Free Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson Page A

whizzing past.
    I lean against the stone wall, gasping for breath. I wait, ready to scream for help if I see him staggering towards me. But he doesn’t come. He’s given up, still somewhere in the cemetery. When my heart slows I walk on shakily, still sick and scared, but feeling a little safer now.
    I don’t know whether I should tell anyone. I’m not sure he really did anything to me. Maybe he really meant well – but it would have been crazy to wait to find out. I hated the way he was looking at me. I couldn’t stand him calling me ‘love’ and ‘darling’.
    I think about my mother, my real mother, not poor Mummy neatly tucked up under her shiny black slab. Maybe my mother was attacked by some hateful drunken stranger? Maybe that’s why she couldn’t bear to keep me?
    I don’t know where I’m going now. The cars roar past, disorientating me. I keep looking back just in case the wild man follows me. I don’t know what I’m doing here. It’s like a dream. Nothing seems real any more.
    But then I’m used to that.

10

    I STOPPED FEELING real after Mummy died and Daddy got shot of me. I felt as papery and easily crumpled as Daffodil and Bluebell and Rose and Violet. I had two foster mothers in quick succession. I read it in my notes.
    The first one was another short-term specialist like Auntie Pat. I think I can remember my sixth birthday there. I left the white-icing rosebuds from my birthday cake because they looked so pretty but someone took my plate away before I could save them.
    Then I went to live with Maureen and Peter. Their friends all called them Big Mo and Little Pete. Did we call them that too? Probably not. I think we just called them Mum and Dad. We were their foster children and there were a lot of us. Some came for a few days, some a few years. Some lived there for ever.
    I asked Big Mo if I was going to live there for ever. ‘Probably, little sweetiepops,’ she said, and then she charged off to separate two of the big boys who were fighting and unhook one of the little boys who’d wound himself round and round in the long living-room curtains.
    That was the way it was. You never got the chance to have a proper talk. There was never time for her to stop and give you a cuddle. I didn’t really want one anyway. Big Mo was a good kind-hearted woman but I didn’t like the way she looked. She
was
Big – probably only a bit taller than average but she seemed to tower ten metres in the air when I was little and she seemed ten metres
wide
too. Big Mo was like a mountain range, vast slopes of bosom and belly and bottom. She wore great patterned sack dresses, bright red jersey in the winter and pink floral print in the summer. She never wore tights even in the coldest spells so her legs were mottled red and pink too. Sometimes when she sat on the battered sofa you got a glimpse of her awesome knickers. Everyone used to giggle uncontrollably when she pulled her clean pairs out the washing machine. Big Mo didn’t seem to mind. When she was in a good mood she’d wave her knickers in the air like flags and we’d all fall about.
    Little Pete wasn’t
that
little, just normal size, but he looked like one of us kids beside Big Mo. He behaved like a kid in lots of ways too, down on his hands and knees making mudpies with the little ones and fixing the bikes and chatting fanatically about football with the big ones. He even had a go on their scooters. Big Mo got very irritated when he fell off and sprained his wrist and couldn’t help her around the house for a week. Little Pete winked at the boys happily and they guffawed.
    I didn’t fit in. They were mostly boys there and I was an exceptionally girly girl at that stage because of the way Mummy had brought me up. I liked to keep my dinky little dresses clean. Big Mo bought me a pair of dungarees with an embroidered bear on the pocket.
    â€˜There now,