Kitabı oku: «Mummy’s Little Girl: A heart-rending story of abuse, innocence and the desperate race to save a lost child»
JANE ELLIOTT
Mummy’s Little Girl
A desperate race to save a lost child
Contents
Title Page Fact Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Epilogue Copyright About the Publisher
Fact
In the UK alone, a child goes missing every five minutes.
Some of these children are found; others become
the focus of high-profile media campaigns.
A few are never seen again.
Mummy’s Little Girl
Prologue
December 1996. London. Evening
The pains had started just after lunch – not that mealtimes meant much in her house.
Had little Hayley Clark known what the sudden rush of water was, the one that had dampened her sheets in the small hours of the morning, she might have known to expect the contractions sometime soon. But she didn’t. No one had explained it to her. There had been no visits to the doctor; no scans; no midwives to reassure her or tell her what was likely to happen, or when. It would have been unthinkable to wake her mum and admit that her bed was wet and she didn’t know why, just as it would have been unthinkable in the first place to tell her that she thought she was going to have a baby.
It had been five months ago that Hayley had realised she was pregnant, a few weeks after she had met the boys who lived at the other end of the estate. She had left the flat out of necessity that summer’s evening – Mum and Dad were shouting at each other, and she didn’t know how it would end. The arguments didn’t always spill over into her tiny bedroom, but they had happened enough times for her to feel scared to the pit of her stomach whenever she heard raised voices. Strangely it was her mum she feared more than her dad in those situations. Dad would just shout at her, telling her she was lazy and ugly and why the hell didn’t she get out there and find some fucking friends, before stumbling into bed to sleep off the cheap booze. Mum, on the other hand, was more physical: she would pull her long, jet-black hair and hit her. One time she had given her a black eye, and Hayley had to pretend to the teachers at school that she’d been in a fight on the way home. Mum would hurl abuse at her too, but unkind words she could deal with. It was the punches that hurt.
That night back in the summer, she had sensed it would be in her interests to leave the house. They were drunker than usual, for one thing – it was the time of the month when they had more money, so there was no danger of running out of drink. And she had heard them talking about her. Yelling about her, actually. Hayley was only young, but she knew what that meant, and was smart enough to get out of there before things turned nasty for her.
She hadn’t needed a coat – it was a warm evening – and so she slipped out of the flat wearing only the same jeans and T-shirt that she always wore, knowing that Mum and Dad would probably not even hear the door. She walked down the concrete stairwell, avoiding the nasty smell that always made her feel a little bit sick, and emerged at the front of the tower block. It was late, but still just light, and little crowds of people were standing around in cliques. Some of them were smoking, some of them were drinking. A lot of them had music blaring from their car stereos.
Hayley didn’t like coming out here by herself, especially at this time of night. During the day there was a police presence, but come nightfall even they knew to steer clear of the estate. When they did show up, they tended to ignore most of what was going on. Cleaning this place up was like pushing sand uphill, Hayley had heard a grown-up say once.
It was scary. None of the groups of people seemed to talk to each other; none of them looked as if they dared talk to each other. Hayley walked quickly, with her head down, hoping that she wouldn’t be noticed.
Hayley was the sort of girl people didn’t normally notice. But that was about to change.
A wolf-whistle filled the air. Hayley felt her stomach lurch and she kept her eyes on the pavement as she continued walking, desperately hoping that the whistle hadn’t been directed at her. Almost immediately, though, it was followed up by the sound of footsteps, and before Hayley knew what was happening, two boys were standing in front of her.
They were older than her – seventeen, maybe, or eighteen – and Hayley thought she knew their faces. They were definitely the sort of boys she would go out of her way to avoid, but that wasn’t saying much: Hayley went out of her way to avoid most people. They both wore baggy jeans and hooded tops; the only thing that really made them look different from each other was that one of them had a tooth missing.
‘Where you going?’ the toothless one demanded. He chewed noisily on some gum.
Hayley almost automatically looked down at the ground. She said nothing.
She could sense the two boys grinning at each other. ‘Going to come and hang with us?’ the other boy said. It didn’t sound much like a question.
‘No thanks,’ she mumbled.
But as she spoke, one of them grabbed her arm. She looked around her in alarm, but none of the other groups noticed what was going on; or if they did, they stayed well clear. It was the boy with the full set of teeth who had grabbed her, and his grip was strong. He pulled her over towards where they had been standing, by a car whose four doors were wide open. There were others here, mostly boys, but a couple of girls too, who looked at Hayley with nasty stares. They didn’t say anything, however.
‘Have a drink,’ the toothless boy said to her. He put a bottle of something into her hand.
‘I don’t want to—’ she started to say, her voice trembling slightly.
‘I don’t want to!’ a female voice mimicked from somewhere. Hayley felt her skin flush.
‘Drink it,’ the boy insisted.
Hayley had never drunk alcohol before. She’d heard the other children at school talking about it, of course, talking about how they would get drunk on Friday nights, but she wasn’t popular enough to be invited to their parties; and anyway, she was hardly likely to touch the stuff, knowing what sort of effect it had on her mum and dad. But as she stood there that night, with these intimidating people standing round and staring at her, she knew that she couldn’t say no; so she put the bottle timidly to her lips.
The mouth of the bottle was already wet from somebody else’s saliva, and it made Hayley shiver with revulsion. She closed her eyes, though, and tipped the bottle up further. The alcohol was incredibly sweet – a bit like the fizzy drinks she occasionally tasted – and to her surprise she found that she quite liked it. Seconds later, however, the kick of the alcohol hit the back of her throat and she started to cough.
The others laughed, and Hayley felt her skin suddenly burning with embarrassment. But what happened next surprised even her. Ashamed of her inability to handle the drink, she took another pull at the bottle, two hefty gulps. This time she didn’t cough, and she handed the bottle back to the toothless boy with a tiny look of defiance. The boy looked at his friend with a smile – a smile Hayley could tell meant something, but she didn’t know what. He took a swig at the bottle, and then handed it round.
‘What’s your name, then, gorgeous?’ he said, his accent thick with south London, just like Hayley’s.
‘Hayley.’
That look again.
‘Not seen you around much, Hayley.’ A giggle from one of the group.
The alcohol had created a warm feeling in her chest. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘So?’ The boldness of her response astonished her.
‘So … you gonna come with us?’
Hayley’s eyes flickered up towards the top of the tower block and she felt a sudden thrill of rebellion. Mum and Dad probably still didn’t know she’d left; even if they did, they wouldn’t care.
‘All right,’ she said.
The boy grinned. He took her by the arm again, but not so roughly this time, and led her away from the group. His friend followed.
‘Where you fucking going?’ a voice screeched. It was one of the girls in the little crowd around the car. They stopped and turned round, and Hayley watched as the girl approached the two boys. She was mixed race, and wore tight clothes against her curves which made Hayley feel like the little girl she was, and her lips and nose were pierced.
‘Fuck you,’ the toothless boy muttered. He pushed her to one side, took Hayley by the arm again and led her off.
‘I’ll be looking out for you, you little bitch!’ the girl called after her, her voice loaded with hate. ‘I’ll be looking out for you!’
Any other time, Hayley would have been petrified; but on that summer’s evening six months previously, with the alcohol doing its work, she felt something different. Carelessness. Recklessness. Whenever she thought back on it, she cringed at her own stupidity.
The boys didn’t tell her their names, and she didn’t ask. They led her to a different tower block on the south side of the estate, and into a flat several storeys up. It was a dingy place, but Hayley was used to that – her own home was hardly luxurious. Thick, dirty blankets were pinned up against the windows, and the only light came from a lava lamp on the floor in the corner. There was no furniture – just a few stained mattresses lying here and there, and a selection of blue and green milk crates scattered around instead of chairs. The kitchen area was covered with fast-food packaging, and there was a strange mixture of smells. Rotting food, of course, but also something else. A thick, musty smell.
As soon as they were in the flat, the boy without the missing tooth shut the door; then he collapsed on to one of the mattresses and pulled out a pouch of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Hayley watched as he licked the gummed edges of two papers and stuck them together, before sprinkling some tobacco into the middle. He then removed a small lump of something brown and held it in the flame of a lighter before breaking bits off and crumbling them onto the tobacco. He rolled the cigarette up and lit it; instantly Hayley could tell where that sweet smell came from.
He took a deep drag on the joint, and then passed it to Hayley. Suddenly timid again, she shook her head. A look of annoyance passed the boy’s face as he handed the joint to his friend. ‘You want another drink?’ he asked Hayley.
Not knowing what else to do, Hayley nodded her head.
She didn’t see him pour the drink; nor did she question why he was giving it to her in a dirty glass rather than straight out of the bottle as before. She drank it quickly, hoping it would give her more of the warm feeling that it had done when they were outside.
‘Why you looking at me like that?’ she asked the two boys when she had finished it. They were standing, watching her, as if they were waiting for something. She took another sip of her drink, trying her best to look grown-up.
It was from that moment that she started to lose her memory. She couldn’t remember what was said between them, or what she did; all she knew was that after a little while a terrible sickness hit her, a nausea that seemed to run through her whole body. She felt dizzy, the blood in her veins ran hot and she lost control of her limbs as she fell to the ground.
And falling to the ground was the last thing that she remembered.
When she woke up, her head was pounding, as though someone was beating the inside of her skull. But the pain in her head was nothing compared to the shocking, sinister stabbing she felt in her stomach, as though hot knives were slashing into her. She looked down and saw, to her horror and shame, that the bottom half of her body was naked. She was lying on one of the mattresses; the two boys were on the other side of the room, fast asleep.
She started to tremble with a mixture of sickness, fear and self-loathing. Slowly she sat up, and as she did so she became aware of streaks of blood down her legs.
Her jeans and underwear were lying on the floor near the boys. Wincing with pain, she got to her feet and crept towards them, quiet and terrified, to pick them up. As she started to get dressed, tears came to her eyes; her jeans became tangled as she pulled them on, and the more she struggled, the slower she became. She tried desperately to keep quiet, but she couldn’t help a sudden, loud sob escaping her lips.
The toothless boy stirred and drowsily opened his eyes. Hayley froze, her jeans still only halfway up her legs.
The boy leered at her, and then pushed himself up to a sitting position. ‘Get over here,’ he said.
Hayley felt her body start to shake. She pulled her jeans up over her hips and walked towards him. He grabbed her hand and pulled her down to the floor; she did her best to master another wave of nausea as he took her face roughly in one of his hands. It hurt, and she whimpered. They were face to face now, and she could smell the tobacco on his breath. ‘You can come back here any time, bitch,’ he whispered. ‘But tell anyone and I’ll kill you. Understand?’
Terrified, Hayley nodded her head.
‘Then get the fuck out of here.’
Hayley fled.
The sickness lasted for several hours, the discomfort in her belly for a few days; the shame endured for much longer than that. Hayley barely left her bedroom for the whole of the school holidays – she was too scared of seeing either the boys or the girl who had threatened her, and not even the prospect of a beating from her mum was enough to get her to leave the flat.
Hayley was not a worldly girl, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew she had been raped that night, probably by both boys. She knew she should tell someone, but there was no one to tell, and anyway, she was scared. Scared of the boys who had done it to her, and scared of what people would think. Much better to forget about it. Pretend it had never happened. Put it from her mind.
But that was not possible.
When her period was late, she ignored the little voice that nagged inside her head. Hayley was only young, and far from regular; it was nothing to worry about. But a week passed, and then two. She started to feel sick. Of course, she kept it from her mum and dad. Mum especially always reacted badly when she said she felt unwell. She didn’t go to the doctor, and even if she had had the courage to walk into a pharmacy and ask for a pregnancy test, she had no money to buy one.
And so the pregnancy progressed. Hayley knew she couldn’t keep it a secret for ever, but nine months was a long time. Maybe by the time the baby was born, something would have changed in her life.
But it hadn’t been nine months. Only five, when once again she slipped out of the flat without her mum and dad knowing. The pains were happening every fifteen minutes, and when they came she felt like doubling over in agony. There was no way she would be able to hide this from her mum, so she had to get out of there.
It was raining outside, a heavy, cold, persistent rain that saturated her clothes almost immediately. The sun had set, and there was no one outside in this weather – no one to see when Hayley bent over, clutching her belly and crying out. She staggered out of the estate and on to the main road that ran alongside it. There were few pedestrians here, but plenty of cars and buses, their headlamps on as they splashed their way through the rain.
If any of them saw the fifteen-year-old girl, stumbling along the puddle-ridden pavement with a look of unabated agony on her face, they didn’t stop to help.
Charity Thomson took the lift down from the maternity ward and walked through the clattering corridors of the hospital to the café by the entrance on the ground floor. She could get coffee on the ward, of course, but sometimes you just had to get out of there, away from the stress and the urgency and the shouting. Fifteen minutes of time to herself and she would, she knew, be re-energised and ready to bring a few more souls into the world.
Charity had been a midwife all her working life – thirty years, near enough. In all that time she had never met a colleague who didn’t have some complaint to make about the job – the conditions, the pay, the hours – but Charity had always loved it. There were difficult days, of course; there were deliveries that went wrong, that ended in heartbreak; and she would never be a rich woman. But on the whole Charity felt blessed to be doing what she was doing.
She bought her drink and took a seat on one of the plastic chairs. It was seven in the evening, but the hospital was still busy, and she watched as people rushed in and out of the large main doors – visitors, doctors, patients – all of them creating a throng of activity. Charity sat quietly for five minutes, absorbing it all in a kind of daydream.
It was the sight of the girl that brought her back to her senses. She was standing in the doorway, her clothes sopping wet and her matted black hair stuck to the side of her face. She was pale – deathly pale – and she looked around her as though she was completely lost and confused. Then she doubled over, her hands clutching the side of her belly. She stayed like that for perhaps twenty seconds. When she straightened up, she looked so scared that it caught Charity’s breath.
Charity had been a midwife for long enough to know what those twenty seconds of agony were. She got to her feet and hurried over to where the girl was standing.
‘Come on, love,’ she said, her voice automatically slipping into the kindly bedside manner she used with all pregnant women. ‘Let’s get you upstairs. Can you walk? Best if you do, eh?’
The girl stared at her as though she hadn’t understood a word.
Charity put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and started ushering her in. ‘Look at you,’ she said, carrying on talking brightly. ‘You’re wet through. Sooner we get you out of these clothes and into something dry, the better, eh? Got someone here with you, have you, love? Baby’s father?’
The girl shook her head violently.
‘Mum?’
Again she shook her head. Poor dear, Charity thought. It happened like that sometimes. They walked slowly towards the lift.
On the way up to the maternity ward, Charity took a better look at this strange girl with the matted hair and the soaking wet clothes. She seemed young, and her belly was barely swollen. It wasn’t so uncommon for that to happen – you might not even have known she was pregnant if you hadn’t seen the signs – but Charity couldn’t help wondering how far gone she was. ‘How many months, love?’ she asked as the doors hissed open on to the maternity ward.
‘Five,’ the girl replied hesitantly.
It was all Charity could do not to let the worry show in her face. She held her security card up to the panel by the entrance door and, when it clicked open, hurried the girl through.
‘What’s your name, love?’ she asked.
No reply.
‘How old are you?’
‘S–seventeen,’ the girl stuttered a bit too quickly. It was obviously a lie, but Charity couldn’t worry too much about that just at the moment. Her job was to look after the girl and deliver a desperately premature baby against the odds. Everything else could wait until later.
A nurse was standing at reception. ‘We’re going to need a doctor,’ Charity told her quietly. ‘And make sure there’s room in Special Care.’
The nurse looked at her quizzically.
Five months. Charity mouthed the words silently to the nurse, whose expression immediately changed to one of concern. The midwife nodded meaningfully, and then continued to walk with the girl towards the delivery suite.
Her patient was shaking violently, and Charity knew she wasn’t far off now.
Hayley did not get the chance to hold her baby girl before she was taken away. But she saw her in the hands of the midwife, and she heard the tiny squawk of her little voice. She was so small. So desperately, impossible small – barely larger than the midwife’s hands – and, despite her absolute exhaustion, Hayley felt an overwhelming need to reach out and touch the child. She pushed herself up on to her elbows, but her strength had left her and she could do nothing but look as the baby was placed in a clear Perspex cot and wheeled out of the birthing room.
Then the nice midwife was there, standing by her bed and tightly holding her shaking hand. ‘You can see her in a bit, love. She’s very frail, and we need to take her into Special Care and put her on a respirator. You’re going to have to be very brave, but the doctors will do everything they can to give her the best chance.’
Hayley looked up at her with wide eyes, feeling them brim with tears. She was so kind. Nobody was ever that kind to her, and she was glad that her baby was being looked after by people like that.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘Now listen, love,’ the midwife continued. ‘I know you’re not really seventeen. No one here is going to judge you or think the worse of you. All we want to do is look after you and make sure that you and your baby are all right. But we need to know your name, and we need to get in touch with your mum and dad to let them know what’s happened. You do have a mum and dad, don’t you, love?’
Hayley nodded.
‘Good girl.’ The midwife squeezed her hand. ‘Now we don’t have to hurry. I’m going to leave you to rest for half an hour. You need anything at all, you press this button here. When I come back, we’ll go down to Special Care to see your baby, and then we’ll fill in all the pieces of paper that we need to. Then we’ll call your mum and dad. Do you want to do it, or shall I?’
Hayley didn’t answer.
The midwife squeezed her hand. ‘You think about it, love,’ she said with a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll be back in a bit.’ She squeezed her hand a second time, and then left.
Hayley lay there, alone and confused. In the last hour, her world had changed. For months she had been terrified – terrified of what her parents would say and do if they found out the dirty truth about their daughter; terrified of encountering the boys again. Now it was all different. She was still scared, but scared for a different reason. Scared for her baby. Scared of what would happen when she took her home. Scared of the life she would have.
As these thoughts ran through her head, Hayley wondered whether this was what it was like to be a grown-up.
About five minutes after the midwife had left she summoned up the energy to get out of bed. Her legs felt weak as she steadied herself by the side of her bed, and she was sore from the birth; but she took a couple of tentative steps towards the chair over which her wet clothes had been laid. She took off her stained hospital robes, and with difficulty pulled on the still damp jeans and T-shirt, which were clammy and cold on her skin. Gingerly, she stepped towards the door and out into the corridor.
It was almost midnight, but the maternity ward was still buzzing with activity. Mums in labour walked up and down the corridor, some of them pushing drip stands along with them. Harassed hospital workers rushed in and out of rooms. Nobody paid any attention to a young girl walking unobtrusively past the reception desk and out of the main body of the hospital.
It was a relief for Hayley when she saw that the rain had stopped. If she’d had the money, she would have taken a bus home, but she didn’t, so there was nothing for it but to walk. It took an hour and a half to get back to the estate, and by the time she got home, her mum and dad were fast asleep. She crept silently into the bathroom, where she removed her clothes before moistening some tissue and using it to wipe away the stubborn streaks of blood from her inner thigh. Then she rolled her clothes up into a little ball, returned to her room, climbed into bed and pulled the blankets tightly around her.
As she lay there, waiting for sleep to come, Hayley felt as though a part of her had been torn away. She felt a desperate, gaping emptiness. She felt as though she was no longer whole. Her body ached for the little girl she had only glimpsed for a matter of seconds.
Yet what else could she have done? Bring her back here, to this place? At least now her child had a chance – a chance of life in the hands of the kind doctors, and a chance of happiness in the hands of whoever she ended up with.
A chance of happiness. If she could give her little girl that, then perhaps she wasn’t so worthless. It wasn’t much to cling on to, but it was something.
A chance of happiness.
The words echoed around Hayley’s head as she lay there in her little bed until eventually, overcome with exhaustion and emotion, she slipped into a troubled, dream-filled sleep.
It was a bit more than half an hour after she’d left Hayley that Charity returned to the girl’s room. She didn’t know why, but somehow she wasn’t surprised to see that she was no longer there.
She felt a pang. On some level, she had hoped that maybe she had been getting through to the girl, but now she realised how thoughtless she had been to leave her alone. If anyone needed help, company and security, it was the frightened little thing who had given birth in that room less than an hour ago. She sighed.
There were procedures in place for this kind of event. Charity immediately informed hospital security what had happened; then the police were called. There would be statements and interviews in due course, but Charity knew it would all be in vain – the girl had not given any information about herself, not even her name. The midwife found herself wondering whether she had come into the hospital intending to abandon her child, but she soon brushed away that thought. Chances were that the girl didn’t even know herself. Chances were that she was too scared even to get her childish thoughts together.
Charity did everything that was required of her in a kind of daze. Her shift was supposed to end at midnight, but it was past two o’clock by the time it was all done. Even then, tired though she was, she didn’t leave for home. There was something she wanted to do first. She slipped down to the shop on the ground floor. It was empty, apart from the bored, pimply young man behind the counter. Charity couldn’t afford much, so she chose the smallest toy she could – a little pink and blue teddy bear, not much bigger than her hand. She paid for it, and then headed back to the maternity suite.
It was never easy going into the Special Care Baby Unit, but tonight’s trip was more difficult than most. She walked into the observation room and saw them lined up, those fragile little bundles of life. There were seven of them tonight, all lying in their sterile incubators, their stillness giving no clue to the desperate struggle each of them was making for their very existence.
The little girl the midwife had delivered lay at the end of the row. She was the smallest of them all, and she lay so still that had it not been for the regular pinging of the heart monitor by her side, you might never have known she was alive. A feeding tube had been inserted into her impossibly tiny nose, and a little oxygen mask covered her face. The baby was bathed in the glow of ultra-violet light to prevent jaundice.
How long Charity stood and stared at the child she could not have said. Eventually, though, she was awakened from her dream-like state by a voice.
‘You should go home.’
She turned around. One of the doctors was standing just by her, a quietly spoken Asian man by the name of Sunil, whom she had always found to be very friendly.
‘I just wanted to see how she was getting on,’ she said quietly.
Sunil nodded and gave a sad little smile. ‘Too early to say.’ Charity was pleased that he didn’t offer any platitudes – they both knew that the baby’s life hung in the balance, and it would have been disrespectful of him to pretend that wasn’t the case.
‘Is this the one?’ he asked. ‘The one whose mother left?’
The midwife nodded.
‘Did you deliver her?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘Well then,’ Sunil continued, ‘as her mother is not here to give her a name, I think she should be named after the person whose hands brought her into the world, don’t you?’
The midwife blinked, and was surprised to feel tears in her eyes. She turned back to the incubator. ‘Charity,’ she breathed, and then shook her head. No. It wasn’t right. ‘I don’t think so,’ she told the doctor. ‘This little girl will need enough charity in her life as it is.’
The doctor shrugged. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘But she needs a name. I think you should choose it.’
Charity’s eyes misted over. ‘I was pregnant once,’ she said. ‘Oh, I lost the child. But that didn’t stop me giving it a name.’ She smiled. ‘Dani. That’s what we’ll call her.’
Sunil put his hand on her shoulder, and then left the observation room. The midwife knew that she too should leave soon, but she allowed herself a couple more minutes with the little girl. It didn’t seem right just to leave her. On a whim, she stepped out of the observation room and, checking to see that no one was watching, walked into the Special Care ward itself and up to the little girl’s Perspex cot. She lay the soft toy she had bought on the clear cover – no doubt it would be removed by a doctor, but she didn’t know what else to do with it. It lay there as floppy and seemingly lifeless as the baby herself.
‘Just get through this, my little love,’ she found herself whispering to the child. ‘Just get through this. Nothing you’ll ever have to do in your life will be nearly as hard if you can just get through this.’
She drew a deep breath and did her best to steady the emotion that was suddenly threatening to overcome her.
‘Keep fighting, little Dani,’ she breathed.
She did her best to smile at the baby, who didn’t even know she was there; then she turned and left the ward, closing the door quietly behind her.
Chapter One
Twelve years later
Dani Sinclair heard the bell go for morning break. All around her, her classmates scuffed their chairs back and started talking. The teacher at the front of the class – Mr Wynn – called out something, but it was lost in the hubbub of noise as everyone hurried out excitedly for breaktime.
Everybody except Dani.
Nobody stopped to run out to the playground with her. Nobody called to her, or smiled at her, or paid her any attention at all. And for that, Dani was pleased. When the other children did pay attention to her, it wasn’t the kind of attention she wanted.
She was the last to leave the classroom, and Mr Wynn hurried her on. ‘Come on, Dani,’ he said impatiently. ‘Outside for break-time, please.’
Dani nodded timidly and left the classroom; Mr Wynn followed her out into the playground.
It was a clear winter’s day, cold enough for the raw chill of the air to burn Dani’s bare legs. Her school skirt was short, not as a fashion statement, but because her mum – her foster mum, actually – had not bought her any new clothes for ages. All her school mates seemed to have new trainers every other week, and they certainly noticed that Dani was not as well dressed as them. It was one of the many things that they used to pick on her.
She skirted round the edge of the playground, trying to make it look as if she was busy doing something when in fact she was just wandering aimlessly. As she passed certain groups of kids, they shouted names at her, but she was so used to them doing so that she hardly heard them.
Dani had been wandering for perhaps five minutes when they stopped her. Ashley and Tammy were the two most popular girls in the class. They had long hair and wore perfume and make-up, even though you weren’t supposed to at school. It made them look much older than their twelve years, and it also put them on a different side of the playground to Dani, who never had anything to make her look pretty. Ashley and Tammy were mean girls. They were always picking on Dani, always teasing her for being so quiet, always trying to get her to say dirty words she didn’t want to say. They made her cry on an almost daily basis, and she hated it when they turned their attention to her.
Dani tried to carry on walking, to get away from the potential confrontation, but they weren’t having it. Tammy wolf-whistled at her, and Ashley stepped forwards and grabbed hold of the hem of her skirt, pulling it up and down so that it billowed. From somewhere else, Dani heard the sound of other children laughing, and she felt blood rise to the skin of her face.
‘What you doing, Sinclair? Going on the pull?’ Ashley called.
Embarrassed, Dani looked down at the ground and carried on trying to walk away; but the girls kept following her.
‘Don’t think there’s anyone fancies you much round here,’ Tammy added.
‘Shut up,’ Dani retorted from behind clenched teeth.
It wasn’t like her to answer back. The other girls knew it and they jeered. Ashley went for the skirt again. This time, Dani swung round and lashed out at the other girl. It was a pitiful sight – Dani was no fighter, and the other two were good at it. Immediately they piled in, pushing Dani to the ground and pulling at her hair. Dani wanted to fight back, but she was not good at this sort of thing, and she curled up into a little ball as a crowd gathered round to watch the entertainment. There were shouts of encouragement as the girls started punching her curled-up body. Dani was in no doubt about who they all wanted to win the fight.
‘Fucking cry-baby,’ Ashley shouted gleefully when she noticed the hot tears that had suddenly started to stream down Dani’s face. And then again, in a sing-song voice, slightly babyish but all the more aggressive for that: ‘Fucking cry-baby …’
‘All right, you three. That’s enough!’ a man’s voice barked from nearby. Dani looked up to see Mr Wynn, his green eyes flashing angrily. ‘I said, that’s enough!’
The scratching and clawing stopped. Humiliated at being the only one still on the ground, Dani pushed herself up.
‘That’s not the first time I’ve seen you three fighting,’ Mr Wynn said severely. ‘I don’t expect to see it happening again.’
Dani looked wide-eyed at him, smarting from the injustice of it.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Miss Sinclair,’ Mr Wynn snapped. ‘I won’t have any fighting in the playground while I’m on duty. Is that understood?’
Dani felt herself nodding. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said quietly.
‘Ashley? Tammy?’
‘Yes, sir,’ they replied in unison, their voices chanting almost sarcastically.
‘Good.’ Mr Wynn nodded his head decisively, and then turned and walked to the other end of the playground. With his back to them, he did not see the spiteful little smile that Ashley and Tammy cast in Dani’s direction.
It was late on Friday evening, and there were three people in the meeting: Kate Swinton, a tall, curly-haired social worker with a thin face and kind eyes; Andy Martin, also a social worker – a young man with a shaved head to hide the fact that he was balding; and Alice Gray, a fair bit older than the other two, their line manager. It had been a long afternoon, and their meeting had overrun. All three of them were looking forward to getting out of the bland room in the council offices and going home. But there was a final case to get through before that could happen.
‘All right,’ Alice said with a sigh of relief. ‘Last one.’ She looked at the agenda on the table in front of her. ‘One of yours, I think, Kate?’
Kate Swinton nodded. ‘Dani Sinclair. Twelve years old. I’ve mentioned her to you once or twice before.’
Alice smiled. ‘Sorry, Kate,’ she said. ‘Heavy caseload. You’ll have to refresh my memory.’
Kate pulled a file out from a little pile by her side. ‘She’s only come my way in the last couple of years. Before that we had no reason to become involved. She was placed with a foster family at birth, a couple in south-west London. Two younger siblings, but neither of them fostered.’
‘Unusual,’ Andy butted in.
‘Mmm,’ Kate replied. ‘I spoke to the mother about it. They tried to conceive naturally for a long time before they fostered, and she fell pregnant soon afterwards.’
‘Sod’s law.’
‘Quite.’
‘Come on,’ their line manager said briskly. ‘Let’s wrap this up. What’s the problem with the child?’
‘Difficult to say,’ Kate told her. ‘On the surface of it, nothing – at least nothing that I can detect. She’s very quiet, and by all accounts finds it difficult to make friends. Young for her age, I’d say – not as streetwise as a lot of the kids we see nowadays. But that’s really nothing out of the ordinary – nothing that would require our intervention. It’s the mother who’s more of a worry. Her husband left the family home two years ago as a result of an affair, and he hasn’t been back since. Divorce is only just coming through now, but he’s not paying any maintenance, and the CSA being what it is …’
Alice rolled her eyes.
‘Exactly,’ Kate said. ‘Anyway, unusually it was the mother who got in touch with us. Her husband leaving hit her pretty hard, I think. She told me that it was getting more and more difficult to look after the three children, and she didn’t think she could continue fostering Dani.’
Both Alice and Andy blinked. ‘How old did you say the girl was again?’
‘Twelve.’
‘And she’s lived with the foster mother all her life?’
Kate nodded.
Alice shook her head. ‘Some people—’ she muttered. ‘Are you trying to tell me she’s requesting that the girl be reassigned?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Has she given you any reason, other than not being able to cope? Any real reason, I mean?’
‘Yes. She’s complaining that the child is showing signs of becoming violent.’
‘Violent?’
‘Getting into fights at school, attacking the other two children at home.’
‘Have you spoken to the school about it?’
‘Yes.’ Kate pulled a piece of paper out of her file and glanced at it. ‘I spoke to a Gina Sawyer, her class teacher. She seemed very surprised by the suggestion that Dani was aggressive. My understanding is that Dani Sinclair does get into scrapes, but they’re not of her own making.’
‘Bullying?’
Kate shrugged slightly. ‘Her teacher didn’t use that word, but that’s what it sounded like to me.’
Alice frowned. ‘Poor little thing. What’s your take on it?’
Kate took a deep breath. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the mother’s approached us, so we have to follow it up. I don’t think there’s any doubt that she’s finding things tough. Money’s obviously tighter than it used to be, which doesn’t help matters. But in my view, moving the child from her family home would be deeply traumatic, especially if she’s having difficulty at school. I think it should be avoided.’
‘I’m assuming you have no reason to believe the child is in danger. No signs of abuse?’
Kate shook her head. ‘As I say, she’s a very retiring kind of girl. It’s difficult to get much out of her. I wouldn’t say she’s the happiest child I’ve ever met, but no, I wouldn’t say she’s demonstrating any of the warning signs.’
‘Do you think we need a supervision order?’
‘I’d say it’s early days for that.’
‘OK.’ Alice looked at Kate and Andy. ‘Kate, you need to keep tabs on the family – keep an eye out for any deterioration. But are we agreed that it’s in the child’s best interest for her to stay where she is?’
‘Absolutely,’ the two social workers said in unison.
‘Good.’ Alice smiled at them. ‘Well, I guess that wraps everything up.’ She scraped her chair back and stood up. ‘Have a good weekend, you two. I’ll see you both on Monday.’
Dani Sinclair had dark brown hair, pale skin and clear brown eyes. She was small for her age, though close up you could tell that she was almost a teenager. When she cried, the tears would collect in her lower lids like water swelling against a dam; but the dam would eventually break, and the tears would suddenly wet her cheeks profusely. It happened a lot. Dani was a tearful little girl, not robust like some children, and she found it difficult to stop herself from crying when she started to feel the tears coming.
She felt them coming now as she sat at the meal table with the two younger ones. It was fish fingers for tea.
Dani didn’t really like fish fingers – didn’t like the way the fish oozed a kind of milky sap against the orange breadcrumbs when they were warm. But she never said so because the other two – James and Rebecca – loved them. Instead, she pushed the little pieces around her plate, occasionally summoning up the courage to eat a mouthful. She knew that they just got worse as they grew colder, but that didn’t make it any easier to eat them up when they were hot.
At the other side of the small kitchen, their mum clattered around at the sink. Dani would be in trouble when her mum saw that she had barely eaten any of the food, and that thought spurred her on a bit. She stuck her fork into a piece of fish finger, put it in her mouth, chewed and swallowed. She shivered as the food went down.
‘Finished!’ Rebecca shouted loudly.
‘Me too!’ James chimed in.
Their mum turned from the sink, suds dripping from the yellow washing-up gloves she was wearing. She walked to the table and picked up the two empty plates, before looking down at Dani’s.
Dani returned the look and steeled herself for what was to come.
‘You’re a fussy little beggar, Dani,’ she snapped. ‘Why can’t you eat the food I give you? Why can’t you be more like your brother and sister?’
Dani kept quiet, and endured the smug stares coming from the younger children.
‘Go on,’ her mum said waspishly. ‘I’m sick of the sight of you. Go to your room.’
Silently Dani got down from the table, left the kitchen and trudged up the stairs. ‘And when your Auntie Rose comes round, you make sure you don’t have that surly bloody look on your face!’ Mum’s voice carried up the stairs.
‘Dani never eats her dinner, does she, Mum?’ she heard Rebecca saying from the kitchen.
‘Shut up, Rebecca,’ the little girl was told.
Mum wasn’t her real mum. Dani had known that for as long as she could remember. But she hadn’t always been like this. In Dani’s earliest memories, things had been happier. There had been a man in the house, for one thing – the man she called Daddy. He had been kind to the children, and to Dani in particular. One day, however, he wasn’t there any more. Dani asked any number of times where her Daddy had gone, but she never received a straight answer from her mum. It was left to her to piece things together from half-heard conversations between grown-ups not intended for her ears. Conversations about things she didn’t really understand.
Dani opened the door to her bedroom. The other two children shared a room, but having a room to herself was not intended as a treat for Dani – she knew that well enough. It was because Rebecca would rather share with James than with her. Their room was nice and big; Dani’s was tiny, with room for only a small single bed and an old chest of drawers. But she didn’t mind. No one ever really disturbed her in here. It was the one place she could go and be sure of being by herself. She sat on the bed, hugged her knees and rested her head against the wall. The wallpaper was pink; her dad had put it up for her before he left and nowit was looking a bit old and tatty – in one corner it was coming away from the wall. There wasn’t any point mentioning it to Mum, of course, any more than it was worth mentioning the trouble she’d had at school that day. She would probably just shout at her, so she kept quiet about it.
Downstairs, she heard the television being switched on. Dani would have liked to have gone down to watch it with the others, but she chose not to – not with Mum in the mood she was in. Much better, she had learned, to keep herself to herself. She put her thumb in her mouth, closed her eyes and gently rocked herself. It would be bedtime soon. Bedtime was all right. When the lights were out, she could lose herself in her own little world and pretend things were better than they really were.
In truth, she knew, they could hardly be worse.
It had been several months ago that Mum had first told her she didn’t want Dani to live with them any more. Her words rang in the little girl’s head more clearly than anything anyone had ever said to her. At first she had persuaded herself that it was just a joke, that she didn’t really mean it; but when she kept repeating it in moments of anger, Dani wasn’t so sure. The arrival of the social worker had confirmed it for her. She was a nice lady called Kate, who had come to talk first to Mum and then to Dani herself. The grown-ups didn’t know that Dani had listened in on their conversation, however; they didn’t know she had heard her mum beg the social worker to take her away. ‘I can’t cope with her any more,’ Mum had said. ‘She’s going off the rails, always fighting other kids and bullying her brother and sister.’
Dani had blinked. She didn’t recognise herself in that description at all. But she knew that she would have to try very hard to make her mum want her again. It was difficult, though. Dani never seemed to be able to do anything right. Anything at all. She was always being shouted at, complained about. One time, Mum had even hit her – not hard, but hard enough to bring those tears to her eyes that always seemed to enrage her mother even more.
The very thought of it made her want to cry now.
She was woken from her reverie by the ringing of the doorbell and a little fluttering of apprehension in her stomach. That would be Auntie Rose. Dani couldn’t decide what to do. If she stayed here in her bedroom, she would be told off and accused of being unfriendly; but if she went downstairs, no doubt they would find something to complain about. Dani sat still, paralysed by indecision for a few minutes, before finally deciding to leave the safety of her bedroom and venture back downstairs. She grabbed the little pink and blue teddy bear – the one that had been hers ever since she was a baby, which was now worn and tatty and was still deeply loved – and went down.
At first, nobody noticed her standing in the doorway of the front room. Mum was in the kitchen, for a start, while James and Rebecca stood around Auntie Rose. Dani’s aunt – her mum’s sister – was a chubby lady. In her private moments, Dani had always thought that she looked a bit like a toad – a fat, poisonous toad with jowly cheeks and flat eyes that would sit there, hardly moving, waiting to be fed. She looked particularly toad-like today, sitting on the comfortable sofa with a wide, indulgent smile on her face. In her hands there was a large, dark green plastic bag. Not the sort of plastic bag Mum brought back from the supermarket: this was thicker and altogether more exciting – you could tell just by looking at it that it contained something more fun than food shopping. James and Rebecca could tell that too. They stood excitedly on tiptoes, waiting to see what their aunt had brought them.
James’s present came out first – a shiny metal car in a bright yellow box. ‘Thank you, Auntie Rose,’ he gabbled automatically, before taking his gift off to a corner of the room to unwrap it further. Meanwhile, Auntie Rose was removing something else from the bag. Rebecca looked a little crestfallen when she saw what it was: a magic wand, with a star at one end and a little button at the other. She pressed the button and the wand lit up, a sparkling golden colour. There was a tiara too, which Auntie Rose placed on Rebecca’s head before pinching her affectionately on the cheek.
‘Auntie Rose,’ Rebecca said in a quiet, whingey voice. ‘I’m too old for toys like that. I’m not a baby.’
Auntie Rose bristled slightly, and looked as if she was about to tell Rebecca off for her ingratitude; but at that moment she noticed Dani, and the indulgent smile fell from her face. ‘Dani,’ she said abruptly, as though greeting a grown-up she didn’t like very much. Her voice was lower than that of most of the women Dani knew.
‘Hello, Auntie Rose,’ Dani replied politely. She glanced at Rebecca’s glowing wand and the plastic bag. She didn’t really expect there to be anything in it for her, but she couldn’t help feeling a whisper of hope.
Auntie Rose looked away. ‘You’re too old for toys like that, Dani,’ she said by way of explanation that the bag was empty.
Dani felt a tiny crush of disappointment. In her mind she searched for the words to explain that Rebecca was only a year younger than her; but it wasn’t in her nature to answer back, and anyway, before she could say anything, she felt her mum pushing past her into the front room.
‘You spoil them, Rose,’ she said perfunctorily. ‘They’ve got enough toys as it is.’ She handed her sister one of the glasses of wine she was carrying, and then took a hearty swig from her own.
‘I like to spoil them, Tess,’ Auntie Rose replied. She also took a sip from her wine, and the awkwardness with Dani seemed to be immediately forgotten as they started chatting. Unobserved, Dani took a step backwards, and then silently climbed back upstairs to the refuge of her bedroom.
It had always been like this. Even before Dad left, Dani had always felt second best. Mum made no secret about it – about the fact that after Rebecca and James came along, she had wanted Dani to move somewhere else. It was Dad who had insisted on her staying, but now he had left. ‘Run off’ was the phrase everyone used. And since then, Mum had seemed increasingly bitter towards the little girl, as though she had been left with a burden she had long since lost interest in but couldn’t get rid of.
It was just the way things were. But that didn’t stop it hurting every time she was left out. It didn’t stop the little surge of embarrassment and shame coming to her cheeks. It didn’t stop her from almost crying. She was almost crying now, as she sat once more on her bed, waiting for night-time to come.
Half an hour later, perhaps a little more, she heard James and Rebecca traipsing upstairs. There was a time when Dani would be in charge of making sure they brushed their teeth and washed their faces, but that time was long gone – there was no way her siblings would ever put up with being bossed around by Dani now. And so she waited, listening for the sounds of them getting ready for bed to die away. Eventually she heard footsteps up the stairs – not the fast, impatient footsteps of her mum but the more plodding gait of Auntie Rose. She listened as the footsteps went into James and Rebecca’s room. It sounded as if she was going to read them a story. Stories were a bit babyish, she knew. Still, for a moment Dani considered knocking on their door and asking if she could listen too, just for a bit of company. Just to feel as if she was part of things. But she soon discarded that thought. They probably wouldn’t say no, but it would still be clear to everyone – her included – that she wasn’t really welcome there. No, there wouldn’t be a story for Dani tonight. There hadn’t been a story for her since the night her dad had left.
A few minutes passed, and eventually Dani heard Auntie Rose going back downstairs again. She would be staying until late in the evening, drinking wine with Mum until they both became drunk and noisy. Dad never liked Mum drinking alcohol, but she did it more and more now, as if she was punishing him for going off like that, proving that she could have a nice time without him. But it never really seemed to Dani that she was having a nice time – not if the way her mood got even worse the morning after was anything to go by.
Dani gave it a few more minutes before deciding to go and brush her teeth and get ready for bed herself.
It was dark outside now, and the landing light had been switched off. Rebecca’s wand caught Dani’s eye the moment she stepped out of her bedroom door. It was lying on the floor, discarded but still switched on, its glow bathing the landing in a soft, golden light. To Dani’s young eyes, it looked like some kind of treasure, and she found herself walking almost automatically towards it. She knelt down and gingerly picked it up.
It was such a beautiful thing, she thought. She couldn’t understand why Rebecca hadn’t liked it, why she had just left it lying there. If it had been Dani’s, she would have taken better care of it; she would have put it somewhere special in her room and made sure it could not get damaged by accident. She longed to take it to bed with her, keeping it switched on under the covers so that everything would be suffused with its magical light.
Gently, Dani switched if off and then on again; off and on. She waved it in the air, drawing an elegant curve as she whispered something under her breath – a magic spell in an invented language. How the others in her class at school would laugh at her if they saw her doing this – Dani was always going off in her own little world, and being teased for doing so.
‘What you doing with my toy?’
Dani jumped, and looked guiltily over her shoulder. Rebecca was standing there in her nightdress, an accusing look on her face.
‘Nothing. Nothing … I was just—’
‘Give it here.’ Dani’s foster sister lashed her arm out and grabbed the other end of the wand. It happened in a split second – the golden star at the end broke off in Rebecca’s hand, and the light was immediately extinguished, plunging the landing into a semi-darkness that was broken only by the light from the hallway downstairs. For a moment the two girls looked in silent horror at the broken toy, and Dani felt a twist of apprehension in the pit of her stomach.
She knew what was coming.
Sure enough, her ears were suddenly filled with the sound of Rebecca’s wailing scream. ‘Mum! Mum! Look what she’s done now, Mum!’ Then she threw the piece of the wand that was in her hand down to where Dani was kneeling.
Dani froze as she heard the sound of footsteps rushing up the stairs. The landing light was turned on and there she was, Dani’s foster mother, looking down on her as she held half the broken toy in her hand.
In her little mind, time seemed to stand still.
Then the air was full of screaming. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Dani’s tongue seemed to stick in her throat, and her body started to shake as she tried to catch her breath. ‘I didn’t …’ she whispered.
Then Rebecca was screaming too. ‘She broke it! She broke my wand! It was her – I saw her do it!’
Suddenly Auntie Rose was there, wrapping Rebecca in her arms and whispering soothing words to her. Dani’s mum, however, had grabbed Dani by the arm and pulled her to her feet. ‘Get to your room,’ she hissed, and she pushed the little girl along the landing and through the door, slamming it closed so that the two of them were shut in there. Dani thought she could smell wine on her.
‘I’m sick of you!’ her mum blazed. ‘You haven’t got a fucking idea, have you? What it’s like.’
Dani was sobbing uncontrollably, great heaving sobs shaking through her whole body. She desperately wanted to explain to her mum that she hadn’t broken Rebecca’s toy, that she wouldn’t, but the words would not form in her mouth.
The little girl’s sobs seemed only to enrage her foster mother even more. ‘What have you got to say for yourself? What have you got to say for yourself?’
She didn’t answer, and her silence seemed to push the woman over the edge. It seemed to happen in slow motion as she raised her hand and brought it down with a surprising, shocking force against the side of Dani’s face. She started to fall towards her bed, and as she did so, her ankle twisted, as did her body. With a sharp, sickening bang, her face fell against the corner of her chest of drawers. The thud seemed to go all through her as she continued falling to the floor, and within a few seconds she felt a burning, stinging sensation creep over her skin. She looked up at her mum, who was standing above her, eyes blazing. She seemed surprised by what she had just done, but not, Dani thought, sorry.
‘I wish we’d never set eyes on you,’ her mum hissed, and Dani thought she could detect a slurring in her voice. ‘It was him that insisted on taking you in. Him. Twelve years, and never a word of thanks for what I’ve done. And how dare you go around breaking my daughter’s toys? How fucking dare you?’
Dani just stared at her, wide-eyed.
‘You’re an arrogant little cow,’ her mum said, delivering a parting shot before turning round, leaving the room and slamming the door behind her.
Dani stayed on the floor for several minutes, her hand pressed painfully to the side of her face that her mum had hit with such sudden violence, tears welling in her eyes. There was the murmur of voices on the landing – Auntie Rose calming Mum down – but no one came to Dani’s room. Noone came to check that she was all right.
Dani didn’t clean her teeth that night or wash her face. She just removed her clothes, switched off the light and climbed into bed. She wept for a long time, being sure not to make too much noise about it.
After all, she had created enough trouble for one day.
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