Bad Girls Read online

  ‘The trunks are kept up in the loft, see. It is true, I swear it is,’ I insisted.

  ‘Um, you shouldn’t swear on it,’ said Melanie. ‘Because I know it’s all a lie. When your mum came round to collect you when you were at my house, she had a cup of coffee with my mum and she went on and on about you, and how she’d had all this yucky fertility treatment for ages and they’d given up all hope of ever having a baby and she said they’d tried to adopt but they were too old but then your mum suddenly started you. “Our little miracle baby.” That’s what she said. My mum told me. So you’re a liar!’

  ‘Liar!’ said Kim, but for some strange reason she still looked impressed. Her eyes flickered and I almost dared hope that she’d stop now, that she’d let me go.

  I don’t know whether I moved or not, edging one half-step sideways. But it was half a step too much.

  ‘Oh, no, you’re not going just yet, Mandy Miracle-Babe Loony-Liar,’ said Kim.

  ‘Liar,’ said Melanie, her head nodding.

  ‘Liar, liar, pants-on-fire,’ said Sarah.

  They all giggled at the word pants.

  ‘Yeah, what colour pants have you got on today, Mandy?’ said Kim, suddenly tugging at my skirt, whipping it up.

  ‘Stop it, stop it,’ I said, frantic, clutching it.

  But Kim still saw.

  ‘Oh how sweet,’ she said ‘White with little weeny rabbits on! To match the itsy-bitsy bunnies Mumsie knitted on your cardi.’ She flicked the rabbits with her long hard fingers. ‘Poor Mumsie, knitting and knitting for naughty Miracle-Mandy – when she goes round telling everyone she’s adopted! Mumsie’s going to be soooooooo upset when she finds out.’

  I felt as if she’d flicked a hole right through my stomach.

  ‘How will she find out?’ I said hoarsely.

  ‘Well, we’ll try asking her. Tomorrow, when she comes to collect you. “How old was Mandy when you adopted her, Mrs White?” I’ll say, and she’ll say, “Oh, Mandy’s my own little girl, dear” and I’ll say, “That’s not what Mandy says, she swears she’s adopted”,’ said Kim, her eyes gleaming.

  Melanie and Sarah giggled uncertainly, not sure whether Kim was joking.

  I was sure she was deadly serious. I could see her saying it. I could see Mummy’s face. I couldn’t stand it.

  ‘You’re wicked, wicked, wicked!’ I shouted and I slapped Kim’s face hard.

  She was a lot taller than me but my arm reached up of its own accord and my palm caught her cheek. It went bright red, though her other cheek was white. Her eyes went even darker.

  ‘Right,’ she said, and she stepped forward.

  I knew I was for it now. I shoved Sarah out the way, I dived past Melanie, I dashed out into the road to get away from Kim because I knew she was going to kill me.

  There was a big blur of red and a shriek of brakes. I saw the bus. I screamed. And then I fell.

  ‘Mandy! Oh my goodness! She’s dead!’

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ I said shakily.

  Arthur King was bending over me, his glasses lopsided, his mouth lopsided too, gaping open in shock. More people gathered in a ring around me. One woman knelt down beside me. They were all in a fog. I blinked, but everything stayed blurred.

  I struggled to sit up.

  ‘No, dear, you must lie still until the ambulance gets here,’ said the kneeling woman. ‘The bus driver’s phoning for one now.’

  An ambulance! Was I badly hurt? I twitched my arms and legs. They seemed to move about normally enough. I felt my head to see if there were any bumps. My hand hurt as I lifted it, pain tweaking up to my elbow.

  ‘Just take it easy, dear. Now then, tell me your name and address so we can let your mother know,’ said the woman.

  ‘She’s Mandy White. She’s in my class at school,’ said Arthur King.

  ‘Were you one of those wicked children chasing her?’ said the woman indignantly. ‘I saw! I was right at the front of the bus and I saw them chase her into the road. She could have been killed.’

  ‘I thought she was killed,’ said Arthur, shivering. ‘I should have stopped them.’

  ‘It wasn’t you,’ I said. I looked up at the woman. ‘It wasn’t him.’

  ‘It wasn’t the boy, it was those girls,’ said someone else.

  Everyone turned round. But Kim and Melanie and Sarah had gone.

  ‘Tormenting her. And she’s only a little kid too! How old are you dearie, eight?’

  ‘I’m ten,’ I said. ‘Eleven next month, actually.’

  ‘Where do you live, Mandy?’ asked the woman.

  ‘Fifty-six Woodside Road. But please, I’m OK, you don’t need to tell my mum. She’d get ever so worried. And she’s not at home anyway, she’s at the dentist,’ I said, trying to sit up again.

  I still couldn’t see properly. Then I suddenly realized why.

  ‘My glasses!’

  ‘I’ve got them here, Mandy. But they’ve snapped in two,’ said Arthur. ‘Shall I put them in your pocket?’

  ‘How’s the little girl?’ said the bus driver, steering Arthur King to one side and bending down beside me.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said shakily, worrying about my broken glasses.

  ‘The ambulance should be here any minute. You look OK to me, but you need to get checked over. They’ll take you to the hospital and someone will let your mum know.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said the woman, nodding.

  ‘No,’ I said, and I burst into tears.

  ‘There, now. It’s the shock.’

  ‘I feel like I’m in shock too,’ said the bus driver. ‘They all suddenly charged into the road, this little one, and then them others, and there was nothing I could do. Lucky job I’d slowed right down because I was nearly at the bus stop. I just bumped her, though. I think she fainted, I don’t think she was knocked out.’

  ‘I thought she’d died. She just dropped and she didn’t move,’ said Arthur, and his bony fingers felt their way past the kneeling woman and the bus driver and found my hand. ‘Don’t cry, Mandy. You are really going to be all right, aren’t you?’ he said.

  I couldn’t stop crying to say anything and my hand was starting to hurt so much I couldn’t even squeeze his fingers. They elbowed him right out of the way when the ambulance came and then I was carried away, even though all I wanted to do was to run home. I tried to stop acting like a big baby, crying like that. I didn’t have a hankie and my nose was running horribly right down to my lip, but the kind ambulance woman gave me a tissue and she put her arm round me and told me to cheer up, chicken. She even made clucky hen noises to make me laugh.

  Then we got to the hospital and I got scared again because I’d never been in hospital before, and when you see it on television there are always people shouting and covered in blood, and tables where they open you up and there are all your insides glistening in jelly.

  Only it wasn’t like that a bit. There was just a waiting-room and a lot of people sitting on chairs. I was put in a little cubicle and a nurse came to talk to me because I was on my own. Then a doctor came and prodded me and shone a light in my eyes, and then I was taken to be X-rayed and that didn’t hurt a bit though I had to keep still. The radiographer told me how the X-ray machine worked and I asked some more questions and she said I was a clever girl. I was almost starting to enjoy myself. Then I went back to the cubicle to wait for the X-rays to be developed and suddenly I heard Mum calling. Then she came rushing into the cubicle, her face grey, her cheek all puffy from the dentist’s injections.

  ‘Oh, Mandy!’ she said, and she scooped me into her arms.

  It was stupid, but I started crying all over again, and she rocked me as if I was a real baby.

  ‘There, now. It’s OK. Mummy’s here.’

  I burrowed against her soft front and smelt her warm toast-and-talcum smell. I felt so bad about telling Kim and the others that she wasn’t my real mum that I cried harder.

  ‘Hang on, poppet. I’m