Bad Little Girl by Frances Vick
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—’