Bad Little Girl(74)

‘Oh, don’t worry. I bought one today. Sleep well, Claire. Take it easy in the morning. I’ll deal with anything that needs to be done.



* * *



The next morning, Claire woke to find Lorna crouched beside the bed, shivering. She looked like she had been waiting a long time.

‘Can I come in your bed?’ she managed through chattering teeth.

‘How long have you been there?’ said Claire, folding over the blankets to let her in. ‘Quick, you’re freezing.’

‘I woke up worried,’ said the girl, snuggling down and putting her cold feet on Claire’s thigh. ‘About Marianne.’

‘What about her?’

‘I don’t think you like her, and if you don’t like her, I don’t want to like her,’ she whispered.

‘I do like her.’

‘Really?’ Lorna examined one bitten finger.

‘I do. I thought she was a bit . . . strange . . . at first. But she’s been very kind and nice and she’s lovely to you, so of course I like her.’

Lorna sighed; she hadn’t cleaned her teeth, her breath was sweet, rotten. ‘I like her too, and I like Benji. Move up!’ She wiggled around, pushing a sharp elbow into Claire’s midriff. ‘She said that I’m a really very good dancer.’

‘Did she?’

‘Yes, and she used to be a dancer, did you know?’

‘I don’t think she used to be a dancer,’ smiled Claire.

‘She did! She told me.’ Lorna propped herself up on one elbow, nodding insistently. ‘When she was little, or my age. She told me.’

Claire considered it. It could be true. ‘Well, then, that’s quite a compliment.’

‘Yes.’ Lorna closed her eyes and remained silent. Claire was drifting back to sleep when Lorna piped up again. ‘She said I could be a dancer. She said I could train starting now and maybe get good enough to be famous.’ She smiled brightly. ‘I could dance on a stage.’

‘Mmmmm.’

‘Or I could go to stage school and be an actress ’cause they teach dancing there, too.’

‘Mmm.’

‘You’re not listening!’ That sharp elbow again. ‘Listen!’

‘Lorna, you have to learn other things too, like maths? Science? We have to catch up on all of that before we start thinking of anything else.’

The girl let all the breath go out of her body and stayed very still. Sleep stole over Claire again, until she heard the whisper: ‘I’ll never be able to do anything.’

Claire forced her eyes open. ‘Don’t say that, Lorna.’

‘Lauren.’

‘Lauren.’

‘I won’t though. How can I? You need, like, a birth certificate or something to go to stage school, and I don’t have anything.’ The girl was speaking Claire’s thoughts back to her. ‘Can you change your name? Be someone else?’

‘I don’t know,’ Claire said carefully.

‘Who would know?’

‘I’m not sure. You can’t ask people those sorts of questions though. I mean, you can ask me, but no-one else. Not Marianne.’

‘She might know though. She knows lots of things.’

‘Yes, but, what you’re talking about is illegal. I mean, it’s against the law. To take another identity.’

‘Well, lots of things are against the law but you do them anyway—’

‘Yes, but—’

‘I mean, taking me here, that was against the law, wasn’t it? I bet?’

‘Lorna—’

‘So what’s another thing matter?’

‘I don’t know what to say, my love. I suppose, there might be a way—’

‘There must be!’ She raised herself up on one elbow. Her shorn hair stood up in little spikes. ‘I saw something on a film once? And they found a dead baby that died at the same time as the person was born? And they took the certificate, and they became that person. The dead baby.’

‘Well, that sounds horrible.’

‘It worked though. In the film.’ She sighed, and thrust one foot out into the cold air, wiggling her toes.

Claire took a breath. ‘Lorna, there’s also Pete.’ Lorna’s foot stiffened, the toes curled and the leg was retracted. Claire patted her shoulder; not so thin now. All those Pop-Tarts and cans of Coke. ‘If he wakes up, gets better, then there’s a chance he’ll talk to the police. About me? About me coming over to the house when I was worried about you? About you staying over at my house even. What I mean to say is—’

‘I’m bored,’ Lorna said flatly.

‘I know you are, but please listen to me, if he talks about me, and the police find me here, well, you can hide. In the cellar—’

‘I’m not going down there!’ Lorna whispered.

‘I only mean if anyone comes here to talk to me about you. You could hide for a little bit and then you’d be safe, no-one would find you. But if we went somewhere else, and tried to have different names and all the things you were talking about, we’d be more visible. Do you see what I mean?’

‘You said you’d make it into a playroom. The cellar. You said that, and it never happened.’