Dustbin Baby Read online

  ‘Hey, hey, they’re only pretty little earrings,’ said Dad. ‘It’s not as if she’s got a nose-stud or a tattoo.’

  ‘Yet!’ Jodie whispered to me.

  She’d tried going to a tattoo parlour but they said she was too young. She inked butterflies and blue- birds and daisy chains up and down her arms and legs with my felt pens instead. She looked incred- ible in her underwear with her red-gold hair and her earrings and her fake tattoos – but her clothes were mostly as dull and little-girly as mine. Jodie didn’t have enough money to buy much herself. Mum was in charge when it came to clothes- buying. Dad didn’t dare slip Jodie some money any more. She’d told him this story about her clunky school shoes rubbing her toes sore, so he gave her forty pounds for some new ones. She bought her first pair of proper high heels, fantastic flashy sparkly red shoes, and clacked happily round the house in them, deaf to Mum’s fury. She let me try them out. They were so high I immediately fell over, twisting my ankle, but I didn’t care. I felt like Dorothy wearing her ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz.

  Jodie was wearing the clunky school shoes this morning, and the grey Moorcroft uniform. She’d done her best to customize it, hitching up the skirt as high as she could, and she’d pinned funny badges on her blazer. She’d inked little cartoon characters all over her school tie. Mum started on a new nag about the tie, but she interrupted herself when she heard the letterbox bang.

  ‘Post, Pearl. Go and get it, pet.’

  I’m Pearl. When I was born, Mum called me her precious little pearl and the name stuck. I was born prematurely and had to stay tucked up in an incu- bator for more than a month. I only weighed a kilo and was still so little when they were allowed to bring me home that Dad could cradle me in one of his hands. They were very worried about Jodie’s reaction to me. She was a harem-scarem little girl who always twisted off her dolls’ heads and kicked her teddies – but she was incredibly careful with me. She held me very gently and kissed my little wrinkled forehead and stroked my fluffy hair and said I was the best little sister in the whole world.

  I picked up the post. A catalogue for Mum (she wrote off for them all – clothes, furniture, commem- orative plates, reproduction china dolls – anything she thought would add a touch of class to our household) and a letter addressed to Mr and Mrs Wells – Mum and Dad. A proper letter in a big white envelope, not a bill.

  I wondered who would be writing to them. I hoped it wasn’t a letter from the head of Moorcroft complaining about Jodie. I knew she and her friends had been caught smoking once or twice, and sometimes they sneaked out of school at lunch time to go and get chips and didn’t always bother to go back again. Jodie didn’t like smoking, she told me privately; it made her feel sick and dizzy, and she also said the school chips were much better than the pale greasy ones in polystyrene pouches from the chippy, but she was trying to keep in with Marie and Siobhan and Shanice. They were the three toughest girls in Jodie’s class. If you kept them on your side, you were laughing.

  ‘Pearl?’ Mum called.

  I fingered the letter in my hand, wondering if I should stick it up under my school sweater until we could steam it open in private. But then Mum came out into the hall and saw the letter before I could whip it out of sight. She barely glanced at the cata- logue, even though it was the one for little enamel pill boxes, one of her favourites. She took hold of the letter and ran her finger under the seal.

  ‘It’s for Dad too,’ I said quickly. He’d be softer on Jodie; he always was.

  ‘Mr and Mrs,’ said Mum, opening it.

  There was a letter inside and some sort of brochure. I peered at it as best I could. I saw the words boarding school. My heart started beating fast. Boarding school, boarding school, boarding school! Oh God, they were going to send Jodie to boarding school. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  ‘No, Mum!’ I said, my voice a little squeak.

  Mum was reading the letter intently, her head moving from side to side. ‘No what?’ she murmured, still reading.

  ‘Don’t send Jodie away!’ I said.

  Mum blinked at me. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, walking back into the living room. She flapped the letter in front of Dad’s face.

  ‘Look, Joe, look!’ she said. ‘Here it is in black and white!’

  ‘Well I’ll be damned!’ said Dad.

  ‘I told you so!’ said Mum triumphantly.

  Jodie pushed her cornflakes bowl away and got up from the table, taking no notice.

  ‘Sit down, Jodie,’ said Mum.

  ‘But I’ll be late for school,’ said Jodie.

  ‘It won’t matter just this once,’ said Mum. ‘Sit down! You too, Pearl. Your dad and I have got some- thing to tell you.’

  ‘What?’ said Jodie, sitting back on the very edge of her chair. ‘You’re getting a divorce?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’

  ‘You’re going to have another baby?’

  ‘Stop it now! Just button that lip of yours for two seconds.’

  Jodie mimed buttoning her lips. I copied her, zipping mine.

  Mum glared. ‘Now, don’t start copying your sister, miss! Shame on you, Jodie, you’re a bad example. It’s just as well you’ll be making a move. I can’t believe how badly you behave nowadays.’

  ‘You are sending her off to this boarding school!’ I wailed.

  ‘What boarding school?’ said Jodie, looking star- tled. ‘You mean you’re getting rid of me?’

  ‘No, no, of course we’re not,’ said Dad. ‘We’re all going. I’ve got a new job. We both have, your mum and me.’

  We stared at them. New jobs? At a school? Dad worked as a carpenter for a small building firm and Mum was a waitress at Jenny’s Teashop opposite the town hall.

  ‘Are you going to be teachers?’ I said doubtfully.

  Dad burst out laughing. ‘Heaven help any pupils if I had to teach them their reading and writing! No, no, sweetheart, I’m going to be the school care- taker and your mum’s going to be the school cook. We saw this advert for a married couple and it seemed like we might fit the bill.’

  ‘It’s time for a move,’ said Mum. ‘We need to get you girls away to a decent environment where you can grow up into little ladies.’

  Jodie made a very unladylike noise. ‘We like it here, don’t we, Pearl? We don’t want to go to some awful jolly-hockey-sticks boarding school.’

  I picked up the school brochure. I shivered when I saw the coloured photograph of the huge grey Victorian building. My fingers traced the gables and turrets and the tower. It was called Melchester College, but it was just like my dream-world Mansion Towers.

  ‘Look!’ I said, pointing. ‘Look, Jodie!’

  Jodie looked too. She bit her lip, fiddling with the little row of earrings running down her left ear. ‘We’d live there?’ she said.

  ‘There’s a special caretaker’s flat,’ said Dad.

  ‘It’s got all the mod cons even though it all looks so old fashioned,’ said Mum.

  ‘So you’ve both been to see it? When?’ said Jodie. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Did you fix it all up behind our backs?’

  ‘Hey, hey, none of it’s been fixed up,’ said Dad. ‘We haven’t even been to see the college ourselves. We went to this interview at a hotel in London while you two were at school. We didn’t say anything because we didn’t want to get your hopes up. To tell the truth I never thought in a million years they’d take me on. I mean, I’m fine with wood but I’m a bit of a botcher when it comes to plumbing or painting.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Joe, you’re a skilled carpenter and a fine odd-job man. What else could they possibly want?’ said Mum.

  ‘No, no, I think we got the job because of your cooking and management skills,’ said Dad, reaching out and patting her hand. ‘You were dead impressive at the interview, Sharon – the way you had that list of sample meals all sorted out, that was fantastic.’

  ‘Where is this Melchester College? Why can’t I still go to Moorcroft? I don’t mind a