Bad Little Girl

by Frances Vick

  Why hadn’t she been to the police?

  The social worker squeezed her hand. Lorna took some deep breaths.

  ‘She told me that the police would say I was bad and I’d get put in prison for ever.’

  ‘Do you remember any of the names of the hotels you were taken to? Where any of the flats were? Any of the men’s names?’

  ‘No. No.’ Her voice was a whisper. She kept her eyes on the floor. Her legs, short, bruised and scabbed, swung.

  * * *

  For a few days the story stuck. Lorna was given a teddy bear and allowed to use a PlayStation in the common room. Every afternoon she had a little walk in the garden. She assumed that she was in some kind of children’s home, but she didn’t see any other children there. On the third day they put a TV in her room. It only had a few channels, and none of the good ones either. She wanted Cartoon Network and MTV but the nice lady, the social worker, wasn’t there any more. There was a different one now, a police lady. Even though she didn’t dress like one, Lorna knew what she was. When they asked her questions, this lady sat next to her, but didn’t take her hand. When she smiled she didn’t smile with her eyes either. And it was always the same boring questions, too. Not even about anything really. Nothing interesting anyway. They asked about the fire.

  ‘I don’t know anything about the fire.’

  ‘Did Marianne tell you about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When did you find out about it?’

  ‘When you told me.’

  ‘You didn’t seem surprised when we told you. Why do you think that was?’

  ‘Don’t know. Shock?’

  ‘Were you shocked?’

  ‘Yeah. Course.’

  They asked about Pete, about her mum, about Carl, if Carl had been mean to her. They kept asking, even when she let her words trail off. Even when she began to cry. They’d just pause, briefly, and then start all over again, same questions, same expressions on their faces, cold. They were cold, mean people.

  ‘When I first told you about your mum, about the fire, you didn’t cry,’ the policeman said.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘No, I remember asking you if you needed to take a break, if you were upset.’

  Lorna said nothing.

  ‘And your dogs? Your pet dogs? Are you upset that they’re dead?’ he asked, and Lorna felt so bored that she swore at him. She saw the police lady smile.

  Then they took the TV away altogether. They said the PlayStation was broken. In the meantime, she had some books, and pads of paper. ‘You can write your own stories. If you get bored,’ the police lady had said.

  It was so boring! Only those stupid books, the same ones Claire had given her. And the same crappy drawing paper they’d had in school. But she did start drawing. And writing. She drew castles and ballerinas and models with heads wider than their waists. She drew diamond rings and high-heeled shoes. She drew dogs. One of them bit a ballerina in half. Her tutu stuck out from his mouth like bloody pink lettuce. She wrote little poems. Outside, summer had started; how long had she been here anyway?

  When they started to ask her real questions, the questions she’d expected at the start, it was almost a relief. Not that she was going to answer them, that’d be stupid. They acted like they knew things that she was sure they couldn’t. They showed her a picture of her mum, and Lorna knew that she should cry, but it was a picture she’d never seen before, and it just looked funny, something about the expression on her face, and her hair was different. Anyway, it was funny. But they didn’t think it was funny. They said all sorts of irritating, ominous things. Things about fire, about pain. About missing your mummy. They said she’d never spoken about her. And that was strange? Don’t you think so, Lorna? Never to mention your mum? And to laugh when you see her picture?

  She began to think that maybe things weren’t going that well after all.

  So she stopped answering questions altogether. One time she gave the police lady a kick. She drew filthy words on the ballerina pictures, drew cocks in Anne and George’s mouths. That was fun. During her outside time she turned cartwheels and lay on the floor refusing to get up when it was time to go back inside. Another lady, a doctor, came to see her, and, pointing at the corner of the room, told her that their conversation was being filmed. Lorna laughed and spat at her. It was over. She knew it.

  43

  The case dominated the headlines for a few weeks, until a natural disaster in Asia trumped it. Lorna – she was so young that her real name was never released by the press –- Child M, they called her – was brought to trial for the manslaughter of Marianne Cairns.

  The true story of the fire never came out. The CPS didn’t have enough evidence, or even the will to link Lorna to the crime. There was a half-hearted attempt to implicate Marianne in it, but it couldn’t stand up. The fire remained, officially, unsolved.

  The press loved the tale of the child being abused by a trusted saviour, hurt and hectored to the point of blind panic; a girl who finally lashed out, only in an attempt to escape, not kill. Although there were none of the inept, beaky court caricatures broadcast, Claire imagined them clearly, would close her eyes, and listen to the trial summary on the radio; a frail girl with brown hair skirting her brows, head down, voice shaky, recounting a level of abuse she had no business even understanding, let alone experiencing.

  Child M was a painful reminder of the damage we as a society do to our youngsters with our lack of curiosity, care, our prudish sense of privacy. The papers briefly had a field day with it. Claire went down to the library in Truro and sat stiffly in a scratchy nylon chair, reading all the papers obsessively. She hesitantly booked internet time, carefully looking for any link anybody might have made between Marianne’s killing and the fire. But there was none. At home, Benji close by, the rolling TV news on, she made scratchy, coded notes that she destroyed afterwards. The notes were always the same. Either, A, Lorna hadn’t told the police about her, or B, she had, but they hadn’t believed her. There was no connection between Lorna and herself. Was there? Nobody – short of the woman in the beach café, the mother in the open farm and the taciturn barber – had seen them together in Cornwall. And there were no pictures of Lorna to jog their memories. Marianne and Lorna had always left Claire behind. It was Marianne and Lorna who were seen in Truro; at the doctor’s, the herbalist’s, the dance classes. Marianne had even let it slip that Lorna had mistakenly called her Mum, on a few occasions. Everything, everything pointed to Marianne.

  But the relief was always short-lived, because Claire knew that if she was safe, she was only safe through the grace of Lorna.

  44

  She left Cornwall in August, and arrived back in her hometown a mere seven hours later, with sand still in her shoes. Mother’s house was clean, fresh-smelling; Pippa and Derek had kept their promise to look after the place. Benji pattered around the unfamiliar space, sniffing out Johnny’s favourite corners and exploring the garden, and Claire, taking a deep breath, phoned Derek. He answered on the first ring.

  ‘Claire! You’re back?’

  ‘I am. Just arrived.’

  ‘Well! We thought we’d lost you. Didn’t we, Pip? Pippa? It’s Claire on the phone. Yes! She’s back! Back to stay, Claire?’

  ‘Yes. I think so.’

  ‘Well, that’s good news. Good news. Although the market is tanking here. I poked around for you, about the house, put out some feelers, but there’s no market for big, detached places. Apparently. It’s all flats. But you’re still subletting your old place, no?’

  ‘I am, yes. How have you been?’

  ‘Good, good. Well, I say good, but Pippa’s had a bit of a shingles flare-up. Nerves. Johnny’s doing well, we got some of that weight off him.’

  ‘Good. Great.’

  ‘Claire, I’ve got to say’ – Derek’s voice lowered – ‘it’s good to know you’re back. Family. All that. Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Well, you know how I feel.’

&nbs
p; Claire smiled. ‘I feel the same way, Derek.’

  ‘You had us going! With the Cornwall thing! I said, didn’t I Pip? I said “She’s not coming back”, but Pip never lost faith. She knew you couldn’t keep away. Didn’t you, Pip? Oh, she’s gone.’

  ‘I came back with a pet, too. A dog.’ She looked down at Benji’s soft eyes, his delicate little paws.

  ‘Oh, that’s good Claire. Good news. They’re like children, aren’t they? Dogs? Less trouble though, I say to Pip.’

  ‘A lot less trouble.’ Claire closed her eyes.

  ‘Speaking of children, what are you going to do for a job, Claire?’

  ‘Oh, I haven't thought about that.’

  ‘Well, I shouldn’t worry too much. There can’t be too many people who want to work with those horrors. Can’t work out if you’re a saint or a masochist, Claire!’

  Claire felt pinpricks of irritation, familiar annoyance, but this, too, was comforting. ‘I’m hardly a saint, Derek. Maybe a bit of a masochist.’

  ‘Pip! Pip? Claire, dinner? Yes? Claire, come over for dinner tomorrow night, hmmm? Homecoming?’

  ‘I’d love to, Derek. Thank Pippa for me.’

  That night she slept better than she had done in weeks. Benji, on guard in an unfamiliar house, stayed on her bed, his ears twitching, trotting off officiously to investigate every noise. Towards dawn he slept, too.

  * * *

  A few days later she walked past the school, with Benji, towards the park. Through the railings she could see a shrieking Miss Peel struggling to pull apart a knot of fighting boys. James Clarke looked palely on from his office window, drinking coffee. When the bell rang, the familiar sound of charging, roaring children, pushing into line, made her smile, made her heart hurt a little. She tied Benji to the railings, and, as if in a dream, stepped through the familiar gate and into the reception, where she ran into James Clarke, striding irritably out of his office. His eyes widened.

  ‘Claire? Am I glad to see you!’ he said.

  45

  And so, Claire went back to work. She put her flat on the market and called the Philpotts in Cornwall to let them know that she wasn’t staying there any longer, and could they keep an eye on the place. At night, she thought of the house, suffering emptily under Cornish storms, the windows rattling, the chimney moaning. She imagined the footsteps of Lorna on the stairs. Benji, always close, whined in his sleep, and the two of them nestled together, their fear large in the dark, waiting for paler shadows to settle on the furniture corners, for light to filter weakly through the pane, for the certainty of no-nonsense daylight.

  Over the next year, it got easier. The new Christmas Cracker group were delightful. Claire lobbied, successfully, for a Feeling Proud assembly and made sure that each of them got a chance to Show Their Learning in front of the whole school. She seemed to be respected more, deferred to.

  ‘After all,’ said Miss Peel to Miss Brice one break time, ‘she was the only one who saw the Bell thing coming. Remember?’

  The school had been in a lot of trouble after Lorna’s conviction. Although her name had been kept out of the press, it wasn’t a secret from the local authority, and they demanded to know just what exactly had gone wrong. A disaster, an abduction, and a murder, all in one family? Why hadn’t James ever raised any concerns? Where was the care plan for this family? Why hadn’t they been flagged to social services?

  ‘I have to say it, Claire, I should have listened. About Lorna Bell. I should have taken you more seriously, I understand that now. But with such a big school, so many issues. Well, you understand, don’t you? Even if we get raked over the coals by OFSTED, I apologise, and in future I’ll defer to your good judgement.’ This last was said with a little sarcastic twist, but Claire recognised it for being as close to sincerity as James was capable.

  On the anniversary of the fire, the local press and news turned their attention to the school. OFSTED had concerns, but the school wasn’t in Special Measures just yet; it still had a chance to redeem itself. The anniversary also attracted the attention of Easy Tiger Productions, who specialised in true crime and queasy documentaries about teenagers loose in Magaluf. James Clarke was interviewed (‘No indication of anything untoward with the family . . . socially deprived but we at the school make sure that . . .’ etc. etc.). Claire wasn’t spoken to, but was briefly, to her dismay, filmed on playground duty (accompanied by the voiceover: ‘Some of the teachers in this tight-knit inner-city school have been here for years, and the pastoral care has always been judged by OFSTED as “good”. So what happened on that fateful night a year ago? What caused the Bell family to fall through the cracks?’ etc., etc.). When a courtesy copy was sent to James Clarke, he insisted that all the staff watch it during the weekly round-up. Claire tried to beg off, but James was having none of it.

  ‘It may be sensationalist, it may not, we don’t know. It may help us, teach us to recognise more Laura Bells. Lorna. Sorry.’

  The documentary was entirely predictable. The girl they had got to impersonate Lorna did look a little like her, but Rabbit Girl and Pete were altogether too attractive, and Carl was a good-natured savant who doted on Lorna. The fire was filmed from a variety of perspectives. ‘Some have even questioned the role of family members in starting the fire,’ said the narrator.

  ‘That’s a bit far-fetched,’ huffed Miss Pickin.

  ‘EastEnders much?’ snorted Miss Peel.

  When the programme ended, there was an anti-climactic feeling in the staffroom. The school hadn’t figured much, which was both good and bad. Miss Pickin was a bit miffed because she’d had her hair done especially, and hadn’t even made the final cut. James claimed to be happy that the school came out well, but bemoaned the fact that he’d given up an entire day to be filmed for interviews and only a couple of minutes had made it onto the screen.

  ‘That’s showbiz,’ muttered Miss Peel, squinting at her phone.

  * * *

  ‘Bring back the birch, that’s what I say.’ Derek had watched the documentary, and had wasted no time calling Claire.

  ‘Derek, families need support. It’s not a simple case of punishment and reward. And if a child has never learned a sense of morality, or had a safe enough environment . . . It’s all about the proper intervention, and the skills to see what’s happening—’

  ‘Oh Claire! You’ve not changed, have you?’ Derek chuckled affectionately. ‘Still the bleeding heart!’

  Claire closed her eyes and leaned tiredly against the wall where the sideboard used to be. ‘I’ve changed Derek. I guarantee it.’

  46

  A few weeks later, Claire got the letter. It was tucked into a card: ‘Hi there!’ cried a cheery cartoon dog. Lorna had written her name in a heart.

  Dear Miss Penny

  I bet you’re surprised to hear from me after such a long time and after everything that’s happened. I hope you are well.

  I am fine. Here they have TV, I saw you on it, and then they turned it off, but now I know you are still at the same school so you probably live in the same house too! I LOVE your hair! I hope your not too upset with me and that we’re still friends. Yesterday I read something in the Bible that said bad company ruins good morals and I think that is really true, don’t you? I didn’t mean to keep bad company, but here they say that I should have had more guidance so maybe it’s not all my fault. I see a counsellor here who is very nice and reminds me of you a bit! She is so kind. I love her almost as much as I love you!

  I am doing school work. They also have some guinea pigs that I help look after, and a garden.

  I write stories and they say that I’m very good at them, and yesterday I started to learn a bit of French, but I’m not very good at that yet.

  The other girls here are ok but sometimes they don’t like me and it’s lonely. You can come and visit me if you’d like. I’d like that because, in my heart, despite everything, I know we are still friends and friends should stick together! I trust you and you should trust me b
ecause I love you and I’d never do anything to hurt you.

  With Love From Lorna

  The night Claire couldn’t sleep. She went through the desk drawers, and found the first note from Lorna. YOR KIND. With the hearts, and the kisses. She propped it up against the teapot, placed the second card beside it, and gazed at them while she made some cocoa. The windows rattled with the tail end of a storm. Benji padded in, sighing, and collapsed on the floor near her feet. The new card trembled, opened wider; like a lazily sprung trap. Claire took sips of too hot cocoa and pulled her robe closely around her. The boiler hadn’t come on yet. The house was cold, empty. But not really empty, now that Lorna was there. And as the dawn light began to show, Claire sat, immobile, vowing not to read the card again. Knowing she would. Determined not to write the letter she was already drafting in her mind.

  Letter to the Readers

  I can’t thank you enough for reading Bad Little Girl my second novel. My first, Chinaski, came out in 2014, and shares some of the themes of Bad Little Girl but is drawn from a lot of my own experiences. Bad Little Girl, thankfully, isn’t.

  Bad Little Girl started off as a very different story, but over the first few weeks of fleshing it out, Lorna, Claire, Marianne and – strangely – all the dogs began forcing themselves into the narrative, and it became something else entirely. What was going to be a road trip novel instead became claustrophobic; a study in manipulation. The characters became real, they moved with their own authority; all I had to do was run behind them documenting their actions.

  I’m really interested in what you think, now you’ve got to the end. Was Lorna born bad, like Nikki says? Do you have compassion for her? How much of this was caused by Claire? Have you met a Marianne type?