen and have a few drinks together. She’s not used to drinking, only had a few sips of wine and a can or two of lager before, she hasn’t liked the taste, but now she’s drinking something sweet, with fruit salad floating on top, and it slips down as easily as anything and makes her feel good. The boy makes her feel good too. He’s holding her hand now, his head close to hers, and they have another drink, and another. There are too many people in the kitchen so they take their next drinks out into the garden.

  It was so hot in the kitchen she felt her face glowing as pink as her drink but it’s cold outdoors and she starts shivering. He puts his arm round her to warm her up.

  ‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ he says, and then he kisses her. She can’t believe this is happening to her at last. It’s too perfect, too beautiful, but then it starts to get too hasty, too worrying. What is he doing? No, she doesn’t want to, not that, please don’t. Please, he says, you know you want to really. I love you, he says. It’s the first time anyone’s ever said ‘I love you,’ and so she lets him love her and then it’s all over and he walks away and leaves her lying there in the garden all by herself.

  She can’t find him when she stops crying and tidies herself and goes back into the house. She searches upstairs and downstairs. She asks people if they’ve seen him. He’s called . . .

  I don’t know. Maybe she doesn’t even know. He’s disappeared anyway. So she goes home and cries some more in bed and when she wakes up the next morning it’s as if it’s all been a dream. She isn’t sure it really did happen.

  She doesn’t forget him. She thinks about him all day and half the night but he stops being a real person to her. It’s as if he’s a rock star, someone to daydream about.

  She doesn’t think about babies. You don’t get pregnant if you have a vivid dream or fantasize about a boy in a band. But the weeks go by. Then the months. She knows perfectly well that there are all sorts of changes going on in her body but she doesn’t want to think about them. Every time anything too scary crosses her mind she sings her favourite songs over and over to blot out the worries. Of course it’s not real. It can’t happen to her.

  But it is happening. It’s April 1st and she can’t keep still on her chair. She’s scared she’s going to have an awful accident in public, so she staggers to her feet and tells her teacher that she feels bad. She looks so white and sweaty that the teacher thinks she’d better go home.

  She doesn’t go home. Her mum will be sprawled on the sofa watching television. She doesn’t know where she can go. The pain’s getting worse. It’s not just in her stomach. It’s growing, taking her over altogether, so that on the bus into town she can’t sit still, she can’t stop herself groaning. She has to get up before her usual stop and is sick in the gutter the second she steps off the bus.

  She wonders if this can really be the reason for the pain, a simple stomach bug making her sick, but the pain is still there, the bug is getting bigger and bigger, battling inside her until she can hardly stand. People are staring at her so she drags herself away, making for the Ladies’ room in the shopping centre. She locks herself in the cubicle and lets herself groan the way she wants, but she can hear muttering outside and after a minute or two there’s a knock on the door.

  ‘Are you all right in there?’

  She says nothing, hoping that they might just go away, but they keep on knocking. She hears keys jangling. They’ll come barging right in.

  ‘I’ve got this tummy bug,’ she gasps.

  ‘Shall I call for the store nurse?’

  ‘No! No, I’m OK now. I’m coming out.’

  She takes a deep breath, praying for the pain to stop for a minute, and gets herself out the door, past their gawping faces, shuffling right out the Ladies’, looking for somewhere, anywhere, she can be alone.

  She staggers through the shopping centre, out the back, round behind the cinema. She’s making for another Ladies’ toilet, one where there won’t b