Mummy’s Little Girl: A heart-rending story of abuse, innocence and the desperate race to save a lost child
she replied.
‘Yeah, right.’ She went back to her make-up.
Dani climbed out of bed and retrieved some clothes from her drawer. But as she stood there in her pyjamas, she was suddenly overcome with embarrassment. At home she was able to dress and undress in privacy; now, if she wanted to put her clothes on, she had to take her pyjamas off in front of these two girls. Timidly, she turned round and shuffled to the end of the bed, where she would be slightly out of their view. She tried to get changed quickly, but it only meant that she got herself tangled up.
‘Don’t worry,’ Kaz said. ‘We’re not eyeing you up.’
The two girls laughed and left the room.
Dani wished she could go back to bed and stay under the duvet for the rest of the day; but she was hungry, and she knew that if she didn’t go down to breakfast she would only have someone come and get her, so she mustered all the courage she could. As she left the room, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. The bruising had gone down – just a little bit, but enough to give her a tiny amount more confidence than she had had yesterday.
She needed to find the bathroom first, but no one had told her where it was, so it was up to her to wander up and down the corridor until she found a door with a little stick picture of a woman. Like everywhere else in this place, the girls’ bathroom was lit by a flickering striplight. There were square white tiles on the floor and walls, which were splattered with puddles from that morning’s use. There was a row of four sinks, and behind a partition there were three baths, lined up next to each other without any privacy. On the other side of the room were three cubicles. Dani splashed water on her face, and then steeled herself to go downstairs.
She avoided her room-mates at breakfast, choosing instead to sit next to an unfamiliar face – a sturdy boy with broad shoulders, strawberry blond hair and freckles. He seemed a bit older than Dani, and for some reason sitting next to him made her feel happier. The moment she took her seat, however, she regretted it.
‘Looks like you pulled, Dingo,’ a voice called from somewhere further along the table, and the boy turned to look at her with an unpleasant leer. There was giggling all around, and Dani felt as though all eyes were suddenly on her. A hot blush rose to the surface of her skin as she pretended not to notice what was going on.
Dani wolfed down her breakfast, and was just about to leave the room when she sensed someone walking up to her.
‘Dani, Dingo,’ Christian’s voice said brightly. ‘I’m glad you two have met. I’m sure you’ll be very good friends. Dingo, you’ll look after Dani, won’t you? See to it that she’s all right. Make her feel at home.’
Dingo sucked his lips in, as though he was trying not to smile; Dani could tell that Christian wasn’t even vaguely aware of it. He shrugged archly. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Course.’
Christian nodded with satisfaction. ‘Good lad,’ he said. ‘Good lad.’ And with that he walked back to the staff table.
Dingo glanced at Dani, and then snorted contemptuously before turning back to his breakfast and ignoring her as studiously as possible. She stood up and prepared to take her tray with her; but as she did so she heard her name being called.
‘Dani!’
It was Christian again. His voice rose above the hubbub, and for a brief moment the noise in the dining room quietened. ‘Just pop over here for a minute, would you, my love?’
Dani cringed, knowing that the other children would be looking at her and smirking at Christian’s term of endearment. She did as she was told, though, and walked to where all the grown-ups were sitting.
‘And how did we sleep?’ Christian asked her.
Dani shrugged. ‘All right,’ she muttered.
‘Excellent,’ Christian replied. ‘Now then, everyone else will be going to school today, but not you. We have to sort you out with a place somewhere, but there are things we need to arrange before then. So that means you’ve got the run of the place. That’ll be nice, won’t it?’ He smiled at her, a broad, well-meaning smile that lit up his eyes. She did her best to smile back, and although she knew it must have looked forced, it seemed to please Christian, who reached out and gave her another of his trademark squeezes on the shoulder. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and find you later.’
Over the course of the next ten minutes, all the children in the home disappeared, running out of the front door with shouts and schoolbags. Dani couldn’t quite face going back to her room yet, so she spent some time exploring.
The day room, which Christian had mentioned the night before, was on the opposite side of the hall to the dining room. It was a large space, with a snooker table and table-tennis table. Checking over her shoulders to ensure noone was looking, Dani rolled one of the red snooker balls against a cushion. A snooker cue was propped up against one of the walls, and she would have liked to have had a go with it; but she was too timid for that, so she made do with an idle couple of minutes of rolling the ball back and forth with her hand. There were a few armchairs dotted around, and several tables which had childish graffiti scrawled on them in pencil – though not as much as the ones she was used to using at her school. On one of the tables was a little pile of newspapers, but they didn’t look as if they had been opened. At one end of the room were some wide windows that looked out on to a fairly large back garden. There were some swings and slides, and a couple of football posts; but it was grey and drizzling outside, so she didn’t venture any further.
Dani wandered around the room for a further few minutes before she felt she had exhausted the possibilities of the day room. She wandered out, back into the hallway, just in time to see Kate, the social worker, coming in through the front door. She was wearing smart clothes and looked hurried and harassed. At first she didn’t see Dani, standing quietly at the other end of the hallway; when she did, she seemed surprised, but she soon regained her composure.
‘Dani,’ she said brightly. ‘How was last night?’
Dani shrugged.
‘Did you meet anyone? Make any friends?’
Dani ignored her question. ‘When can I go home?’ she asked.
Kate’s eyes looked away. ‘Why don’t we go to your room?’ she suggested, her voice suddenly a little more subdued. ‘We can talk about it there.’
Dani could tell from the way she spoke that she had bad news, and she led the way up to her room nervously. Once inside, they sat together on Dani’s bed, and the girl was glad that her vandalised teddy was hidden under the duvet. Kate looked her straight in the eye.
‘I want you to know exactly what’s happening, Dani. I don’t want there to be any secrets, OK?’
‘OK,’ Dani replied quietly.
‘We’ve been granted something called an Emergency Protection Order. That’s something we ask for if we want to take a child away from their home when we think they’re in danger.’
‘But I’m not in danger,’ Dani complained. ‘Mum was just cross, that’s all. I was being naughty.’
‘No, Dani,’ Kate told her firmly. ‘Grown-ups should never do that to you. Never. The Emergency Protection Order only lasts a few days, so in the meantime we are going to apply for a Care Order. That means that the people here, at Linden Lodge, will take on the responsibility of looking after you instead of your mum. Does that make sense?’
Dani shook her head. Nothing made sense – nothing at all. ‘I just want to go home.’
Kate took Dani’s hands in hers. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know. But that may not be possible for a while. Your mum has told us that she’s had difficulty coping, and for the moment she’s asked that …’ Her voice trailed off and she looked at Dani with sympathetic eyes.
Dani’s face fell. ‘She doesn’t want me back, does she?’
‘She