I couldn’t decide which was worse. I knew I was bad. I was still haunted by Pearl and every time she came near me in my dreams I’d give her another push. Now I was a thief too, up all hours with Gina night after night. The neighbourhood was fuming at all the break-ins. The police had visited the Children’s Home making general inquiries. I nearly wet myself when I saw the men in uniform but Gina stayed calm, answering every question with off-hand grunts and shrugs. Venetia and Rayanne were equally nonchalant.
The boys all tried to be too smart, getting aggressive and alleging harassment. Gina grinned slyly, knowing they were the prime suspects.
Nobody thought about me. I wasn’t even interviewed.
I didn’t breathe a word about any of this during my therapy sessions. I played obediently with the weird dolls in the lady’s office, handling them gingerly because they all had very rude-looking realistic bottoms. I rearranged the dolls’ house, and put the mummy doll in the bath. I shut the daddy doll in the wardrobe. I twiddled the baby doll in my fingers. I couldn’t find a toy dustbin.
I drew a dustbin with the lady’s felt-tip pens but she started watching me and I got worried. I turned the dustbin into a big vase and drew flowers all different colours. Red and yellow and blue and purple. Then I cried but the lady didn’t know why.
Gina saw I’d been crying when I got back to the Children’s Home. I told her about Daffodil, Rose, Violet and Bluebell and how I still missed them. She thought I was daft carrying on about paper dolls that weren’t worth a penny. I just hung my head, snivelling.
‘Cheer up, April,’ she said.
I tried but without much success.
‘I’ll cheer you up. You wait and see,’ said Gina.
She went round the shops on Saturday without me. She came back with a clutch of Barbie dolls and thrust them into my hands.
‘There you are! Real dolls,’ Gina said triumphantly. ‘Much better than scrappy old paper dolls, eh?’
I fingered their pointy fingers and pointy breasts and pointy feet. I still secretly mourned my flower girls but the Barbie dolls were wonderfully glamorous. I couldn’t play with them openly because Billy or Lulu would have wondered where on earth I’d got them from, but I had fantastic secret games with them in the wardrobe, the door just a little open to let in a chink of light. I pretended it was our house and Barbie-Ann and Barbie-Beth and Barbie-Chris and Barbie-Denise and I lived there together and styled each other’s hair and swopped clothes and shared secrets.
Gina crawled into the wardrobe with me sometimes and played too. It was a bit of a squash because Gina was so big. She was impatient too, tugging the tiny outfits too hard and tearing seams but I couldn’t very well shut her out.
One time one of the other girls got in; not Venetia or Rayanne, a sad, older girl called Claire with long straggly hair who wasn’t friends with anyone. No-one seemed to bother to speak to her. She can’t have been that old because she went to the Juniors too though she looked like a teenager. She acted it too, hanging round the big boys and letting them do whatever they wanted.
Claire tried to make friends with me but Gina objected fiercely so that wasn’t possible. She still crept into my room every now and then and once caught me playing with the Barbie dolls. She gazed at me beseechingly but I didn’t dare invite her to join in my game in case Gina caught us.
The next day the Barbie dolls went missing. They weren’t in their shoe-box bed at the back of the wardrobe. They hadn’t crawled into the rubbery hidey-holes of my trainers or Wellington boots though I tipped them up to check. They hadn’t hiked across the carpet on their tippy-toes to sneak a peak in my knicker drawer or play tents in my T-shirts. They weren’t peeping out of my dressing-gown pocket or doubled up in my pencil case. They weren’t anywhere at all though I searched and searched and searched.
I knew Gina was going to go mad. She didn’t go mad at me. She went mad at Claire, deciding she was to blame, even though I hadn’t breathed a word that she’d seen the Barbies. She swore she didn’t know what Gina was on about, keeping to her story even when Gina seized a hank of her stringy hair and pulled hard. I believed her and begged Gina to stop, but no-one could stop Gina once she’d started. She slammed the poor girl against the wall and started searching through her bedroom, tearing it apart, ripping half her stuff. I started howling and Gina misunderstood.
‘Don’t you fret so, April. I’ll get your Barbies back for you,’ she said.
She flapped the duvet in the air, tossed the pillows around and then seized the mattress. Claire squealed and Gina jerked it upwards triumphantly. There were the Barbies entombed underneath, each wrapped in a white paper tissue like a shroud.
‘I knew you had them, you dirty little thief,’ spat Gina. ‘Well, you’ll be sorry now.’
Claire ended up very, very sorry, though I begged Gina to stop.
Gina was a thief too, of course. She’d probably stolen the Barbie dolls herself. But that was different. She’d stolen them for me. That sort of stealing didn’t seem so bad when I was Sunnybank. It was the way you got things, the way you got your own back.
It makes me feel bad now. I don’t want to think about it. So why am I getting on the wrong train at the station? Why am I going back to Sunnybank? Gina won’t be there now. She’ll be twenty-one, twenty-two. I can’t imagine her grown-up. I wonder what she’s doing now? Maybe she’s locked up.
13
IT’S TAKEN ME a while to find it. I was starting to think I’d maybe made it all up. But here it is. Here’s the gate with the sun’s rays. I run my finger up and down them as I stare in at the white house with the yellow door. I don’t feel anything. It’s as if I’m acting in a film. This is just a wooden gate. Sunnybank is simply a big house. Maybe it’s not even a Children’s Home now.
Who am I kidding? There are toys littering the stubbly grass and bikes and skateboards are all over the porch. A battered mini-bus is parked in the driveway. I wonder if Billy still drives it?
I don’t want to see him, or Lulu, even if they’re still around. The only one I’d love to see is Gina.
I cried and cried when I had to leave Sunnybank. We got caught, Gina and me. Lulu and Billy were waiting up for us when we crept back into the house at dawn after a night’s burgling. It was Claire. She told them. There was no way we could lie our way out of it. Gina had a stack of CDs tucked down her jacket and three hundred pounds and a handkerchief full of gold jewellery in her pockets.
So I got sent away to a special school. I don’t know why they didn’t send Gina away. Maybe she was too old or they felt she was too set in her ways. This new school was supposed to be giving me a new chance.
I didn’t want to go but no-one listened to me. That’s the scariest thing of all about being in care. You don’t get to choose. You just get shoved here, sent away there.
I felt I was being chucked out of Sunnybank because they’d got sick of me. I wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with Gina that last week. There certainly weren’t any more midnight jaunts. There was a new padlock and an alarm system put on the front door, the back door, even the windows. Lulu had a new regime too, getting up in the small hours to check we were all safely in our beds.
I waited until she’d padded round everyone. Then I crept out and went in search of Gina. I climbed into her bed and she gave me a big cuddle and called me her baby. I cried and I think Gina cried a bit too, because her cheek was wet when she gave me a kiss. We stayed cuddled up tight, me on Gina’s lap, until morning.
I never saw her again. She did write to me once at the school but she wasn’t really much of a letter writer so she just drew me a picture and signed her name very elaborately, swirls all down the page and then added lots of kisses.
I wrote to her every week for the first year even though I gave up hoping for further replies.
Maybe I could write just one more time. The Sunnybank staff might have Gina’s address. I open the sun gate and walk up the path. I stare at the door and then give the knocker
two quick raps.
A blonde woman in dungarees answers, a tea-towel tied round her waist. Her hair is divided into bunches with little bows. Lulu often had silly stick-out plaits. People who work with children often want to dress like them too.
‘Lulu doesn’t still work here, does she?’ I ask.
She shakes her head so that her bunches waggle.
‘I think there was a Lulu way back, but I never knew her.’
‘What about Billy?’
The bunches waggle again.
‘Did you want to get in touch with them then?’
‘Well, not really. It was more this girl, Gina—’
‘Oh, Gina!’ she says.
‘Do you know her?’
‘Everyone knows Gina,’ she says, smiling.
‘But she can’t still live here?’
‘No, but she comes to visit us lots, and she’s part of our lecture programme too.’
‘Gina gives lectures?’
‘She goes round all the Children’s Homes in the South East area and talks to the kids. She’s wonderful with them. They can really relate to her because she’s been through the system herself. What about you?’ She looks at my neat school uniform doubtfully. ‘Did you ever live here?’
‘Just for a bit. I was friends with Gina. But I think it was maybe a different Gina.’
‘There’s only one Gina! She lives near here, on the Kempton Estate. See those multi-storey flats? She lives on the top floor of the south block, number 144. Why don’t you go and look her up? I’m sure she’d love to see you.’
I walk over to the flats though I’m sure it’s pointless. She can’t possibly be my Gina. This Gina gives lectures. The only subject my Gina could lecture on is breaking and entering.
This maybe isn’t a good idea anyway. I don’t know what this Kempton Estate is like. I’ve had enough of scary encounters. I keep looking round warily and when some little kid clatters up behind me on his skateboard I jump violently. The kid jeers at me and then whizzes on his way.
I try to stop being such a baby. The estate doesn’t look too bad. I think some of it has gone private, because there are fancy curtains and potted plants in the windows and the front doors along the balconies are brightly painted in rainbow colours. I’m not so sure about the burnt-out bin area and the rude words all over the walls. I press the button for the lift, waiting an age, and then step in cautiously, avoiding a puddle.
I press for the top floor, but the lift stops halfway up and two guys with shaved heads and studs barge in. I swallow and take one step back. Thank goodness they act like I’m not even there. I look slyly at all their piercings, wondering what Marion would say if I came home looking like that. One of them sees I’m staring and sticks his studded tongue out at me. I laugh shakily and rush out of the lift on the fourteenth floor.
I feel as if I’ve stepped out onto the top of the world. I can see for miles and miles – but I have to grab the railing tight, feeling like I might be sucked straight over. I back along the balcony and find the front door of 144. I tap the knocker once, so softly maybe she won’t hear. It won’t be my Gina anyway.
A young woman comes to the door, barefoot, in jeans and a big blue shirt. A beautiful mop-haired toddler clings to her hip. She stares at us, her head on one side.
She’s not Gina.
‘I’m sorry,’ I stammer. ‘I was looking for . . .’
Is it Gina? She’s big, she’s broad, she’s black, but she’s so different. This Gina’s adult and arty and attractive, with lovely long hair elaborately plaited and beaded. She’s got a diamond nose stud and crescent moon silver earrings and bangles jingling up and down her plump arms. She doesn’t look fierce, she’s got a friendly smile on her face. It suddenly stretches wide.
‘April!’ she cries. ‘My little April!’
She hugs me tight, her baby squashed between us. I breathe in her familiar warm, powdery, musky smell.
‘It is you, Gina!’ I say, and I burst into floods of tears.
‘Yep, it’s definitely you, April,’ says Gina, laughing. ‘You were always such a crybaby – but you were my baby, right? Hey, what do you think of my real baby, eh?’ She holds her toddler up proudly, giving it a quick kiss and tickle. It snuggles sideways, chuckling.
‘She’s lovely.’
‘He! He’s my baby Benjamin. Don’t worry, everyone thinks he’s a girl because he’s so gorgeous – and I suppose it’s the curls too. Everyone keeps on at me to take him to the barber’s but it would be a crime to cut off all his curlylocks, wouldn’t it, my little babe?’
Benjamin laughs and shakes his head so that his curls bob.
‘Yes, you’ve got lovely curls,’ I say, sniffing.
‘You need a tissue, as always! Come on in, April. This is just so great! I can’t believe it. How old are you now then? Eleven, twelve?’
‘I’m fourteen. Today, actually.’
‘Wow! Happy birthday, babe!’
She steers me inside with her free arm. The hall is swimming pool turquoise with dolphins diving up and down the walls. The living room is purple, with red curtains and big red velvet cushions and a giant black and white panda perched in his own red rocking chair. I follow Gina to her kitchen. It’s canary yellow, so bright you need sunglasses. Gina hands me a hunk of kitchen roll, pops Benjamin into his highchair with a rusk and then puts the kettle on.
‘I love your flat,’ I say shyly, blowing my nose.
‘Yeah, great, isn’t it? I got some of the older kids from Sunnybank to help me paint it,’ she says, setting out orange flowery mugs. ‘Have you just been back there?’
‘I was trying to find you.’
‘Oh April, you’re going to make me cry,’ says Gina, giving me another hug. Then she laughs. ‘Bet you were surprised to hear I’m Ms Goody-Goody-Gina nowadays? Remember all that stuff we used to get up to? You were a right little cat burglar when you were tiny! You’d shin up a drainpipe and wriggle through a window quick as a wink.’
‘Did you find another little kid to help after I left?’
‘No. They were all rubbish compared to you. And I kind of lost heart. I missed you, babe.’
‘You didn’t write.’
‘Yes I did!’
‘You sent a picture.’
‘Well, I’ve never been into writing much – and you could never get near the computer at Sunnybank with all them boys. Anyway, I didn’t really want to write. I wasn’t very proud of myself. I was an idiot, I got into all sorts of stupid stuff, then I had a baby which was one big mistake.’
‘Benjamin?’
‘No, this was another kid. I was still just a kid myself.’
The kettle is starting to boil. I feel as if my own thoughts are bubbling.
‘So what happened to it?’ I say. ‘Did you – did you give it away?’
A tear spills down Gina’s cheek. ‘She got taken away. I wasn’t a good mother.’
‘But you’re wonderful with Benjamin!’
‘I wasn’t with my Amy. Oh, I loved her, I loved her to bits, but I was out of my head most of the time, using all sorts of stuff, not knowing whether I was coming or going. They’d given me this flat, tried to set me up, but I couldn’t look after myself, let alone a baby. She was sick a lot. I got sick too. I was still thieving a lot of the time. I got caught and they sent me to this rehab place – and took Amy into care.’
‘Oh, Gina.’ I put my arm round her.
‘No, don’t feel sorry for me. It was my own fault. I was a mess. I screwed everything up.’
‘But how could they take her away if you loved her? She was yours. Couldn’t she have stayed with you?’
‘Not at this place. Maybe I should have tried harder to keep her. I just felt she’d have a rotten life with me. I didn’t think she’d want someone like me for her mum. I didn’t want her passed round like a parcel, dumped in different Children’s Homes like I was. So I let her be adopted. She’s got a lovely new family now.’ Gina smiles, though tears are still
sliding down her cheeks. ‘Don’t look at me like that, April. I thought it was for the best. She’s happy now, I know she is. And I’m happy too. I went a bit crackers after I gave her up. I was in this special unit for a bit but I got my head together eventually, gave up all my bad habits – and now look at me!
‘I’ve still got to sit some exams. It takes me ages, you know what I’m like at writing, but I’m getting there. I’m going to be a social worker. I’m not going to be an old softie. I’m going to give those kids hell if they don’t toe the line – but at least I’ll know what it’s like for them. They won’t be able to kid me. I’ve been there, done that, messed up in every kind of way. I do this talk, right, telling the kids all about it. Some of the hard nuts don’t want to know but some of the younger ones feel a bit of respect for me.’
‘I feel respect for you, Gina,’ I mumble, blushing because it sounds a bit daft.
‘So I should hope!’ says Gina. She makes us a both a mug of tea and gives Benjamin a bottle of milk. Then she grins at me. ‘OK, April, what do birthday girls get?’
I blink at her.
‘Cake!’ Gina opens a cupboard and takes out a huge tin. She opens it with a flourish. I see half a pink iced sponge studded with Smarties with ‘Happy Birthday’ in swirly writing. ‘I knew you’d come today!’
I gape at her. Gina laughs.
‘I’m teasing, nutcase. I made it for one of the kids along the balcony. I run this club, see, a play scheme thing. Benjamin loves it because everyone wants to play with him. Whenever it’s anyone’s birthday I make a cake.’
I think of Marion at home, maybe with a Marks and Spencer’s birthday cake set out on her special crystal plate. She’ll be wondering why I’m late home from school. She’ll be starting to get worried.
If I had a mobile I could ring her. It’s her own fault.
That’s rubbish. I’m rubbish.
I can’t stop thinking about her all the time I’m chatting to Gina and eating birthday cake and feeding Benjamin little slithers of icing.