Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

and in and out of my clasped fingers, then whisking me off to change my nappy and tuck me up into my cot.
    â€˜Yes poppet, din dins, yum yum, now time for beddy-byes,’ she said to me too. I’d burble back to her, repeating sounds. I expect I said my first word to her. But it wouldn’t have been ‘Mum’.
    She sat me up, she lay me down, she tossed me in the air. She saw me crawl across the carpet and she kissed me better when I bumped my head. She let me play drums on her saucepans, she let me lick the honey spoon, she played round and round the garden in my palm and tickled me until I squealed. Maybe she acted just like a mum but when I went away she forgot all about me.
    Maybe my
real
mum has forgotten about me too.
    Mummy
would have remembered.
    I’d better remember her.

6

    I SAY GOODBYE to Pat after lunch. She gives me a nod and a smile, busy with one of the little boys who’s smeared custard into his curls. She doesn’t put her arms round me or kiss me.
    Tanya gives me a hug.
    â€˜Keep in touch, Dustbin Baby,’ she says. ‘What’s your mobile number, eh?’
    â€˜I haven’t got one,’ I say, sighing. ‘Marion won’t let me. She fusses that they give you brain cancer and says they’re a social nuisance. I thought she might just give me one for my birthday, even so – but she didn’t.’
    â€˜Well, here’s mine,’ Tanya says pityingly, handing me a proper printed card with her name and a computer-designed girl with orange hair and the message KEEP IN TOUCH . It’s actually wrongly spelt TUTCH but I wouldn’t point this out for the world.
    She whips out a fluffy pink personal organizer and writes down Marion’s phone number with
My mate Ayprel
next to it.
    I feel thrilled that we are mates. We hug again and then I set off, walking as if I know where I’m going.
    Well, I do know. I’m just not very clear how to get there. I don’t fancy trying another taxi. I walk towards the town centre and see the sign to the railway station. I get a Travelcard to London and then curl up in a corner of the carriage, staring out the window at all the back gardens, thinking about Mummy.
    She adopted me. I can remember the first time she picked me up. Lavender. Soft lavender talc and soft lavender blouse, slippery to the touch.
    I’m imagining it. I can’t
really
remember being one year old. It’s just they told me so many times. Though I can close my eyes and smell her talc and feel her silky blouse. I see a pale purple blur whenever I think of her.
    I gave her a cake of Yardley’s lavender soap and a tin of lavender talcum every birthday and Christmas. She always cried and said, ‘Oh April, darling, what a lovely surprise!’ though they were the most predictable presents ever and she’d been watching out of the corner of her eye while he nudged me to the right corner of Boots to help me purchase them.
    I called him Daddy, I called her Mummy. They called me Danielle for the first few months, tried a few variations – Dannie, Ella – but by the time I was eighteen months and anyone asked my name I’d say April.
    Could I, really? I think that’s what they said. One of Mummy’s stories. Maybe she made half of it up. I’ve made up heaps myself and now I can’t remember what’s real. They don’t seem real. Neither do I. Maybe that’s why I hung on to the name April. It made me feel myself.
    So my name stayed April and Mummy and Daddy had to like it or lump it. There were lots of lumps in our relationship.
    Mummy wasn’t very good at holding me. I was always small and slight but I was a very squirmy little girl and I suppose she was terrified of dropping me. She strapped me in a chair to feed me. She anchored me in a corner of the bath with a giant inflatable seahorse. She buckled me into my buggy on outings. She caged me in my cot at nights. She never hugged