Read Online Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

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.
    â€˜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