Dustbin Baby

  I could ask Gina if I could use her phone. I want to. But I can’t. Marion will want to know where I am. If she finds out I’ve bunked off school she’ll go really mad.

  I could tell her I’m at Cathy’s or Hannah’s. But then she’ll want to come round to collect me. It’s too complicated.

  I won’t phone her but I’ll go home straight away and I’ll tell her how sorry I am and I’ll make it up to her somehow.

  ‘I’d better get going, Gina. My foster mum will be wondering where I’ve got to.’

  ‘You’re a good girl, April,’ says Gina.

  I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m bad.

  Gina gives me a huge hug when we say goodbye. I cling to her, wishing I was as little as Benjamin so she could carry me around all day.

  ‘You’ll keep in touch now, babe,’ says Gina. ‘Write to me? I’ll write back properly this time, I promise.’

  I go down in the smelly little lift, trying not to cry. When I get out into the courtyard and look up I see Gina standing way up on the balcony. She’s clutching Benjamin tightly with both hands so she can’t wave but she bobs her head at me and he does too. They look like two dark flowers blowing in the wind.

  Gina’s a wonderful mum.

  I wonder if my mum ever got a second chance.

  14

  I’VE GOT TO go home.

  I’m on the tube, on my way to Waterloo. I’ll make up some story for Marion. I’ve made up stories for me enough times.

  This story doesn’t have a happy ending. I haven’t found her.

  No that’s silly. I’ve found two great friends, a new one and an old one. I’ve found my very first foster mother and the grave of my adoptive mother. I’ve found so many people today – but I still feel lost. Lonelier than ever. There’s only one person I want.

  How can I ever find her? She could be anywhere at all. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. Tealeaf in a dustbin.

  The Dustbin Baby.

  There’s one more place.

  I have a Travelcard. I can journey on from Waterloo.

  Or I can go home to Marion.

  I’m no good at making decisions. When I first went to live with Marion I couldn’t even choose what I wanted for tea. You didn’t get a choice at Fairleigh. You just got your baked beans or your scrambled eggs – splat – on your plastic platter. You got iced buns afterwards on a Friday, for a treat, pink ones with jam or white ones with currants or yellow ones with a cherry on top but I was such a slow eater they’d mostly all gone by the time I’d cleared my platter. You had to finish all your main course. It was one of the rules. Sometimes I got a big girl called Julie to eat mine for me, surreptitiously shovelling forkfuls from my plate as well as hers, but then she got friendly with an anorexic girl who paid her twenty pence a plate so Julie concentrated on helping her out instead.

  I don’t need to go on a nostalgic trip back to Fairleigh. I lived there five years, longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else. I didn’t even go away any place in the holidays, apart from one sad summer camp for children with special needs, where I mostly helped the helpers.

  Marion and I are going on holiday this summer. Italy. Five days doing all the culture and history and art stuff, but then five days by the sea for me.

  ‘It’s only fair. It’s your holiday as much as mine,’ she said.

  She is fair, even though she’s so fussy. It’s getting so late. What am I going to do if she’s phoned Cathy or Hannah and they tell her I wasn’t at school? I wish I was at Cathy’s or Hannah’s now. I mostly feel so ordinary with them. We have a laugh together and a moan about the teachers and a sigh about boys and a wail about our hair/spots/figures. We might talk about what we want to happen in our lives but we never talk about who we are or where we come from.

  They’re the friends I’ve always longed for. I had friends at Fairleigh but they were odd friends, sad girls, bad girls, mad girls – like me. That’s why we got sent there. It’s a school for vulnerable girls: girls constantly in trouble; girls with special needs; girls with learning difficulties; girls in distress. We were all lumped together and dressed alike in our blue-and-white checked dresses and blue blazers. We were all given identical teddy bears with blue knitted jerseys to take to bed at night.

  During the day we were put into very small classes so we could have individual attention. I didn’t want attention. I wanted to hide inside myself and keep out of trouble. There were quite a few Down’s girls at the school like Esme back at Big Mo’s. I made friends with a very kind Down’s girl in my year, called Poppy. She loved sweets. She bought a lollipop every day from the school tuckshop.

  ‘I’m Lollipoppy,’ she’d chortle, over and over, sounding so funny and daft she got me giggling too.

  I wanted to sit beside Poppy in classes and do colouring with her big wax crayons. She had special alphabet pictures. I thought how peaceful it would be to colour in ‘A is for Apple, B is for Baby, C is for Cat’, but I had to do sums and science and stories. I didn’t know how to add up or experiment or invent so I was useless at first. I thought it was because I was simply thick. I didn’t realize it was because I’d been in and out of so many schools I’d missed out on learning all the really basic stuff.

  They did their best to remedy this at Fairleigh. After a term or two I felt as if someone had stuck a pair of strong spectacles on my nose. I could see straight at last. It wasn’t comfortable. I preferred seeing inside my own head. There wasn’t time to daydream now. I had to think, to work things out, to come up with answers.

  Maths and Science and Technology stayed a struggle but I liked English and I loved History. Miss Bean made it fun. She was older than the other teachers and she looked a sight in terrible hand-knitted jumpers in pastel colours, baby blue and pale pink and insipid lilac. We all called her the Beanie Baby – but not to her face.

  No-one dared be naughty in Miss Bean’s class. She was much stricter than the other teachers. She nagged me something rotten. ‘Try, April!’, ‘Come along, think’, ‘No this isn’t good enough, you can do better than that’. But sometimes she could make things magic. Especially History.

  We did the Romans and she let us take the sheets off our beds to wrap round us like togas. We had a Roman feast with wine (Ribena) and all sorts of sweetmeats (Miss Bean provided home-made fudge and toffee and coconut ice, plus an extra lollipop to keep Poppy happy). We made our own special model of the Colosseum (she showed us photos of it from her summer holiday in Rome) with tiny cardboard Romans and wild animals and Christian martyrs. I felt a pang seeing these little cardboard figures, remembering poor Bluebell, Rose, Daffodil and Violet, but I quickly entered into the spirit of the thing. I fashioned some especially ferocious wild animals and then cut out a champion gladiator with a gilt-sprayed toothpick sword in his clenched fist.

  ‘Well done, April!’ cried Miss Bean.

  I really came into my own when we did the Victorians. I settled down happily to making an elaborate Victorian villa out of a big cardboard box and a stack of cornflake packets, copying the details from the pictures in the Victorian history books in the library – but some of the slower girls got everything mixed up and wanted another toga party with wine.

  ‘No, no, that was the Romans. They lived hundreds and hundreds of years before the Victorians,’ said Miss Bean.

  They still couldn’t get it. It was all History to them. The Victorians were every bit as ancient as the Romans.

  ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said Miss Bean. ‘We’ll all do our family trees and then you’ll see that your very own great-great-great grandmothers were Victorians.’

  I kept very still. I didn’t join in the silly jokes about family trees and Great-Auntie Oak and Grandpa Maple. I didn’t even pick up my pen. I sat with my hands clasped in my lap, my nails digging into my palms.

  Miss Bean bobbed around the class in her baby-blue jumper, giving advice here and there. She printed ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ in pencil on Poppy’s piece of paper and Poppy traced ov
er the top with red wax crayon, her tongue sticking right out with the effort of keeping to the lines.

  Miss Bean looked over in my direction. ‘Come on, April. Get cracking.’

  I sat tight.

  She came over to me, frowning. ‘April! What’s the matter with you this morning? Get started!’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said I don’t want to,’ I repeated very loudly.

  The whole class put down their pens and watched, mouths open.

  ‘I don’t care what you want. You’ll do as you’re told in my classroom,’ said Miss Bean. She tapped my blank page. ‘Get started this instant, April.’

  ‘You can’t make me, you stupid old fat Beanie Baby!’ I shouted.

  Everyone sat stunned. Even I wasn’t quite sure I’d really said it.

  ‘I don’t allow that sort of rudeness in my classroom,’ said Miss Bean. ‘Go outside and stand in the corridor.’

  I stumbled down the rows of desks to the door. I wondered whether to make a run for it once I was outside. But there were no really foolproof hiding places in the school. I’d tried the toilets and the games cupboard and the boiler room but I’d always been discovered. There was outside – but I had scarcely been out of the grounds since I’d arrived and the whole idea of outside seemed as alien as Mars. So I stood miserably in the corridor, waiting for the end of the lesson.

  Hours and hours and hours seemed to go by. My own words echoed in my head. ‘You can’t make me.’ But this was Miss Bean and she probably had many unpleasant ways of making me do anything she wanted. I imagined increasingly outlandish tortures, most of them incorporating the sharp and very whippy cane on show in the Victorian project display.

  The girls came out at long last, staring at me in awe. Then Miss Bean beckoned to me from the doorway.

  ‘Come into the classroom, April.’

  Once we were inside she shut the door.

  ‘I don’t want you to speak to me in that tone of voice ever again,’ she said gravely. ‘Please apologize for your rudeness.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Bean,’ I mumbled.

  She nodded. Then she said something amazing. ‘Now it’s my turn to apologize to you. I feel I made a mistake asking you to compile your family tree. There may be all sorts of reasons why this is not a good idea. I should have thought first before I suggested it. I’m sorry, April. I hope you will accept my apology.’

  ‘Yes, Miss Bean! I didn’t mean to call you names. Well, I did, but it was just because I felt so weird when I couldn’t fill anything in. I haven’t got any family.’

  My voice started to wobble. Miss Bean’s face went blurry as I started to cry. Once I started I couldn’t stop. I howled and howled. Miss Bean patted me on the shoulder, murmuring, ‘There, there.’ She offered me a little folded wad of tissue and I blotted my face as best I could.

  ‘Better now?’ she said softly. ‘You run along to your next lesson then, dear.’

  I ran. I was so tear-stained that everyone was sympathetic, convinced Miss Bean had been furious. I didn’t tell anyone what had really happened. It seemed private between us.

  15

  MISS BEAN AND I were friends after that. Not friends friends. She was still very much Miss Ultra-Strict-Schoolteacher but she would give me the glimmer of a smile every so often in class and if I hung back she’d chat to me. Sometimes she’d pick out a book for me or give me a postcard of a painting. Then one Saturday while we were still studying the Victorians she turned up at the school and told me she was taking me out for the day.

  ‘If you’d like that, April,’ she said.

  I wasn’t too sure that first time. I was still a little scared of her and I thought it would probably be boring to be stuck with her all day. I liked the way she taught History but I didn’t fancy a History lesson all day long.

  It wasn’t like that at all. She did take me to the Victoria and Albert Museum but she made it great fun, and she took me to the shop afterwards and bought me a tiny bear dressed up as Queen Victoria. We went to the café too which seemed very grand and grown up. She said I could choose whatever I wanted.

  ‘Whatever?’ I said, staring at the wonderful cakes and puddings.

  I couldn’t choose between the chocolate gâteau or strawberries and cream, but she let me have both, though she insisted I have a little salad first. Miss Bean had wine with her meal which surprised me. I wondered if she might start acting drunk like Daddy, but she sipped her way through two glasses with no obvious effect.

  I thought we’d catch the train straight back to school now we’d marched all round the museum but Miss Bean suggested a little look round the shops first. She took me to Harrods. I felt as if I’d entered a fairy-tale palace. I tiptoed round, awestruck. The food hall was particularly astonishing, especially the chocolates. Miss Bean let me choose one of the white cream chocolates. She laughed at the expression on my face when I bit into it.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Wondrous!’

  ‘Have just one more. And I will too. Blow my boring old diet!’

  She patted her large tummy. She was wearing her favourite pink jumper which made her look like a giant marshmallow but I didn’t care. I liked her.

  She took me out a lot after that. She usually drove us out into the country and we went for long walks. She told me about the trees and the birds and the wild flowers. I didn’t always listen. I liked to think my own thoughts and wonder where we might go for afternoon tea. I pretended we were related and this was a normal weekend visit. She didn’t seem the granny type and clearly she couldn’t be my mother, so I turned her into my eccentric great-aunt.

  The girls at Fairleigh teased me when they found out about the Saturday outings. Someone said Miss Bean might be after me and I’d better watch out. I hissed in Gina’s most menacing tones that they’d better shut up or I’d sort them out. They left me alone after that.

  Miss Bean was getting near retiring age. I suppose I should have realized. It came as a shock the summer term I was in Year Seven when she said she’d be leaving in July. I didn’t know what to say. I screwed up my face to stop myself bursting into tears.

  ‘Are you going to miss my History lessons that much, April?’ she asked jokingly.

  ‘I’m going to miss you,’ I blurted out.

  Miss Bean pulled her own face. ‘Well . . . I could always come and visit you. We could still go out at weekends if – if you’d like to.’

  ‘I would!’

  ‘I would too. I enjoy our outings very much. But you must promise me you mustn’t feel obliged to trail round with me. I can never tell if you’re just being polite.’

  I still wasn’t sure she’d really come calling for me. I cried the last day of term when Miss Bean said goodbye to everyone in Assembly and the head girl presented her with a clock and a suitcase and a set of history books. Surprisingly lots of the other girls cried too. I was pleased Miss Bean was popular even though she was so old-fashioned and strict. Poppy was in floods of tears. Miss Bean gave her a big bunch of lollipops as a goodbye present. She didn’t give me anything, but she patted my shoulder as she passed and whispered, ‘I’ll come soon, April, I promise.’

  She packed her new suitcase and went abroad on holiday but she sent me two postcards – and the first weekend she was back she arrived at Fairleigh early on Saturday morning. She had a new short haircut, a deep tan, and bright blue baggy trousers that really suited her though they made her bottom look even bigger.

  ‘Come on, April,’ she said.

  ‘You look so different!’

  ‘I feel different,’ she said, flipping her fingers through her short hair.

  She said I didn’t have to call her Miss Bean now she’d stopped being my teacher. I could call her by her first name. Marion.

  She chatted to the other teachers when she came to collect me, and she always made a fuss of Poppy, but she was really there to see me. She said she didn’t miss teaching. She was bus
y learning Italian and playing the piano and running an Oxfam bookshop three days a week. She was also busy moving, from a flat in town to a bungalow in the suburbs. She took me to see it before she moved in.

  ‘I need to know what you think of it, April,’ she said.

  I didn’t quite see what she was getting at. She skirted around things for months. She talked about my future and what I wanted to do. I said I’d wondered about being a dress designer (snipping and sewing red, yellow, blue and violet outfits) but Marion suggested a History degree. She tried very gently to make me talk about my own history. I hated this. I knew I was a Dustbin Baby. I remembered as far back as Mummy and Daddy, though most of the details were sketchy, but I didn’t want to think about it. It always gave me a shaky feeling, as if I was standing on the edge of a cliff.

  I couldn’t understand why Marion had started probing when she could see it upset me. We were usually scrupulous about each other’s feelings. I never talked about diets or exercise or fat people (Marion had put on more weight since leaving school and had had to buy even baggier trousers) and she never talked about mothers.

  ‘Do shut up about it, Marion,’ I said eventually, as we walked round the formal gardens of Hampton Court.

  I put my hand over my mouth once the words were out, scared that Marion would turn back into Miss Bean and punish me.

  She seemed upset, not cross, though she automatically told me not to talk in that rude tone of voice.

  ‘Say “be quiet” if you must, but never tell anyone to shut up.’

  ‘Well, OK, please be quiet and quit going on and on about all my foster mothers,’ I said, scuffing my sandals in the chalky gravel.

  ‘I hope you’re going to polish those the minute you get back to school,’ said Marion. She paused. ‘I take it you didn’t like being fostered?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘And – and you don’t want to be fostered again?’

  I looked at her warily.

  ‘What do you mean? Is someone going to foster me?’ I started to panic.