Dustbin Baby (14 page)

‘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 busy 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.

‘Not if you don't want it to happen.'

‘Well, I don't. You mean stop boarding at Fairleigh?'

‘That's maybe not such a bad idea. You're very bright, April, even though you've still got a lot of catching up to do. If you went to a proper secondary school you could take your GCSEs and A-levels and—'

‘And read History at university, yeah, yeah, I know. Though I'm
not
bright, I'm rubbish at heaps of things.'

‘And you don't seem exactly
happy
at school. You haven't got many friends, apart from Poppy.'

‘I'm OK. I don't want heaps of friends. Anyway, I've got you. If I get fostered I wouldn't be able to see you at weekends, would I?'

‘You could maybe see a lot more of me.'

‘How?'

Marion laughed nervously.

‘Maybe you're not so bright after all, April.
I
want to be your foster mother.'

I stared at her. She bravely met my eyes. ‘You probably think it's a ridiculous idea. It
is
. I mean, I'm much too old and I'm single – though I've had a detailed chat with social services and they seem to think these aren't insurmountable problems. But of course you should really be with a proper family.'

‘I don't want a proper family!'

I thought about it, my head whirling. I wasn't sure I wanted Marion either. She was good as my teacher, fine as my friend – but she wasn't a bit like a
mother
. I couldn't imagine living with her all the time.

I saw her bite her lip worriedly. I was being cruel keeping her waiting. So I took a deep breath.

‘Thank you very much. It's very kind of you,' I said politely, as if she'd offered me a cup of tea rather than a permanent home. I struggled harder. ‘It will be . . . wonderful.'

Marion smiled wryly.

‘It won't be wonderful living with a grumpy old stick like me. I'll nag you about homework and I'll lecture you silly and I'll twitch terribly if
you
shorten your skirt or wear too much makeup. But I think we
could
get on well together. I'd love to give it a try. Of course I know I can't be like a real mother to you, April, but—'

‘I don't want you to act like a real mother.' I still had one, even though I didn't have any idea who she was. And I'd had too many foster mothers to want another, even if that had to be Marion's official title.

‘Will I call you Mum or Auntie or what?'

‘I think you should just carry on calling me Marion. Though if you're really bad we'd better go back to Miss Bean!'

It took a long time to get everything properly sorted out. Marion had to go on a special course. I had to see a new social worker, Elaine. There were lots of meetings about me, nearly all behind my back.

‘It's
my
life, so why can't I be there?' I asked Elaine.

‘I know, it does seem stupid, April, but it's just the way we work,' she said, playing around with a little bunny on her desk.

‘Why is it taking such ages? Marion wants to foster me and I want to be fostered by her so why can't we just get on with it?'

‘I know, it's such a bore, but we've got to proceed carefully, prepare both of you, compile all the reports—'

I suddenly felt sick. ‘Will Marion have to see all the stuff about me in my file?'

‘I think she's seen it already,' she said gently.

‘I thought that was
private
! You mean she knows about the times I went out thieving with Gina?'

‘Yes.'

‘And – she knows about
Pearl
?'

‘Yes.'

‘And she still wants to foster me?'

‘She does.'

That silenced me. Elaine reached across her desk and patted my hand. ‘Marion understands, April. Don't worry. I don't think there'll be any problems about her fostering you. One of my other clients has recently been fostered by a single woman and that seems to be working well. I'm sure it will all work out beautifully for you and Marion.'

It has worked. But maybe not
beautifully
.

I left Fairleigh. Everyone sang a song for me the last day to wish me luck. Poppy sang an old Shirley Temple song, ‘On the good ship Lollipop' – she just sang those five words all the way through until the music stopped. I laughed and then I cried and couldn't stop. I didn't really like Fairleigh but I'd lived there five years so it was like home. I didn't fit in but that was nothing new. I didn't fit in anywhere.

I wondered if I'd ever fit in with Marion. I had my own blue bedroom, with blue floral curtains and a matching duvet. She'd even bought me a new blue nightie and a blue quilted dressing-gown. I would have liked a brighter blue and I prefer wearing pyjamas and I don't ever bother
with
a dressing-gown but I pretended to be very grateful. I tried giving Marion a hug but we'd been teacher and pupil too long. We both found embracing embarrassing.

Marion hasn't ever tried to kiss me goodnight but she pats my shoulder and then tucks the duvet tight round my neck and under my chin. I always rear up out of it the moment she goes out the room. I hate anything round my head. If I burrow under the covers by accident in my sleep I always wake up in a panic.

Maybe I was stuck in that dustbin for hours and hours.

Of course I can't remember what it was like. It just seems as if I can. I'm nearly there. I'm off the train, on the tube. There's no stopping me now. I know where I'm going.

I have to find The Pizza Place in the High Street. If it's still there. Even if it is, it's mad to think there'll still be the same dustbins round the back. And even madder to think my mother will be there.

Marion is almost as good as a real mother. She's been so kind to me. It's cruel of me to keep her worrying at home, wondering where on earth I am.

She won't be
really
worried. She'll be anxious, she'll be concerned, like a teacher when someone goes missing from the playground. But I've seen mothers lose their children. I've seen that terrible chewed-up look on their faces, heard their high-pitched calling. I've seen Cathy and Hannah's
mums
the day the school coach got a double puncture and we were all hours late after a trip to the Science Museum. Marion looked perfectly calm and collected. She'd spent her time reassuring everyone that we were all OK, school coaches were forever breaking down and we'd all turn up safe and sound.

Safe and sound. These are the words that sum her up, though she'd circle them in an essay and say I was using tired language. She's so safe you can believe everything she says and never feel she's going behind your back to get rid of you. She's so sound you know there's no nasty rotten bit of her ready to turn sour on you. She's there, safe and sound, if you want her.

I do want her.

I want my
mum
too.

16

THE PIZZA PLACE
is still there, halfway down the High Street, by a little alleyway. I peer in the window, looking at all the people eating their pizzas. I can't see anyone on their own. No woman looking out the window, waiting for me.

I walked past, down the alleyway.

She's not here.

I don't know why I'm crying. Of course she isn't here.

I'm in the right place. There's the dustbin. Well, it's not one single silver dustbin the way I'd imagined. There are lots of wheely-bins, large, stinking and unattractive. I don't know if there was a real dustbin once or whether the journalists fudged things because Wheely-bin Waif has less impact. I stare at the wheely-bins, breathing shallowly. How could anyone stuff a newborn
baby
in those dank depths? I've imagined it over and over and yet I've never thought about the
smell
.

I must have reeked when that boy raked through the rubbish and found me. Yet he cradled me inside his shirt. That's what the newspaper said. Maybe it just made a good story.

It's
my
story and I don't know what's made up and what isn't. I've made some of it up myself to fill in the gaps. I feel as if I'm not real. Everyone makes up their own version of me.

I don't know which is the real me. I don't know who I am.

Why can't she be here for me? Doesn't she even remember me on my birthday? Doesn't she ever wonder what I've turned out like? I've thought about her every day of my life.

She doesn't care. She gave birth to me but she shoved me straight in that bin and hasn't given me a second thought since. What sort of a mum could throw her baby away? Maybe she isn't worth finding. It's obvious she doesn't want me to look for her. She left me without a note, without a stitch of clothing, not even a nappy.

I punch the nearest wheely-bin. It hurts a lot. My knuckle starts bleeding and I suck it. Someone's scrawled rude words all over the bin. I say them too. There are numbers as well. A line of eleven numbers. Someone's left their phone number. There's a message in the same handwriting: PLEASE CALL, BABY.

I read it again and again and again.

It's a message for me.

No, that's crazy. It's nothing to do with me. Some girl and boy use this alley as their secret meeting place and now they need to get in touch. ‘Baby' is a common enough nickname. Grant called Hannah ‘Baby'. She thought it wonderful (though Cathy and I privately agreed it was a bit demeaning, like he couldn't be bothered to remember her name).