Free Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson

what it’s like to trace your family way back, to finger the gold lettering and find your great-great-great-great grandmother.
My
great-great-great-great grandmother could have been a posh old lady in a silk crinoline or a wretched old beggar-woman in rags. I’ll never know.
    I hurry past, marching towards the regimented rows of recent gravestones, wincing at freshly dug mounds heaped with wreaths. I walk up one row and down the next, wishing the dead could be conveniently rearranged in alphabetical order. Maybe Mummy’s grave isn’t properly marked anyway. I don’t think Daddy would have wanted to fork out on a gravestone. And how would he have it engraved?
Only sleeping
?
Much loved wife of Daniel, deeply mourned almost-mother of April
?
    I trek backwards and forwards, my eyes watering in the brisk wind. I’m never going to find her. I don’t need to see the exact spot. It’s better to think of her the way I used to, sleeping like Snow White in the green wood of my imagination . . .
    There she is! JANET JOHNSON. Bright gold lettering on shiny black stone – much too garish for Mummy. And there’s a
photo
, a heart shape behind glass. I go closer, my heart beating.
    It’s not her.
    It has to be her.
    It could be a different Janet Johnson, it’s a common enough name – though the dates are right. It
is
her.
    She looks young. She’s wearing some very fancy white bow in her hair. No, you fool, it’s a bride’s veil. It’s a wedding-day photo. Typical Daddy – he’d insist the day she married him had to be the happiest day of her life. Maybe it was. She looks radiant. It’s the word you always use about brides, but she truly looks lit up from within, light shining out of her eyes, her mouth open, showing her gleaming teeth.
    She never looked like that when I knew her. The light had been switched off. Poor Mummy.
    I wish I could remember her properly. I wonder if she really loved me. Not the way she loved Daddy, but in a warm, soft, motherly way. Or was I always the odd little dustbin baby who never quite scrubbed up sweet enough?
    I’m crying. I fumble in my schoolbag for a tissue.
    â€˜What’s the matter then, love?’
    I freeze.
    A man dodges through the graves towards me – a man with wild hair and dirty clothes, clutching a bottle in his hand. I look round. No-one else. Just him and me. And I’m a long, long way away from the cemetery gates.
    I turn sharply and start walking away.
    â€˜Hey! Don’t ignore me! I’m trying to be
helpful
. Want a hankie, eh?’ He pulls out a filthy rag from his trouser pocket and waves it at me.
    Is
he just being kind? He doesn’t look it. I shake my head and give him a quick, scared smile.
    â€˜Thank you – but I’m OK. Well, I’ve got to go now. Goodbye.’
    â€˜Don’t go! I want to talk. What you crying for, eh? Want a drink? It’ll make you feel better, darling.’
    â€˜No. Really.’
    â€˜Suit yourself. All the more for me.’ He tips the bottle and drinks.
    I walk on but he walks with me, lurching a little.
    â€˜Someone die then?’ he asks.
    â€˜Yes. It’s . . . my mother and – and my father’s just over there.’ I gesture vaguely beyond the graves . ‘I’m going to catch up with him now. Goodbye.’
    I run for it. I don’t think he believes me. He calls after me but I don’t stop. I hear his footsteps and I clench my fists and run harder, as fast as I can, my schoolbag banging against my hip. I run and run and run, twisting my ankle on tufts of grass, staggering as I zig-zag through gravestones, on and on, wondering if I’m really going in the right direction. Maybe he’s catching me up, his grimy hands reaching out to grab me – but there’s the arch of the cemetery gates, I’m nearly there! I rush towards them, through, out by the main road, cars