Dustbin Baby (8 page)

I'M SURPRISED DADDY
didn't back off there and then the minute he'd sluiced off his suit. But he took me to his new flat. Was it his place – or hers?
She
was called Sylvia. There's some silly song that goes ‘Who is Sylvia, what is she?' and Daddy kept singing it. I knew exactly who Sylvia was. She was Daddy's new girlfriend. I knew
what
she was too. She was wicked because she had enticed Daddy away from Mummy.

Maybe that's not fair. I don't know how they met or when they started their affair. I just knew that if Sylvia hadn't come on the scene Daddy might have stayed with Mummy so she wouldn't have slit her wrists.

I didn't see her, of course. Nobody told me what she'd done but I heard them whispering. I imagined Mummy and her lady's razor and her
pale
body and the crimson bathwater. It seemed clear that it had to be
their
fault, Daddy and Sylvia.

I had to stay with Sylvia while Daddy went to the funeral. I didn't properly understand what a funeral was so I didn't clamour to go. Daddy bought me a new Barbie doll and a big tub of wax crayons and coloured drawing paper and a pile of picture books but I didn't touch any of them. I asked for scissors and cut pictures out of magazines. Sylvia was into fashion in a big way so I carefully cut out long lanky models with skinny arms and legs, my tongue sticking out as I rounded each spiky wrist and bony ankle, occasionally performing unwitting amputations as I went.

Sylvia found me an old exercise book and a stick of Pritt but I didn't want to make a scrapbook. I wanted to keep my paper girls free. They weren't called Naomi and Kate and Elle and Natasha. They were my girls now so I called them Rose and Violet and Daffodil and Bluebell. I weakened over the wax crayons and gave my girls' black-and-white high-fashion frocks bright red and purple and yellow and blue floral patterns to match their names.

‘That's this month's
Vogue
,' Sylvia said irritably, but most of the time we didn't speak. She fixed me lunch and then watched me warily. Perhaps she'd been the one who had to wash the sick out of the suit. My peanut-butter sandwich and Ribena stayed in my stomach so she relaxed and
switched
on the television. And then at long last Daddy came back.

‘What did Mummy look like?' I asked.

Daddy flinched, not knowing what to say. I wasn't being deliberately awkward. I didn't understand that Mummy was dead – and now indeed buried. I'd been told she was asleep and that she wasn't coming back home but I'd be able to meet up with her again in Heaven. Mummy had read me fairy tales so I imagined her sleeping in a castle surrounded by briars in some distant holiday resort called Heaven.

Daddy didn't answer. He had a lot of whispered discussions with Sylvia. Sometimes they got angry and forgot to whisper. Then they made up passionately and I'd come across them in an unpleasant embrace. I tried hard not to take any notice. I clutched my crumpled paper friends in my hands and in my head I played Big Girls, going out dancing with Rose and Violet and Daffodil and Bluebell.

I couldn't dance for ever. I cried at night when I was supposed to be sleeping on Sylvia's sofa. I cried during the day too, in the toilets at school, though I always blew my nose and scrubbed my face with crackly paper before I sidled out of the cubicle.

People tiptoed round me at school. I think the other children had been warned not to mention my mother. They played safe and didn't talk to me at all, not even my best friend Betsy. She acted as if maternal suicide was catching. We
still
had to sit next to each other but she edged as far away as possible and charged out every playtime so as not to get stuck with me. She started going round with another little girl called Charmaine. They circled the playground arm in arm whispering secrets. I tried bribing Betsy back by giving her my new Barbie doll but she said witheringly that dolls were for babies – though I knew she had a big girly gang of Barbies back at home because I'd played with them when I went to tea at her house.

I couldn't ask her back to our house any more because we didn't live in it.

But then we did. Daddy moved us back – and Sylvia came too.

‘But it's Mummy's house!' I said. ‘She won't let Sylvia in.'

‘Don't be silly, April. You know Mummy's passed away. It's
my
house and so of course I'm going to live in it. With Sylvia. She's your new mummy.'

I wasn't having it. Sylvia didn't seem keen on the idea either.

‘I hate this house. I hate the way everyone round here looks at me,' she shouted. ‘I don't want to live here. I don't want to look after your creepy little kid. I want to have fun! I'm out of here.'

So she went. So then there was just Daddy and me. He didn't know what to do with me. He asked Mrs Stevenson if she could fetch me from school and look after me till he got home from
work
. Mrs Stevenson made it plain that she didn't want to, except in emergencies. I begged Daddy to ask Betsy's mum, seeing it as a brilliant way of making Betsy be friends again, but she turned me down too, saying she didn't want the responsibility.

‘One well-behaved quiet little girl?' said Daddy impatiently.

I tried hard to be well-behaved around Daddy then because he was very bad-tempered, and I was very, very quiet in the real world. Inside my head I shouted all sorts of stuff with Rose and Violet and Daffodil and Bluebell. We played all day and danced all night. We could look after ourselves. We didn't need mothers or fathers.

Daddy employed an old lady to ferry me backwards and forwards. She came into our house and settled herself down in front of the television as if it was her place. I couldn't bear her to sit in Mummy's chair. I didn't want her big bottom squashing Mummy's pale lilac cushions. I raced to sit on Mummy's chair myself and wouldn't get up when she asked me. She smacked me hard on the back of my skinny legs. I kicked her. She walked out there and then.

So Daddy employed a young woman student instead. Jennifer. She was pink and plump and gentle and showed me how to paste my frail paper girls onto cardboard cornflake packets so they became reassuringly sturdy. I liked Jennifer a lot. Unfortunately Daddy did too. She showed
him
a lot more than cardboard cut-outs. Jennifer moved in. She didn't just commandeer Mummy's chair. She moved in on Mummy's bed.

I wasn't allowed into the bedroom now. I slumped outside in the hall, feeling lonely. For once Rose and Violet and Bluebell and Daffodil failed to keep me company.

I went into the bathroom and stared where the bath had been. Daddy had changed it into a shower stall because Sylvia said the bath gave her the creeps. It was one change too many. I wanted the bath back. I wanted to lie down in it and pretend I was cuddled up to Mummy. I wanted to prise open her eyelids so she would stay awake for ever.

I wanted her so badly.

I started whispering her name. The whispers got louder and louder until I was screaming. There was a lot of knocking at the door. I thought I'd locked it but Daddy's full weight made the lock burst open and then there were fingers digging into my shoulders and I was lifted off the floor and shaken so that my head jerked backwards and forwards and the bathroom became a fairground ride.

Daddy's voice bellowed, ‘STOP THAT SCREAMING!' I couldn't stop because he was scaring me so. I wouldn't stop for Jennifer. I wouldn't stop for Mrs Stevenson who came rushing around to see if I was being murdered. I screamed until my throat was raw. Daddy had
to
send for the doctor who stuck a needle in my bottom. He said it would send me to sleep – which made me scream all the more.

The doctor said I was suffering from ‘Nervous Reaction'. It wasn't surprising, given the circumstances. He said I just needed lots of love and reassurance.

I suppose Daddy tried. For a day or two. ‘Don't look so droopy, April. Daddy's here. Daddy loves you. Come on, how about a smile? Am I going to have to tickle you? Tickle, tickle, tickle,' and his hard fingertips would poke under my chin or into my armpit until Daddy interpreted my grimace as a grin.

Most of the time he let me mope. I was in trouble at school. I put my head down on my desk and shut my eyes. The teacher asked Daddy if I was getting enough sleep at night. He said I was getting too much, if anything. I wasn't always waking up in time to run to the bathroom. There were always damp sheets flapping in the back garden now. Daddy got angry and called me a baby. Jennifer said it wasn't really my fault and I couldn't help being nervy, like my mother.

‘She wasn't her
real
mother,' said Daddy.

He wasn't my real father and I'm glad, glad, glad there isn't a drop of his blood in my body. He was glad too, because when he'd eventually had enough of me – only months after Mummy died – he could shove me straight back to the social workers. Into Care.

Only it seemed that no-one really cared for me now.

I wonder if Mummy would have given up on me too. I've tried so hard but I can't
really
remember her. She's just a feeling, a faint smell of lavender, a sad sigh.

I think I still need to see her though. I know where she is.

9

THE GREENWOOD CEMETERY
. It was written in my records. I imagined it a real green wood, a gothic fairytale cemetery, tall yews and ivy and marble angels, but Greenwood is a London suburb and the cemetery is a long hike up a busy dual carriageway. I get to the gates at last and look for someone to give me directions. There's no-one around.

I don't like it being so empty. I wish I had someone with me. I really want to run right back to the station – but I can't give up now.

I could wait and ask Marion . . .

No. I'm here. It's OK. I'm not a little kid. I don't believe in ghosts even though I'm so haunted by the past.

I set off, selecting a path at random. There are a few angels, but their wings are broken and
some
have their heads knocked right off. I pat a pair of little mossy feet, stroke a marble robe, hold hands with a tiny cherub without a nose. It seems so shocking that no-one tends these graves any more. Vandals whack at them with baseball bats, thinking it's a right laugh. I want to cry even though the people in the graves have long ago crumpled into dust. A hundred years or more. Too long ago for Mummy.

I try another path, a bit scared of getting lost. My footsteps crunch on the gravel. I stop every now and then, wondering if I can hear someone else. I stop and peer round. The new leaves on the trees rustle, branches bobbing up and down. There are so many places someone could be hiding. Boys with bats, vagrants, junkies . . .

I'm being silly. There's no-one here. The footsteps I keep hearing are my own. I take a deep breath and walk on through the Victorian graves, reaching the classier end of the cemetery, all plinths and columns and little houses for the dead. I wonder what it's like to trace your family way back, to finger the gold lettering and find your great-great-great-great grandmother.
My
great-great-great-great grandmother could have been a posh old lady in a silk crinoline or a wretched old beggar-woman in rags. I'll never know.

I hurry past, marching towards the regimented rows of recent gravestones, wincing at freshly dug mounds heaped with wreaths. I walk up one row and down the next, wishing the dead could
be
conveniently rearranged in alphabetical order. Maybe Mummy's grave isn't properly marked anyway. I don't think Daddy would have wanted to fork out on a gravestone. And how would he have it engraved?
Only sleeping
?
Much loved wife of Daniel, deeply mourned almost-mother of April
?

I trek backwards and forwards, my eyes watering in the brisk wind. I'm never going to find her. I don't need to see the exact spot. It's better to think of her the way I used to, sleeping like Snow White in the green wood of my imagination . . .

There she is! JANET JOHNSON. Bright gold lettering on shiny black stone – much too garish for Mummy. And there's a
photo
, a heart shape behind glass. I go closer, my heart beating.

It's not her.

It has to be her.

It could be a different Janet Johnson, it's a common enough name – though the dates are right. It
is
her.

She looks young. She's wearing some very fancy white bow in her hair. No, you fool, it's a bride's veil. It's a wedding-day photo. Typical Daddy – he'd insist the day she married him had to be the happiest day of her life. Maybe it was. She looks radiant. It's the word you always use about brides, but she truly looks lit up from within, light shining out of her eyes, her mouth open, showing her gleaming teeth.

She never looked like that when I knew her. The light had been switched off. Poor Mummy.

I wish I could remember her properly. I wonder if she really loved me. Not the way she loved Daddy, but in a warm, soft, motherly way. Or was I always the odd little dustbin baby who never quite scrubbed up sweet enough?