Dustbin Baby Read online

  I went into the bathroom and stared where the bath had been. Daddy had changed it into a shower stall because Sylvia said the bath gave her the creeps. It was one change too many. I wanted the bath back. I wanted to lie down in it and pretend I was cuddled up to Mummy. I wanted to prise open her eyelids so she would stay awake for ever.

  I wanted her so badly.

  I started whispering her name. The whispers got louder and louder until I was screaming. There was a lot of knocking at the door. I thought I’d locked it but Daddy’s full weight made the lock burst open and then there were fingers digging into my shoulders and I was lifted off the floor and shaken so that my head jerked backwards and forwards and the bathroom became a fairground ride.

  Daddy’s voice bellowed, ‘STOP THAT SCREAMING!’ I couldn’t stop because he was scaring me so. I wouldn’t stop for Jennifer. I wouldn’t stop for Mrs Stevenson who came rushing around to see if I was being murdered. I screamed until my throat was raw. Daddy had to send for the doctor who stuck a needle in my bottom. He said it would send me to sleep – which made me scream all the more.

  The doctor said I was suffering from ‘Nervous Reaction’. It wasn’t surprising, given the circumstances. He said I just needed lots of love and reassurance.

  I suppose Daddy tried. For a day or two. ‘Don’t look so droopy, April. Daddy’s here. Daddy loves you. Come on, how about a smile? Am I going to have to tickle you? Tickle, tickle, tickle,’ and his hard fingertips would poke under my chin or into my armpit until Daddy interpreted my grimace as a grin.

  Most of the time he let me mope. I was in trouble at school. I put my head down on my desk and shut my eyes. The teacher asked Daddy if I was getting enough sleep at night. He said I was getting too much, if anything. I wasn’t always waking up in time to run to the bathroom. There were always damp sheets flapping in the back garden now. Daddy got angry and called me a baby. Jennifer said it wasn’t really my fault and I couldn’t help being nervy, like my mother.

  ‘She wasn’t her real mother,’ said Daddy.

  He wasn’t my real father and I’m glad, glad, glad there isn’t a drop of his blood in my body. He was glad too, because when he’d eventually had enough of me – only months after Mummy died – he could shove me straight back to the social workers. Into Care.

  Only it seemed that no-one really cared for me now.

  I wonder if Mummy would have given up on me too. I’ve tried so hard but I can’t really remember her. She’s just a feeling, a faint smell of lavender, a sad sigh.

  I think I still need to see her though. I know where she is.

  9

  THE GREENWOOD CEMETERY. It was written in my records. I imagined it a real green wood, a gothic fairytale cemetery, tall yews and ivy and marble angels, but Greenwood is a London suburb and the cemetery is a long hike up a busy dual carriageway. I get to the gates at last and look for someone to give me directions. There’s no-one around.

  I don’t like it being so empty. I wish I had someone with me. I really want to run right back to the station – but I can’t give up now.

  I could wait and ask Marion . . .

  No. I’m here. It’s OK. I’m not a little kid. I don’t believe in ghosts even though I’m so haunted by the past.

  I set off, selecting a path at random. There are a few angels, but their wings are broken and some have their heads knocked right off. I pat a pair of little mossy feet, stroke a marble robe, hold hands with a tiny cherub without a nose. It seems so shocking that no-one tends these graves any more. Vandals whack at them with baseball bats, thinking it’s a right laugh. I want to cry even though the people in the graves have long ago crumpled into dust. A hundred years or more. Too long ago for Mummy.

  I try another path, a bit scared of getting lost. My footsteps crunch on the gravel. I stop every now and then, wondering if I can hear someone else. I stop and peer round. The new leaves on the trees rustle, branches bobbing up and down. There are so many places someone could be hiding. Boys with bats, vagrants, junkies . . .

  I’m being silly. There’s no-one here. The footsteps I keep hearing are my own. I take a deep breath and walk on through the Victorian graves, reaching the classier end of the cemetery, all plinths and columns and little houses for the dead. I wonder what it’s like to trace your family way back, to finger the gold lettering and find your great-great-great-great grandmother. My great-great-great-great grandmother could have been a posh old lady in a silk crinoline or a wretched old beggar-woman in rags. I’ll never know.

  I hurry past, marching towards the regimented rows of recent gravestones, wincing at freshly dug mounds heaped with wreaths. I walk up one row and down the next, wishing the dead could be conveniently rearranged in alphabetical order. Maybe Mummy’s grave isn’t properly marked anyway. I don’t think Daddy would have wanted to fork out on a gravestone. And how would he have it engraved? Only sleeping? Much loved wife of Daniel, deeply mourned almost-mother of April?

  I trek backwards and forwards, my eyes watering in the brisk wind. I’m never going to find her. I don’t need to see the exact spot. It’s better to think of her the way I used to, sleeping like Snow White in the green wood of my imagination . . .

  There she is! JANET JOHNSON. Bright gold lettering on shiny black stone – much too garish for Mummy. And there’s a photo, a heart shape behind glass. I go closer, my heart beating.

  It’s not her.

  It has to be her.

  It could be a different Janet Johnson, it’s a common enough name – though the dates are right. It is her.

  She looks young. She’s wearing some very fancy white bow in her hair. No, you fool, it’s a bride’s veil. It’s a wedding-day photo. Typical Daddy – he’d insist the day she married him had to be the happiest day of her life. Maybe it was. She looks radiant. It’s the word you always use about brides, but she truly looks lit up from within, light shining out of her eyes, her mouth open, showing her gleaming teeth.

  She never looked like that when I knew her. The light had been switched off. Poor Mummy.

  I wish I could remember her properly. I wonder if she really loved me. Not the way she loved Daddy, but in a warm, soft, motherly way. Or was I always the odd little dustbin baby who never quite scrubbed up sweet enough?

  I’m crying. I fumble in my schoolbag for a tissue.

  ‘What’s the matter then, love?’

  I freeze.

  A man dodges through the graves towards me – a man with wild hair and dirty clothes, clutching a bottle in his hand. I look round. No-one else. Just him and me. And I’m a long, long way away from the cemetery gates.

  I turn sharply and start walking away.

  ‘Hey! Don’t ignore me! I’m trying to be helpful. Want a hankie, eh?’ He pulls out a filthy rag from his trouser pocket and waves it at me.

  Is he just being kind? He doesn’t look it. I shake my head and give him a quick, scared smile.

  ‘Thank you – but I’m OK. Well, I’ve got to go now. Goodbye.’

  ‘Don’t go! I want to talk. What you crying for, eh? Want a drink? It’ll make you feel better, darling.’

  ‘No. Really.’

  ‘Suit yourself. All the more for me.’ He tips the bottle and drinks.

  I walk on but he walks with me, lurching a little.

  ‘Someone die then?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. It’s . . . my mother and – and my father’s just over there.’ I gesture vaguely beyond the graves. ‘I’m going to catch up with him now. Goodbye.’

  I run for it. I don’t think he believes me. He calls after me but I don’t stop. I hear his footsteps and I clench my fists and run harder, as fast as I can, my schoolbag banging against my hip. I run and run and run, twisting my ankle on tufts of grass, staggering as I zig-zag through gravestones, on and on, wondering if I’m really going in the right direction. Maybe he’s catching me up, his grimy hands reaching out to grab me – but there’s the arch of the cemetery gates, I’m nearly there! I rush towards them, through