‘What do mermaids do, April?’ she’d whisper, sitting really close to me, her teeth gleaming. Soapsuds glistened on her pale arms. Her wet black hair lay flat against her head, shiny like a Dutch doll.
‘I’m talking to you, April. Can’t you hear me? Haven’t you got any ears?’ She yanked a lock of my hair to one side and jabbed her finger right into my ear, making it ring.
‘I – I don’t know what mermaids do,’ I stammered that first time.
‘And you’re such a clever-clogs too! Well, dopey, drippy April, mermaids have got long fishy tails so they can – what?’
I swallowed, trying to edge away from her until the hard enamel of the bath bit into my back.
‘Answer me! Maybe you haven’t got a tongue, is that it?’ Her fingers scrabbled at my bottom lip until it opened. ‘No, yuck, there it is, waggling away at me. So make it work. Tell me why mermaids have tails, April.’
‘So they can swim,’ I whispered.
‘Hurray! She’s got it! Top of the class! Soooo – swim!’
She suddenly seized me by both ankles and tugged hard. I shot forward and my head went back, under the water. I tried to struggle up, but Pearl’s hands were hard on my chest, pressing me back. My legs kicked at her feebly but I couldn’t see what I was doing. I had a terrible roaring in my head as if the water was whirling through my ears. I knew she was drowning me and in amongst the pain and the panic I had a moment of triumph – at last Pearl would get into trouble. But then her hands were suddenly under my armpits and my head bobbed out of the water. I gasped and coughed and cried.
‘Shut up, stupid,’ said Pearl, sitting up calmly. ‘Call yourself a mermaid? You’re not very good at swimming, are you? Better practise, eh?’ She shoved me straight back under.
She didn’t always have a go at drowning me. Big Mo was there a lot of the time – and even when she wasn’t, Pearl could sometimes be perfectly ordinary, just splashing and telling silly jokes. In a way that made it worse, never quite knowing when she was going to turn.
But then I turned.
11
I TRIED TO kill Pearl.
No I didn’t.
I don’t know. I don’t know what’s real any more. I just remember what they all said. Everybody asked me how it happened and I had to tell it again and again. They kept telling me to relax and take my time but I was so tense I was like a little iron kid. It would have taken a crowbar to unclench me.
I suppose I looked as guilty as hell. They all thought I’d pushed her deliberately. Maybe I did.
Pearl flew through the air, arms waving, legs kicking, mouth screaming, showing every single one of her pearly teeth. I thought she might land on her feet and come running straight up the stairs to get me. But she landed on her back with a thump, one of her legs sticking out sideways. I waited for her to start crying. She didn’t make a sound.
I teetered at the top of the stairs, peering down at her. Big Mo and Little Pete and Esme and all the boys came running. They made a lot of noise on Pearl’s behalf. Little Pete ran to call an ambulance while Big Mo crouched beside Pearl, holding her hand, talking to her. Pearl didn’t reply. Her eyes were half open but she didn’t seem to be looking at anyone.
‘She’s dead!’ said one of the boys.
‘No, she’s not,’ said Big Mo, but she didn’t sound sure. ‘What happened? Did Pearl slip?’
They all looked up the stairs at me.
‘April pushed her!’
‘Of course she didn’t push her. Did you, April?’
I didn’t say a word. I didn’t dare. I was frightened Pearl was dead too – but that would mean she couldn’t tell on me.
The ambulance came at last and Pearl was tied onto a stretcher and taken off in a big white van. Big Mo went with her. She didn’t return all night. When she eventually came back after breakfast she was on her own.
‘Pearl is dead!’ said one of the boys.
They all stared at me in awe. My breakfast cornflakes hurtled upwards and made my mouth taste of sick.
‘April’s a murderer!’
They all hissed it, even Esme, though I don’t think she knew what it meant.
‘Stop that silly nonsense!’ Big Mo snapped. She had dark circles under her eyes and her hair hung lankly. ‘Pearl isn’t dead, but she’s a very poorly little girl. She’s got a broken hip, a fractured leg, cracked ribs, sprained wrists. The poor little pet will be in hospital for weeks.’
I let out a squeak of relief.
‘April, I need to talk to you,’ said Big Mo, her voice very solemn. She took hold of me by the wrist – as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to hold my hand – and dragged me off to her private sitting room.
We kids weren’t usually allowed even a peep inside there. There were rumours that Big Mo and Little Pete had a television the size of a cinema screen and vast leather sofas and white fur rugs. The only television was smaller than our set in the children’s room, the sofa was a sagging chintz similar to Big Mo’s frocks and there were no rugs at all, just dull porridge-colour carpet. I stared at it all the time Big Mo was talking to me. She talked and talked and talked.
‘Pearl told me everything, April,’ she said.
I hung my head.
‘Yes, well may you look guilty!’ said Big Mo. ‘You did push her, didn’t you?’
I nodded forlornly.
‘On purpose!’ Big Mo persisted.
I had to agree.
‘You could easily have killed her,’ said Big Mo. ‘The boys were right, you could have ended up a murderer. I should tell the police what really happened, April.’
I waited, my heart thudding.
‘But we can’t have a scandal here. I’ve fostered kiddies more than twenty years with never a moment’s bother. I’ve looked after the naughtiest boys and no child’s ever been hurt, not seriously – a few lumps and bumps, a black eye after a fist fight, but never anything like this. Pearl says you flew at her for no reason!’
I had my reasons. Pearl had been the murderer, four times over. She’d torn Bluebell, Daffodil, Violet and Rose into tiny shreds.
I’d tried to be so careful, never letting her see them. I’d played with them secretly inside my head whenever Pearl was around, making sure my lips didn’t move, but I wasn’t mad enough to hold the real paper girls anywhere near her. I kept changing their hiding place just in case. They lived in my shoebox and then they moved to my damp sponge bag and then they squashed up together inside the pages of Where the Wild Things Are.
They would have been safe – but Esme betrayed me. I’d let her play paper girls in that long-ago pre-Pearl time and she’d never forgotten it.
Esme and Pearl and I were in the children’s room. Esme was flicking through one of Big Mo’s magazines, licking her finger and turning each page so violently that they crackled.
‘Quit that, Esme! You’re getting on my nerves. What are you doing with it anyway? You can’t even read.’
‘I can read. I can read lots. I can read, can’t I, April?’ Esme protested.
‘Yes, you can read great, Esme,’ I said.
‘Rubbish. She’s useless at reading. She’s totally thick,’ said Pearl.
‘I’m not thick, I’m thin, thin as a pin,’ said Esme, sucking in her big tummy and preening in a parody of a fashion model.
Pearl mocked her but Esme didn’t mind.
‘Like these ladies,’ said Esme, stabbing at the magazine photographs. Then she paused. ‘Daffodil!’ she said. ‘Look, April, it’s Daffodil!’
She was right. It was the same model, though her hair was different and she was wearing beach clothes. It was very clever of Esme to spot her.
‘Daffodil?’ said Pearl. ‘What are you two nutcases on about?’
‘Daffodil one of April’s special little paper ladies,’ said Esme. ‘She got one, two, three, four pretty paper ladies.’
‘Shut up, Esme.’
But I was too late. Pearl knew now. It took her a while to find them. I started to
think they might be safe inside my woolly winter sock, but Pearl was like a bloodhound.
I went to my room after tea one day and found my underwear drawer slightly open. I rummaged inside and found one sock – empty. And there was the other one, right at the bottom. Inside were the tiny snipped remains of my girls. I tipped them out onto the carpet, wondering if I could stick them together, maybe make up a missing part or two as I’d done before with Rose and her leg. No, Pearl had been too thorough with her snipping. She’d turned my girls into confetti.
I tried to imagine them in my head but Pearl seemed able to snip inside me too. I couldn’t make them up any more. Daffodil and Rose and Violet and Bluebell stayed little pieces of paper.
I started crying.
‘What’s up, April?’ said Pearl, putting her head round my door. Her teeth gleamed. ‘Oh, boo hoo, boo hoo, baby! Does diddums want her soppy dollies back, eh? Honestly, crying over bits of paper! You’re even nuttier than old Esme. Look, snotty-nose, it’s just rubbish!’
She picked up a handful of flower girls and tossed them in my face. Little shreds of yellow, red, purple and blue stuck in my hair and fluttered against my face.
I felt as if I’d been scattered too. I wanted Mummy, I wanted Daddy, but they weren’t there any more. I had no-one. I was no-one.
Pearl rolled a tiny pink speck in her fingers, possibly part of Rose’s new leg that I’d tried so hard to make a good match. Pearl laughed and flicked it away as if it was snot out of her nose. I suddenly couldn’t stand it. I rushed at her. She saw I wasn’t playing about. She ran for it but I caught up with her along the landing. I punched her hard in the chest and she staggered backwards – back and back, and then she wobbled and went right over, down the stairs.
‘You pushed her on purpose, didn’t you, April?’ Big Mo repeated. ‘For no reason whatsoever?’
I nodded, because I did push her, and it was for no reason Big Mo would ever understand.
I haven’t ever told anyone, not even Marion.
12
MAYBE MARION WOULD understand. She’s so strange. She’ll make an endless fuss if I get a bit cheeky or forget to make my bed, acting like I’m the worst girl in the world, but she didn’t flinch when she found out all my past history. She still took me on. She acts like she trusts me too, leaving her bag lying around, never locking her precious stuff away, even though she knows what I got up to at Sunnybank.
I got sent there because Big Mo felt I was a threat to the other kids. Sunnybank was a special Children’s Home, a dumping ground for hard-to-place kids. They were hard too. Especially some of the big girls. Gina and Venetia and Rayanne had their own girls’ gang. Gina was the eldest and the toughest. Everyone was frightened of Gina, even some of the Sunnybank staff. But I was OK because she took a shine to me.
I should go home now. I’m nearly at the station, Travelcard in my hand. With a bit of luck I could be back before Marion finishes her shift in the Oxfam bookshop. She’ll just think I’ve been at school all day.
I was so mean to her this morning. OK, she’s mean not letting me have a mobile – but she was really trying hard with those earrings. I could say sorry and try them on and show her how pretty they look. She might have got me a birthday cake for tea. We were looking at them in Marks and Spencer only the other day. I could ring Cathy and Hannah and see if they want to come over to share my cake. Though I’ll have to swear them to secrecy about my missing school.
I don’t know what I’m going to tell them either. I could say I simply felt like bunking off but they’d be astonished. They think I’m such a good girl. They’d never in a million years believe all the stuff I got up to at Sunnybank.
It didn’t look like a Children’s Home. It was a big converted mock-Tudor house with a large garden. There was a round sun with rays carved into the front gate. I used to run my fingers up and down the slats as I swung on the gate. One time I stuck my finger in the hinge by mistake but Gina sucked it for me to stop it throbbing and then gave me a whole tube of Smarties.
I was Gina’s special baby. She liked it when I acted younger than I was, like a really little kid, so I spoke with a lisp and sucked my thumb when I was around her. It was very hot that first summer at Sunnybank so Gina fixed me up my own little paddling pool in a big plastic basin. We’d sunbathe for hours, Gina’s dark skin turning mahogany, but she was careful to slap lotion all over my skinny shoulders and arms and legs, watching over me just like Mummy.
She watched over me at nights too when she and Venetia and Rayanne smuggled me out after midnight. Not every night, only the times Billy or Lulu were in charge. They were both heavy sleepers and never stirred. Then Gina and her gang crept out – and a lot of the boys did too, though we never got involved with them. Gina got us girls organized into a highly efficient burgling team. I was Gina’s key ingredient when it came to breaking and entering because I was so small.
Most people left their little bathroom windows open. Gina hoisted me halfway up every handy drainpipe and I clambered the rest of the way and then hooked my arm right through the window up to my shoulder, tucked my head right in tight, wriggled through up to my waist, tried to get my hands on the bathroom windowsill and then tumbled down, one leg after the other, to land in the washbasin.
I thought I was stuck for ever the first time, head in the stranger’s bathroom, bottom and legs poking out into blank air behind me. I snivelled, teeth clamped in my bottom lip so I wouldn’t make a sound, and then gave one last desperate wriggle and landed head first, my head catching such a clunk from the cold tap that I nearly knocked myself out.
I got a lot better at burgling but I always hated it. Sometimes I wet my knickers or worse during those night-thieving sessions I was so scared of getting caught. I had to creep out of strange bathrooms in the pitch dark, find my way across the landing, holding my breath at each creak of the floorboards, listening for a lull in the snores behind the bedroom doors, looking over my shoulder constantly in case someone was creeping after me, ready to catch me and hand me over to the police.
I had to scamper down the stairs and then find out the way to open the back door for Gina – and Rayanne and Venetia too if they were all along for the laugh. They really did seem to find it fun. I hated every second even when everything went like clockwork – and often it didn’t. One time I couldn’t work out all the bolts and locks on the back door and twiddled and tugged for ages while Gina whispered impatiently from the garden. And then I heard the thump of someone’s feet on the floor above my head and then the clomp, clomp of slippers coming down the stairs. I gestured frantically at Gina through the kitchen window. She pointed towards the front door – but the steps were nearly down in the hall by now and they’d catch me. I shook my head at Gina and she suddenly bobbed out of sight.
I thought she’d abandoned me and started crying but then she bobbed back, her shoe in her hand. She smashed the window, stuck her arm through, grabbed me and pulled. By the time the man reached the broken window we were right over the garden fence. I had glass in my hair and my hands were bleeding after all the tugging but at least we’d escaped. This time. It was so hard knowing there was going to be a next time – and a next and a next.
It wasn’t just the fear of being caught. It was the terror of knowing I was going straight to Hell for being a thief. Mummy had taught me it was wrong to steal so much as a dropped grape in Marks and Spencer’s food hall. When she’d caught me chewing she’d told me off so sorrowfully I wouldn’t go to bed that night in case I was sucked straight to Hell in my sleep. I was April the Awful Grape-Stealer and I’d have to be good for the rest of my life to make up.
But I had very nearly murdered Pearl and so I was shut up with all these bad girls – and now I was bad too.
I suppose I didn’t have much choice. You certainly couldn’t argue with Gina. You didn’t tell on her either. Not that there was really anyone to tell. The staff at the Children’s Home kept changing. One woman arrived and immediately got into an argume
nt with Venetia. Venetia slapped her and she slapped Venetia straight back so she had to leave an hour after she’d arrived, which was a quick turnover even for our Children’s Home.
Billy had been there the longest but he was frightened of Gina and her gang. He was frightened of almost everyone. Even me. I learnt to look at him really hard, widening my eyes so that they nearly popped. It seriously unnerved him. He’d read my notes. Perhaps he thought I was selecting him as my next victim.
Lulu was kind in a soppy sort of way but she never really listened. She nodded and looked in your direction but she was only ever thinking about her boyfriend Bob, a big lollopy guy who came and watched television with her when she was working nights. They wore matching T-shirts. Lulu’s said I LOVE BOB and Bob’s said I LOVE LULU. Even when he wasn’t around Lulu was still tuned into him, as if she were wearing invisible headphones.
So I kept quiet. I kept quiet at my new school too. I was tired of trying to make new friends so I kept to myself and hid in the toilets at playtime. I didn’t say a word during lessons. It was more peaceful if everyone thought you were too thick to know any of the answers. I felt thick anyway, my brain in a fog, because I never had enough sleep. It was easy for Gina and Venetia and Rayanne because they went to secondary school by themselves so they could all bunk off but I was driven down to the primary school in the Children’s Home mini-bus. It had a big sun painted on both sides and the words SUNNYBANK CHILDREN’S HOME but someone had spray-painted the S into an F and added FOR TOTAL NUTTERS. I felt as if I’d been spray-painted with the same scarlet paint.
I was sent once a week to a strange lady with a lot of toys in her office. I thought she was a special teacher and I was having extra-easy lessons but now I see she was probably some kind of psychiatrist. They needed to find out if I was really bad – or mad, a nutter just as my schoolmates suspected.
Dustbin Baby Page 7