Dustbin Baby

  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
bin Baby, This Is Your Life.

  I knew lots of it already, of course. I’d made a scrapbook of my life when I was little. They don’t like you using the word ‘scrapbook’ because they don’t want you to feel you’re like little throw-away scrappy bits of paper. Though that’s the way I do feel. You know those linked dolls you can make if you fold a piece of paper and cut out a girl shape? They all look identical but you can colour them all in differently and put glasses on one and bright lipstick on another and choose varying patterns for their dresses. I’m like all those paper dolls. I’ve stayed the same shape girl all my life but each time I’ve gone to a new home someone’s coloured me in differently.

  Patricia Williams was my first mum, though she wasn’t permanent. She took in foster kids. She’d been doing it for years, babies a speciality, so they took me out of hospital when I was a few days old and she looked after me until I was nearly one.

  I wonder if she remembers me? If only I could remember her! I have these dreams where someone’s lifting me up and holding me close and kissing me. Cathy’s got a dream journal and writes all her dreams down. We were all discussing our dreams one day, cosily squashed up together in a corner of the playground, and just this once I forgot to be cautious and started telling them about my recurring dream. Luckily they started hooting with laughter long before I was finished, totally misinterpreting everything, thinking I was dreaming about a romantic encounter with some boy. I let them carry on thinking that because it was less embarrassing than the truth. Normal people don’t dream about being babies. I don’t know who the dream arms belonged to. Not my mother. She didn’t hold me close and kiss me. She probably seized me by the ankles and shoved me straight in the dustbin.

  So have I been dreaming about this first foster mother, Mrs Williams? I’ve got an idea of her in my head, big and soft and smelling of toast and fresh ironing. I wish she’d pick me up in her arms now. OK, it’s crazy. But I want her so.

  I’m going to try to see her. I’ve got her address from the file. She’s probably moved away ages ago but I still want to see the house. It might feel familiar. And if she is still there I might recognize her.

  I know I shouldn’t just take off on my own. I should discuss it properly with Marion. But I don’t want to tell her anything. She’d want to take me herself. I don’t want to go with her. I want to do it by myself.

  It’s weird. I haven’t really gone anywhere by myself before. Well, I nip down to the corner shops to get the paper for Marion, and I’ve been trusted to buy a sliced wholemeal loaf and a jar of Gold Blend, and I sometimes choose a video – but that’s as far as I go, apart from school.

  I mooch around the shops with Cathy and Hannah some Saturdays and we go to films together and we went to the under-eighteens’ night at the Glitzy once (total disaster – some girls thought Hannah’s way of dancing pretty wacky and laughed at her, some other girls thought Cathy was eyeing up one of their boyfriends and threatened her, and one of the bouncers inside refused to believe I was fourteen – well, I was nearly – and asked us all to go). Even then we didn’t go home by ourselves; Cathy’s dad came and collected us and got dead worried when he discovered all three of us in tears.

  I’m not really used to sorting out trains and stuff. Still, Mrs Williams lives in Weston and that’s only a few stops on the train. No problem.

  4

  NO PROBLEM INDEED! Weston is huge and I don’t have a map. I ask about twenty different people if they know the road. I get sent right out of the town, then I’m told that’s all wrong and get sent back again. I’m directed down leafy streets near the river with big posh houses and I start to think I started my life in suburban splendour, but I end up in an Avenue rather than a Road and realize this isn’t it either. Eventually I trudge all the way back to the railway station and take a taxi. I’ve got a few pounds in coins and a five-pound note in my school bag. I’m only in the taxi a few minutes but the fare comes to £2.80. I offer the driver three pounds, thinking that will be fine, but he says something dead sarcastic about the generosity of my tip. I end up apologizing and give him the five-pound note instead. He asks if I want any change. I do, but I don’t dare say yes, so he just drives off, leaving me feeling flushed and foolish.

  A girl with bright orange spiky hair is sitting on the garden wall watching me. She’s wearing a very short skirt and a tight T-shirt that shows her tummy. She’s got a tiny rainbow arcing over her navel. I think it’s felt tip but it could just be a real tattoo, though maybe she’s not much older than me.

  She’s got a baby in her arms, a squirming damp bundle, dribbling and whining. He’s large and lumpy but she flips him over expertly so he lies across her bony knees, chuckling as she pretends to smack his bottom.

  ‘You must have more money than sense,’ she says. ‘Feel free to lob a few pounds my way.’ But she smiles as she says it.

  I smile back. I can’t help staring at the baby, wondering.

  ‘He’s my third,’ she says. ‘My other two are at nursery school.’ Then she cracks up laughing when she sees my face.

  ‘Joke!’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘It’s April Fool’s Day, right?’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ I say. ‘It’s my birthday, actually.’

  ‘Oh well, Happy birthday! What’s your name?’

  ‘Guess.’

  ‘Oh-oh! April?’

  ‘Yep. What’s yours?’

  ‘Tanya.’

  The baby gurgles on her lap.

  ‘Yeah, mate, OK. He’s saying his name’s Ricky.’

  The baby squeals excitedly when she says his name and then drools all down Tanya’s leg.

  ‘Yuck!’ says Tanya, taking off one of his woolly booties and using it as a mop. Then she squints up at me with her small green eyes.

  ‘Are you bunking off school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You’re in your school uniform, idiot.’

  ‘OK. Are you bunking off too?’

  ‘I haven’t got a school at the moment. They’re still sorting me out. Don’t let’s get started on me. There are huge casebooks and files and folders on me.’ She says it proudly, chin in the air. ‘So. What are you here for? Come to see Pat?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I mumble. ‘Pat? Is she . . . Patricia Williams?’

  ‘That’s her. Auntie Pat to all the little kids. Oh, I get it. Were you once one of them?’ She laughs. ‘Quick on the uptake, that’s me. Still, you don’t look like one of Pat’s kids. Or sound like it either.’

  I swallow. I’ve started talking carefully again since I’ve been living with Marion. ‘I’m just talking posh to impress you, right?’ I say, in my old Children’s Home voice.

  She laughs. ‘Yeah, you’re quick on the uptake too, April. So, do you want to come in and meet Pat?’

  ‘Maybe it’s not such a good idea,’ I say, scared all of a sudden.

  ‘She’s OK,’ says Tanya. ‘Come on.’

  She stands up, slinging the baby on one hip. She tugs my arm with her free hand. I let her pull me to the front door.

  It’s on the latch. Tanya kicks it open with her high-heeled sandal. The hall is shabby, with scribbles on the wallpaper and bits of Lego and little cars all over the carpet. The house smells of cooking and nappies and washing powder. I breathe in, wondering if this smell is familiar.

  ‘Pat? We’ve got a visitor,’ Tanya calls, pulling me along the hall into the kitchen.

  This woman is standing by the stove, while two little boys bang saucepans at her feet. She’s just how I imagined her; soft, cosy, pink cheeks, no make-up, old jumper, baggy denim skirt, scuffed shoes. But there’s no prickling at the back of my neck, no tingle at all. I don’t recognize her. She doesn’t recognize me either, though she smiles cheerfully.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ she says. ‘Who are you then?’

  ‘I’m April,’ I say. I wait.

  ‘April,’ she says brightly. ‘That’s a lovely name. And appropriate for today.’

  ‘
That’s why I’m called it. Don’t you remember? I’m April the Dustbin Baby.’ I hate saying it. It sounds so stupid. Sad. Totally pathetic. I feel like I’ve been shoved right back in the dustbin with the rubbish rotting around me.

  ‘What are you on about, April? What dustbin?’ Tanya asks.

  ‘That’s where they found me. The day I was born,’ I mumble.

  ‘Oh. Right. Cosy,’ says Tanya, raising her eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, of course. I remember you now,’ says Pat, shaking her head and smiling. ‘You were small but very noisy. You cried a lot at night. I walked you up and down, up and down, but you just went on crying. Three-month colic – though it lasted much longer.’

  ‘Maybe she was missing her mum,’ says Tanya. ‘Did she really dump you in a dustbin, April?’

  I nod, hoping I’m not going to cry now.

  ‘Dead maternal, your mum,’ says Tanya. ‘Didn’t she like the look of you then?’

  ‘Now then, Tanya, I’d have thought you of all people would know better. You don’t talk about other people’s families like that. Who are we to pass judgement?’ says Pat. ‘Some women get very sick when they have babies. Sick in the head. They can’t cope. They leave their babies in all sorts of strange places. Telephone boxes. I even had one poor little lamb left in a lavatory.’

  ‘I hope you gave it a good wash before taking it home,’ says Tanya. ‘Hear that, Ricky? You’d better stop dribbling on me, matie, or it’s down to the bottom of the bog for you.’

  ‘Tanya!’ says Pat, clucking. ‘You stir my mince for me while I fix you both a drink.’

  ‘Bacardi and Coke for me, Pat. What do you fancy, April?’ says Tanya.

  ‘Sure. Bacardi and Coke. Only funny thing, we’re clean out of Bacardi,’ says Pat. ‘Do you want a Coke too, April?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Where do you live now, dear? Do they know you’re here?’ She’s trying to sound casual but she’s obviously checking up on me. ‘You’ve not done a bunk, have you?’