Bad Little Girl

  Bad Little Girl

  Frances Vick

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Letter to the Readers

  Acknowledgments

  [DED]

  * * *

  For M, J and T

  Prologue

  She had never experienced real darkness, until now.

  There was no way to mark the time, and the cold seeped into her bones. Her fingers were numb.

  Sometimes she heard things. Once, singing, faint, slow. A sudden, shrill laugh, a door slamming. Her thoughts leaned into one another, whispering; how long would she be here? Did they mean to kill her? There must be something here, something sharp, or rough at least. Something to cut through the plastic around her wrists. She crawled around, searching, in futile circles, but it was so dark, her hands were so cold, her fingers useless. She gave up and curled, crying, on the freezing floor.

  1

  Lorna Bell was such a happy little girl with a wide smile. That was the first thing anyone noticed about her if they noticed her at all. She charged around the playground on her stick-thin limbs, and, like all the other children, swarmed into the sudden eddies and drifted out into the hasty tides that lapped into the classrooms when the bell rang. Her classmates hadn’t yet noticed there was anything different about her, nothing unusual; she was just a normal, sweet little girl – friendly, open, confident.

  It’s strange how things can change so quickly, and how, once they change, they so rarely go back to the way they were before.

  * * *

  It was Friday Golden Time, the one period in the week when Claire felt able to leave her class in the hands of her enthusiastic but hapless teaching assistant; they couldn’t get into too much of a muddle playing with Lego, and Claire needed a bit of a break, a bit of fresh air. She positioned herself just outside the door, so she could keep an eye on the head teacher’s office. Lorna would be coming out of there soon, and Claire hoped it wouldn’t coincide with hometime – surely the girl had been humiliated enough for one day. To endure the stares and breathless tattle-tale of the playground, to walk, shamefaced and tearful, past sorrowful parents, it was too much, too hard. And she’d started school so well! It had seemed that she would be able to come out from under the shadow of her notorious family. That she would be accepted.

  The leaves were just beginning to fall from the plane trees in the housing estate next door. Soon the caretaker would be pushing them into heaped, rotting piles in the corners of the school yard, but now they were crisp, beautiful, and they drifted into swathes of colour, delighting the children. Just last week Claire’s class had made a collage from them – it had pride of place next to the white board. Autumn was her favourite time of year. New possibilities and fresh starts; the soft, contented hum of the children in her class, the odd squeal of delight and excitement. These things calmed her, reassured her that nothing was for ever, and everything could be overcome. And then she heard the office door open, a yelp and a clatter, saw Lorna being dragged across the playground by her mother. Lorna’s cheeks were mottled with cold and tears and her feet in those thin-soled shoes stuttered on the cracked tarmac. She dropped her book bag, and tried to go back for it, but her mother, all Puffa jacket and rage, kept pulling her by the wrist.

  ‘. . . doing? Fucking hell Lorna?’

  ‘. . . didn’t know . . .’

  ‘Course you fucking knew! Knew they weren’t yours, course you did!’ And Claire watched as Lorna made a sudden brave effort to wrench her arm free, and shrieked when the grip was not only maintained, but tightened. Claire’s heart shuddered.

  ‘I just wanted to share,’ the little girl was saying, ‘I just wanted to share them out.’

  ‘It’s good to share!’ She raised a hopeful face to her mother. ‘Isn’t it?’

  And then the woman’s red, raw hand connected with Lorna’s sallow, curved cheek. Claire heard the sharp slap, saw the palm print appear in a blaze on the child’s face.

  2

  ‘Claire, I know that you thought you did the right thing, and, I mean, you did do the right thing. But. Pick your moments, you know?’ James Clarke, the Head, was harried. He’d arrived three years ago with the expressed intention of energetically ‘turning the school round’, but so far the only changes had been to the website. He stuffed his tie into his pocket, and stayed standing. Claire didn’t feel that she could sit down, although her feet were killing her.

  After the slap, Claire had come forward.

  ‘Mrs Bell! Miss Bell? What – we can’t have this – you can’t do that!’

  The girl/woman turned, her dazed eyes brown and dull as pennies. ‘What?’

  ‘Hit her, hit a child. You can’t do that!’

  ‘. . . my kid . . .’ the woman muttered, but her eyes found only the ground now. Lorna stared at Claire, the cheek red as a cherry, mouth open, eyes wide.

  ‘I have to ask you to come back inside, talk to Mr Clarke.’

  ‘I’ve talked with him already—’

  Claire had stayed silent, pointed at the door with all the teacher sternness she could muster, and the woman slunk back inside, trailing Lorna behind her like a broken kite.

  The meeting had not gone well. James Clarke, already exhausted by spending most of the day explaining that stealing was wrong to this stupid girl and her dough-faced mother, cut his eyes tiredly at Claire. The mother whined and fumed: ‘. . . My kid, after all . . .’ and Claire, left standing because there weren’t enough chairs, tried to interject, but was shouted down and ignored until she gave up.

  ‘I didn’t feel I had a choice,’ Claire said now.

  ‘I just think that parents – well they shouldn’t hit, but you know, it’s their business. Their children. I think – don’t get too involved. There’s loads of kids like her – Laura.’

  ‘Lorna.’

  ‘Lorna. Loads of them. And they all need your support – the school’s support. Just, pick your battles. Emma Brett was telling me that you have some special interest in the girl—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Said you had a word. Just . . . what did she say? Oh that’s it – you’re taking on her cause. Something like that. But at the end of the day—’

  ‘James, she didn’t deserve to be hit—’

  ‘At the end of the day, she stole from another student, and she knew full well what she was doing.’

  ‘I think she got a little confused. She’s very little . . .’ Claire mumbled.

  ‘Oh I don’t think so,’ James answered briskly. ‘She just doesn
’t have morals yet. Probably never will, with that family. Remember Carl? He was feral. Statement or not. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Laura—’

  ‘Lorna.’

  ‘—went the same way. You can’t save them all, Claire. It’s a sure fire way to burn yourself out!’

  3

  Claire got into her little car, feeling, absurdly, like she was about to cry. She’d done the right thing, she was sure of it. The force of the slap – the way the girl had stumbled back, the look of animal pain on her face. No. No. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t warranted. And James could remonstrate all he wanted, Claire had been around for a long time, longer than him, and she wasn’t about to ignore something like that. It wasn’t in her nature.

  She was the teacher children remembered even when they were in secondary school, and often even later, when they were fully grown adults leading staggering toddlers of their own. At the cafés she frequented with Mother, she would see a not-so-familiar face beaming at her: ‘Miss Penny!’ They always remembered her name. ‘Miss Penny, you haven’t changed a bit!’ and Claire would exclaim gently over their children, their job prospects, their small achievements. She was loved, because she cared. And she noticed things.

  She’d noticed how well Lorna was fitting in at the beginning of term. She was invited to a lot of parties – the all-girl extravaganzas in church halls, but also the rough and tumble soft-play parties the boys tended to throw.

  Claire would see her in the playground: shorter and thinner than most of her friends, happily chasing boys; digging in the sand; laughing at the centre of a knot of girls; laughing hysterically, in the way only small children do, unable or unwilling to explain just how something – how anything – could possibly be that funny.

  She hadn’t got into trouble – not at the beginning. There were no frowny faces, red cards or trips to see the head teacher. It was a bit of a miracle, really, when you thought about it, coming from that family. She wasn’t teased either. But then, in infant school, the children were too young to perceive difference, and to ascribe that difference to a particular social class – that came later, in the sly, self-conscious years of three and four – and so, for now, none of Lorna’s peers had noticed or attached any importance to her greyish polo shirts, spotted with grease and ketchup, the way her hem came down from its cheap webbing, the lack of a warm coat, the cheap shoes. They hadn’t yet noticed that she didn’t bring presents to birthday parties, or have parties herself. But the parents, and teachers, had noticed, and come to their own conclusions.

  Those few from the nearby well-to-do avenues felt sorry for the girl, proud that their own daughters played with her, and congratulated themselves on raising children who lived in the ‘real’ world, with ‘real’ people. The parents from the estates said that at least she wasn’t like her brother, Carl, but look at the state of her shoes! And you know the school gives them money for some nice ones from Clarks, but her mum keeps it and sends her in in those knock-offs from the market instead.

  Recently though, there’d been incidents. Islands of concern. The fork thrown at lunchtime; the heart gouged into the craft table; the handful of gritty sand rubbed into a boy’s hair. And, now, this.

  For the past year or so, the all-consuming fad in the school was for a special type of fragranced eraser: a marketing meme from the makers of a popular cartoon franchise. Each was shaped as a different character, each permeated with the smell of chocolate, apples, cherries, or roses. They were fiendishly expensive, and appalling at erasing, so parents couldn’t comfort themselves with the idea that they’d spent over the odds for something that was at least useful.

  Each month, the manufacturers would bring out another batch, and instantly the old set became embarrassingly obsolete. Parents and teachers alike had hoped the fad would die over the summer holidays, but no such luck, and this month was even more trying, because the erasers were Halloween themed, limited edition, special. And even more expensive. Girls hunkered down on their heels in corners of the playground, holding earnest discussions. They carried their erasers around in clear plastic sandwich bags: it absolutely had to be a sandwich bag, no opaque carrier bags, and God forbid you kept them loose in your pocket or at the bottom of your book bag. The end of each month saw a series of impromptu bring-and-buy sales. Children would spread out their soon-to-be-outmoded erasers and barter them away for other goods – a long-cherished hair clip perhaps, or the chance to see someone’s new kitten. Sometimes, carried away by their own generosity, richer girls would give their old erasers away to younger, poorer kids. And Lorna, open-faced and charming, was always first in the queue.

  As soon as Lorna had received her windfalls though, and the initial excitement had worn off, she seemed dissatisfied and withdrawn. An older girl, out of the kindness of her heart, had given Lorna a clear sandwich bag to keep the cast-off treasures in, and Claire saw her picking through it.

  ‘Don’t you think you should put these in your school bag, Lorna?’ Claire had asked her. ‘Just so you don’t lose them?’ And the girl had turned, smiling, and silently offered her an eraser – a high-kicking girl detective, smelling of lavender. ‘Oh, I couldn’t take one of your lovely rubbers. No, you keep them nice and safe. But thank you!’ Claire hustled her towards her classroom, and, at the door, felt a small, sticky hand worming into her own. There was the eraser, planted firmly in her palm. Lorna ran, laughing, into her class, collided with the teacher and was firmly told off.

  Poor little mite, thought Claire. Poor little love.

  Then, that day, the day of the slap, Lorna had come in with her own erasers, brand new in their packaging and still with the barcode on the back. Halloween themed. She was the first in her class to own any that week, one of the first in the whole school, and girls from all years made a special pilgrimage to the infants’ side of the school yard to seek her out and take a look: four limited-edition, double-sized character erasers! The crowd was so impressed that they were even willing to overlook the fact that Lorna drew them out of her coat pockets, and not from the sandwich bag she’d been given. They were passed from hand to hand, gingerly sniffed and reverently stroked.

  ‘Only came out yesterday,’ whispered a Year Two girl.

  ‘I’m getting some tomorrow,’ claimed her companion.

  ‘She’s got them now though.’

  And there wasn’t much to say to that. Claire, dealing with a fracas and a cut knee by the sandbox, caught sight of Lorna, the centre of such jealousy and admiration, so pinkly excited. She sat cross-legged and bounced her bruised knees, fizzing with happiness. The erasers were passed slowly back.

  A girl sighed, ‘I’d do anything for them. But my dad says to save up.’ There was a murmur of sad understanding.

  ‘My mum says it’s stupid,’ said another girl. ‘Where’d you get them, Lorna?’

  ‘Town.’

  ‘Yeah, but where? ’Cause Tesco doesn’t have them in till the first Monday of the month.’

  Lorna smiled evasively. ‘Do you like them?’

  ‘Course.’

  And the crowd gasped as one as Lorna’s chewed fingers dug into the biggest eraser, a kung-fu kitten, dressed as a witch and smelling of spice. She gouged it into smaller, crumbling pieces. ‘Here, you can all have a bit.’

  ‘LOOORRRRNNNNAA!’ wailed the Year Two girl. ‘MISS! Lorna’s BREAKING THEM!’ Her voice quivered with hysteria. The girls rose up as a group, backing away, as if from some horrible accident. Claire, still with her group of surly boys, hesitated. Someone needed to go over there, soon, and find out what exactly was going on. Where were the playground assistants?

  ‘No, look, now you can all have a bit, look.’ Lorna held out one grubby hand filled with fragranced rubble. ‘Now we can all share.’

  ‘MISS!’ bellowed the girl again.

  And Lorna’s expression hovered between happiness and pain. She tried to shove some of the broken pieces at a classmate who moved aside, quickly, as if something nasty had touched her. Lorna stood
up. A passing boy laughed at her and shoved her back down onto the cold tarmac. Now she began to cry.

  Finally, Miss Parry, on playground duty, muscled her way over, managed to glean some sense from the excited shouts of the girls, and plucked Lorna up from the ground with one meaty hand, leaving a little pile of fragranced rubber in her place. A couple of girls furtively pocketed some pieces once her back was turned.

  Lorna had stolen the erasers. Of course she had. She’d taken them from an older girl’s bag, a girl known for her bad temper and irritable, indulgent parents. Word spread through the school that Carl’s sister – you remember Carl? He kicked the caretaker in the balls that time and had to leave – had stolen from a big girl. And who knew what else she’d been stealing?

  Claire, on her way to class, passed the little girl sitting on the bench outside James’ office, miserable and shell-shocked. Children crowded round the nearby window for a glimpse of her. She kept her head down, furiously wiping away tears with a grubby fist. Claire hesitated, and then went towards the window, and, wearing a grim face, waved the children away. They scattered like birds.

  ‘Are you waiting for Mr Clarke, Lorna?’ Claire stayed in the corner by the window, to shield the girl from view should anyone try to peer at her again.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’ She knew what had happened. She just wanted to see if Lorna understood what she’d done wrong.

  ‘Took Cara Parker’s erasers.’

  ‘Why?’ The girl shrugged helplessly and said nothing. ‘Why, Lorna?’

  ‘Wanted to.’

  ‘Yes, but why? Surely you must know that that’s wrong? That you’d get caught?’

  ‘I . . .’ Lorna’s face collapsed. She began to sob. ‘I wanted to hold them, that’s all. And then people saw, and it felt like they were mine, and then I wanted to share them so everyone would be happy.’