Dustbin Baby Read online

  Hannah will probably give me make-up. No, nail varnish, a really funky colour, and we’ll give each other a manicure at lunchtime and paint our nails.

  Lunch will be especially good too. We all take packed lunches and mine is always particularly boring. (Marion goes in for wedges of wholemeal bread and cheese and carrots and yogurt and bananas and sultanas, like I’m a very special kind of monkey.) However, Cathy and Hannah and I have this tradition that whenever it’s our birthday we nip out to the bakery for big cream doughnuts.

  My mouth waters now thinking about the doughnuts as I walk to school. I never ate my birthday breakfast. I want to have my birthday doughnut, I want to see Cathy and Hannah, I want my birthday to be fun like anyone else’s birthday. But I’m not anyone else. I’m me.

  I walk on, past the school, hurrying now in case anyone spots me. I start running. I can’t go to school today. I can’t go home. I have to go back.

  3

  ‘YOU CAN’T LOOK back. You have to look forwards.’ That’s what Cathy said, very firmly. But she wasn’t talking about me, of course, she was saying it to Hannah. It was just about this boy Hannah once went out with. I say ‘just’. It was Grant Lacey. If you went to our school you’d be seriously impressed. Even his name sounds special, like he’s a rock star or a famous footballer. The way the girls go on about him you’d really think he is. He might even get to be famous one day. He plays in the school orchestra, classical stuff and a bit of jazz for concerts, but we’ve all heard him riffing on his guitar at break. He’s really great, fast and furious, though he can be soulful when he wants to, singing along with his eyes looking straight at you as if he’s in love with you. He’s great at football too. Maybe not ultra-talented like the really sporty jocks, but they’re just pathetic, terrible show-offs and much too muscly. Grant is in the school football team, partly because he’s so popular – and partly because he’s got great legs, lean and shapely and strong and every girl in our school wants to ogle them.

  Well, that’s what the girls say. I say so too and act as if I’m crazy about Grant like Hannah and Cathy and everyone else but privately I think he’s a stupid show-off. I don’t even think he looks that great. He’s handsome. Too handsome. You know when you turn the colour tone too high on the television and all the reds glow lobster and the green is like the grass in Teletubby land? Someone’s turned the tone up inside Grant, so his face is too chiselled and clean cut, his hair too blond, his eyes too blue, his teeth too white in his perfect smile. That smile! I bet he practises it every night in his bathroom mirror. One corner of his lips quirks upwards, the other has just the hint of a droop so that he doesn’t look too eager. The smile of the super-cool. He smiled at Hannah and she came running.

  We were all surprised. Cathy and I are used to boys making a play for Hannah, of course. They look straight past Cathy and me. Cathy is big and bouncy and pounces on people in a friendly fashion like Tigger. I’m more like Piglet, little and pink, and I sometimes wear my hair in a pigtail too. Hannah is more of a Barbie doll than a cuddly toy. She’s blonde like Barbie, and she’s got that sort of figure too. Boys are always hanging round Hannah. Boys in our year at school, not Year Eleven like Grant. But Hannah sings in the choir and they get to practise with the orchestra sometimes after school, and a few weeks ago Grant casually suggested to Hannah that she might like to go to McDonald’s afterwards on their way home.

  Hannah is a vegetarian and disapproves of McDonald’s – but she’d have eaten a whole cow raw if Grant had suggested it. So off they went to McDonald’s and Hannah nibbled a few chips in total seventh heaven – seventy-seventh heaven, stars shining overhead and herds of little cows jumping over a galaxy of moons. Grant walked home with Hannah, going right out of his way to do so. Hannah said her heart was thumping like crazy wondering whether he was going to kiss her when he said goodbye. She wanted him to kiss her sooooo badly and yet she was terrified too, wishing she could brush her teeth and put lipgloss on first.

  She kept up a frantic gabble all the way down her road right up to her front door. Grant gave her his much-practised devastating smile, bent his head – and kissed her.

  Hannah held her breath. She told us it felt wonderful, but she was so worked up she was scared she might laugh or cry, and she was starting to feel dizzy not breathing. Grant looked deep into her eyes and she was so overcome she let it all go and snorted right in his face. He leapt backwards in alarm and he looked so comical she carried on giggling helplessly, spluttering and gasping, going into peal after peal of laughter.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she gasped, clutching her sides.

  Grant gave her one cool look of contempt and walked off. She tried calling after him but he didn’t even look back.

  She knew she’d blown it and burst into tears. She tried apologizing properly the next day at school but Grant just raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I didn’t realize you’re just a silly little kid,’ he said and he sauntered off.

  He ignored her completely after that. Poor Hannah was heartbroken. She wrote to him but he didn’t reply. She plucked up all her courage and phoned him, leaving sad little messages on his answerphone, but he never called her back. She invited him to her fourteenth birthday party but he didn’t turn up.

  ‘If only I hadn’t been so stupid,’ Hannah wailed. ‘How could I have acted like such an idiot? Snorting right in his face! And all this stuff came out my nose. I just about died when I saw myself in the mirror. He must have thought he was with a total loony, laughing like a jackass with green slime dripping out my nostrils!’

  I gave poor Hannah a hug and Cathy launched into her speech about not looking back, looking forward . . .

  But it was Hannah’s mum who was really comforting. She was so sweet at Hannah’s disco, boogying away just like us most of the evening, but when nearly everyone had gone home and Hannah had started crying because she’d so hoped Grant would turn up after all, Hannah’s mum put her arms round her and stroked her hair out of her eyes and kissed her on the nose and told her she was worth ten of Grant Lacey and she’d pull vastly superior boys in the future.

  I started crying too and everyone thought it was me doing my usual April Showers act, sad for poor Hannah. Well, I was sad for her – but I was also so jealous it’s a wonder I didn’t gleam emerald green all over. I wasn’t jealous of Hannah because of Grant Lacey. I was jealous of Hannah because she had a lovely mum.

  I’m even jealous of Cathy and her mum, though she’s a terrible worryguts who’s on the phone flapping if Cathy is five minutes late home from school and she calls her seriously embarrassing baby nicknames like Cuddlepie and Chubbychops. Cathy squirms when she does it in front of us. I shake my head sympathetically but I have to blink hard to stop tears spilling down my cheeks.

  I want a mum to cuddle and kiss me. I want a mum to worry about me. I want a mum to baby me.

  I don’t say a word about it to Cathy and Hannah of course. They think I’ve got a mum. They’ve only met Marion a couple of times. Maybe they were surprised that she’s much older than their mums but they didn’t say anything. They seemed to think it cool that I call her by her first name.

  ‘Did you call Marion “Mum” when you were little?’ Cathy asked.

  I fudged things by saying I’d always called her Marion.

  I can’t start calling Marion ‘Mum’ now.

  I’ve called lots of women ‘Mum’. I don’t even remember what the first one looked like. Patricia Williams. That’s the name in my file. It’s a huge great box file packed with all kinds of clippings and letters and reports. It’s got my name on it but I wasn’t even allowed to have one quick peep inside – not until I went to live with Marion. She insisted. She said she didn’t care what the rules were, it was my basic moral right to learn about my past. Marion’s great at getting her own way, even with senior social workers. She doesn’t shout. She doesn’t even argue. She just states things quietly but firmly. So they gave in and presented me with my brimming box file. Dust