before. She managed to tear off one of the strips and that side of the nappy slipped crookedly and soggily down inside her pyjamas towards her knees. But it was too hard to get it right off. It was taking too long. The pyjamas were in the way. Her fingers wouldn’t work.
And then it was too late to find the potty. She couldn’t hold it in any longer, no matter how hard she jiggled, and the warm liquid flowed down her legs, leaving a long damp trail down her pyjama bottoms and making a big slippery puddle that she could hardly see on the floor around her cold bare feet.
Ruby
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.
Laura checked her watch. Ten to eight. She had managed to run and catch the bus just as it was about to pull away from the stop, puffing heavily and with the beginnings of a stitch in her side – she really must lose a few pounds, she was so unfit – but glad to have made it, as the next wasn’t due for twenty minutes.
The traffic had not been as heavy as usual and the bus had sailed through several sets of lights just as they were about to turn red, so now she was here with time to spare. That made a change. She stood in the lobby, early-morning empty, a pale imitation of the bustling hive of activity it would soon become, once the coffee shop opened and the visitors started to arrive, armed with cards and grapes and Lucozade and flowers.
There was a pile of thick Sunday newspapers, colour supplements in plastic casing spilling out of the sides, tied up with string in the still-closed doorway of the hospital shop, and Laura waved through the glass at her friend Fiona, overall on, getting ready to open on the dot of eight, tipping coins into the till from a small plastic bag with one hand as she waved back, sleepily, with the other.
For some reason she could not fully explain, despite one of Gina’s casseroles, an early night and not the smallest trace of alcohol, Laura had slept fitfully. Images of the girl from yesterday, the one hit by the car, had kept flashing up on her dream screen. It was never easy, seeing people hurt, unconscious, sometimes not being able to help them. As a nurse, she knew she had to switch off, try not to take it home with her, keep it all out of her head. But some times were harder than others. Some patients had more impact, tugging harder at the heart strings.
This girl, the one from yesterday, had got to her, crept in under the radar. Perhaps it was the fact that she was unconscious and unidentified. Just Lily, if that was even her name. Poor sick deep-sleeping Lily. No bag, no address, no medical records, no family sobbing at her bedside. Or perhaps it was because she was so near to Laura’s own age, or seemed to be. No wedding ring, but somewhere there would be parents, brothers, sisters, a boyfriend maybe, all blissfully unaware … Surely someone would have reported her missing by now?
Laura pushed the button for the sixth floor and waited for the lift to arrive. She had ten minutes – okay, only eight now – before she was due to start work. Just long enough to pop up to the intensive care unit and see if anyone had come to claim Lily, or if she had woken up yet.
*
William put the key in the ignition and turned. There was a splutter, an ominous sort of chug, and then nothing but a whine. He tried again and got just the whine this time. The sodding battery was flat. Just when he’d finally psyched himself up to go and see his mother too. Best shirt, shoes polished, and a handful of loose change clanking in his pocket, ready to pick up some flowers on the way. Could you buy freesias in October? He had no idea. Still, they’d be bound to have something nice at the Asian 24-hour place on the corner, or at the petrol station, something bright and cheerful that would sit in a vase on his mother’s windowsill and help him break the proverbial ice.
Cars! More trouble than they were worth. He would have liked to get out and give the damn thing a good kicking, vent his frustrations on the already rusting bodywork, but then it would have a sodding great dent in the side as well as a dead battery, so what was the point, other than to make himself feel better? Instead, he rooted about in the glove compartment, looking for the breakdown