Читать книгу Lily Alone: A gripping and emotional drama - Vivien Brown, Vivien Brown - Страница 12

I’m sitting on the grass in the park. The others are all chasing a ball around, glad to be outside for a while, shouting to each other and squealing with excitement, but I’m happier here under the tree with my book.

Every now and then I lay it down on my lap and watch the people going by. Mums pushing prams, toddlers stopping to pick daisies in the grass, the occasional man out from his office, lighting up a cigarette, tugging his collar open and loosening his tie as he sweats in his business suit.

There’s an old lady today, with a little grey dog. She’s walking very slowly, her big coat open and flapping in the breeze, and it’s obvious the dog just wants to run on ahead, but she doesn’t let him. She grips on to his lead as if she’s holding back a great raging lion, but he’s just a little dog. A poodle, I think. Anyone can see he’s dying to chase leaves and bring back sticks and do what dogs are supposed to do, but the old lady finds a bench and lowers herself onto it, tying the end of the lead round the slats at the back and closing her eyes against the sun.

After a while she opens a pack of sandwiches, little square ones she’s made at home and wrapped up in a greaseproof paper bundle. I watch as her jaw grinds up and down rhythmically, and she pushes a chunk of something – maybe cheese – into the dog’s mouth and throws a few crusts for the birds, and then the dog gives up trying to escape, rolls onto his side and goes to sleep on the path.

I like it when we come out like this. Get a look at the real world, a world populated by families and grannies and dogs. I don’t have any of those things. I have never had any of those things. Not properly. Not to keep.

Someone nearly took me once. Did all the papers and took me out on trips and stuff. They seemed nice enough. Him with his shiny shoes, and her with her shiny eyes. But it didn’t happen in the end. It’s a big decision, I suppose, taking on a kid who isn’t yours. A bit like choosing a dog. You have to be in it for the long haul, prepared to get on with it, take what comes, ups and downs, good and bad, no matter what. Not just for Christmas. Maybe they just couldn’t go through with it, face the enormity of it. I like to think that maybe they found out they were having a baby of their own, or decided to get a cat instead, or realised they could be happy just in each other’s company after all. I hope they didn’t choose some other child to adopt, that it wasn’t just me they rejected.

Mrs Castle is rounding us all up now. It’s time to go back to the children’s home, nearly time for tea. She’s herding us back to the mini-bus like wayward, weary sheep. I get up and flick stalks of dried grass from my clothes, pop the bookmark inside my book ready to pick up the story later, exactly where I left off, and climb up the steep step, heading for my favourite seat by the window, in the middle row, on the left.

I must have gone to sleep. The rhythm of the wheels on the road, the gentle chatter of the other children’s voices all around me, the heat of the dying sun working its way into the skin of my forehead through the glass, layer by layer, making me feel all muzzy and only halfway here.

And now someone is touching my arm, whispering so quietly I can hardly hear, as if they are a long, long way away. ‘Lily …’ a voice is saying, cool steady fingers pressing against my wrist. A female voice I don’t recognise. Not Mrs Castle. Not my mother. But then I realise I don’t quite remember what my mother’s voice sounds like. It’s so long since I’ve seen her. Or heard her say my name.

And, through my dreams I’m thinking: Yes, Lily. I like Lily. It’s a nice name. When I’m a mother, I’m going to call my baby Lily. Or Betsy, like my doll. And love her properly, never leave her, never let her go. But the voice fades away, and I can’t conjure up a face that fits it, and the wheels keep turning, and my left leg has gone to sleep pressed against the throbbing side of the bus.

And I’m not ready to wake up yet.