Bad Little Girl(16)

‘Ten minutes, Lorna. Mum will probably have supper for you when you get home, and you don’t want to ruin your appetite, do you?’

‘I can’t!’ she whined. An ambulance passed suddenly, and the girl’s stricken face was horribly illuminated in the blue light. ‘We might get lost on the way and it’ll take ages, and she won’t have tea anyway.’

‘We have to get you home.’ Claire was shaky though. It wouldn’t be so bad to take her for a sandwich, would it? But she’d told her that silly lie about living nearby . . . she’d have to take her to Mother’s, and, no, she couldn’t do that. Norma would never let her forget it.

‘Please let me come to your house? Just for a minute? Just to use the loo?’

‘Lorna—’

‘Just to use the toilet?’

‘I thought you were hungry? Now you need the loo? Lorna, don’t you want to go home?’ Silence. ‘Lorna, if there’s something wrong please tell me.’

‘Nothing wrong,’ she muttered into her chest.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey. Housing estates slid past the windows, settled in their concrete nests like decaying fortresses.

The house wasn’t that hard to find. Unlike the dark Victorian streets of the centre of the town, the estates at the fringes had been built with adequate street lighting. A warren of square brick houses with square blank windows and PVC doors sprawled out into scrubland, with Lorna’s the last house on the left.

The girl sat like a big broken doll while Claire unbuckled her seatbelt, then allowed herself to be led towards the house. Inside, dogs were barking, and they hurled themselves against the door when Claire rang the bell. Claire had never really liked dogs, never trusted them to stay calm, but she told herself not to be silly, and held Lorna’s hand firmly. It was a long time before the dogs were pulled away from the door, and it opened to show an impossibly small boy glaring through thick glasses. He was almost as small as Lorna, but obviously older. Thickset around the chest, he tailed off into spindly limbs. His toes turned in.

‘I called earlier on but there was no answer. Carl? I’ve brought your sister back from school.’ The boy said nothing but his frown deepened. Lorna shimmied under his arm and dashed into the house. ‘Is your mum in? Or dad?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. Well, when can you expect them back?’

‘Dunno. You’re Miss Penny.’

‘Yes! How are you, Carl?’

‘You told me off once for climbing the gate.’

Claire could count on the fingers of one hand the times she had actually had to tell a child off, and at least two of them had involved Carl. Five or six years ago, he’d managed to scale the fence leading to the main road and she’d had to shout at him to get him down. He hadn’t been in her class; in fact he’d left the school altogether the following year. He seemed a lot calmer now. Medicated? Undoubtedly.

‘How’s school?’

‘At Heathfield. Want to be a mechanic.’

‘Good for you. How old are you now?’

The boy thought slowly. ‘Twelve?’

‘OK, do you often look after your sister? I mean after school?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Can you get her some dinner? She’s hungry.’

‘I’m all right now.’ Lorna appeared munching a sandwich. ‘I’m OK now, Miss.’

‘Oh. Are you sure? Right, Carl, do you have a mobile number for your mum, or dad?’

‘Pete has a phone.’

‘Pete?’

‘Don’t know the number though.’

‘Look Lorna, if I leave a note for your mum, can you make sure she gets it?’

Both children stared at her blankly. ‘I’m going to write a note and I want you to make sure that your mum gets it, OK?’

Carl, bored, wandered away. Claire tore a page out of her notebook and swiftly wrote:

I’m afraid nobody picked up Lorna from school today, so I brought her home myself. Can you give the school a call on Monday?

Kind regards.

Claire Penny.





‘Now take care of yourself Lorna. I’ll see you at school tomorrow. Please make sure Mum gets the note?’

‘Yes, Miss.’ The girl was chewing solemnly. ‘Thank you, Miss.’

‘OK now. Goodnight!’

The girl suddenly hurled herself at Claire and hugged her with all her strength.

‘Thank you Miss Pretty Penny!’ and then she was released; the girl ran inside and slammed the door.

Later, after the longish drive back home, a piece of paper fell out of her coat pocket as she was hanging it up.

A picture. Two figures with wide smiles and bulbous limbs, hovering above some scribbled green grass. A rainbow arched over their heads. At the top, in large firm letters, was written YOR KIND.

Claire kept it beside her bed that night so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up in the morning. The girl had said she was beautiful! She thought about that, and about the hug, and smiled.





8





Claire didn’t expect Lorna’s parents to read the note, let alone comply with it. Parents rarely called when they were asked to; it wasn’t that sort of school. You had to cajole, threaten and force them into coming to meetings. So it was a surprise when, the following morning, there was a Post-it note stuck to her coffee mug: