The Girl Who Saw Lions Read online

  Abela had no idea what to do with herself. Lola and Cathy were allowed to go into town on Saturdays. ‘Out of my hair,’ Carmel said, and they piled out of the house full of giggles and high spirits, reeking of cheap perfume and hair mousse.

  ‘Ah, peace at last!’ Carmel said. ‘Who’d be a foster mother? Who’d be a mother at all, come to think of it? I must be mad! You can make yourself useful, Abela, if you please. Help me do the beds. And we might go to the shops later. But you can’t go out on your own. You’re too little. You’ve got to stay home.’

  Home. It was true. This was home, this place with red carpet on the floor and echoey bedrooms and giggling girls and loud-voiced boys. It seemed it would be home for ever. Abela sat in the kitchen and worked through the book that Mister Hardy had given her to read, framing each word out loud until she had made sense of it. The Dad clattered through the dishes at the sink, then sat opposite her at the table, reading a newspaper. ‘What’s this say?’ he growled to her a few times, and guffawed at her attempts to read the football news.

  Abela went up to the bedroom. The house was so quiet now Lola and Cathy were out. It had a waiting hiss on its breath. She helped Carmel to change the sheets and then she climbed up and lay on her bunk. She could see out of the window at the wet London sky, the shiny lines of roofs one after another after another. Must she stay here for ever? A plane cruised silently across the sky, trailing a white plume behind it. Maybe it has come from Africa. She turned over onto her stomach, burying her face in her pillow. Please, please, please don’t let Uncle Thomas be on that plane.

  Every day, every night, she fretted that Uncle Thomas would come and beat her for getting Susie into trouble with the police. Her dreams were so real that she woke up sobbing, and Lola would thump the mattress from the bunk underneath to tell her to shut up.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Cathy would mumble sleepily. ‘She’s only a kid.’

  ‘She’s an annoying brat,’ Lola said. ‘She gets on my tits.’

  The two girls would howl with laughter till Carmel yelled through the door at them to cut it out.

  At last the interminable weekend stretched to Monday and Abela was back in school. She learnt a song called ‘January, February, March and April’, telling all the months of the year. She couldn’t stop singing it in her head; round and round it went, month after month, in a chant of children’s voices. But the days crawled and the nights crawled, especially the time she spent at Carmel’s house. Thoughts of Uncle Thomas haunted her. The only thing she enjoyed was school, but Mister Hardy noticed that she was often jumpy and frightened, especially if he ever raised his voice in order to speak to the whole class. One day he said, without looking at Abela,

  ‘Children, if you’re worried about anything, you know what to do, don’t you?’

  ‘Tell the worry box!’ the children chanted, hardly looking up from the work they were doing.

  ‘That’s right. Post a letter in the worry box, if there’s anything at all on your mind.’

  For days Abela thought about this worry box, but didn’t do anything. Every night Uncle Thomas broke into her dreams, shouting and slapping her with his big, damp hands. One day at break time when nobody was looking, she took a piece of paper and a pencil with her to the toilet. She knelt on the cold tiled floor in the cubicle and wrote, ‘I am frade of Uncle Thomas. He beat me if you send me home. He want to sell me to rich fambly. I go to hell.’ She folded up the letter and walked, trembling, to the worry box. No one was watching. She stood poised with the letter half in and half out of the slot. A door opened and Mister Helliwell came into the hall. She let go of the letter and ran out into the yard, and Jasmine came yelling up to her and grabbed her hands.

  That afternoon Mister Hardy whispered to her that she need never worry about Uncle Thomas again. Her social worker came to see her after school and told her that she was very, very pleased that Abela had been able to write the letter to the worry box. Abela felt as if a cool hand was smoothing away the frown between her eyes.

  ‘Would you like to tell me any more about your uncle?’ Mrs Sanderson asked. ‘You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.’

  But Abela did want to. She told her about Uncle Thomas’s wedding to Susie, and how quiet and strange and different it had been from any of the other village weddings she had seen. She told her about the airport, and how Uncle Thomas had made her wear a scarf to hide her face, and to walk with the Muslim women through the barrier. And she repeated what Susie had told her, that he was planning to sell her to a rich family, and it would be like going to Hell.

  ‘I not bad girl, am I?’ she finished. ‘Bad girls go to Hell.’

  Mrs Sanderson smiled and told her, no, she wouldn’t go to Hell, and that she had been very brave to tell her all this. And from then, Abela began to relax, and stopped darting glances at the door or the window every now and again in case Uncle Thomas was there, waiting to punish her. Soon, instead, she replaced the bad dreams at night with good dreams, where Bibi came to see her. In her dreams, Bibi, not Uncle Thomas, was on the plane that rode through the sky. Bibi would find her way to Carmel’s house. Hodi, hodi, she would call at the door, and Carmel would let her in and say nothing because she had never seen anyone so beautiful and smiling and confident before. Bibi would come into the bedroom and all the taunting and sniggering would stop because she had brought the scents of Africa with her. She would fold Abela in her arms. ‘Come back with me now,’ she’d say. ‘It’s time to go home.’ Bibi would come.

  ‘You know lots of English words now, Abela,’ Mister Hardy told her. ‘Nearly as many as English children of your age.’

  ‘Are there many more words to learn?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Hundreds and hundreds,’ he laughed. ‘Hundreds of words that even I don’t know.’

  The thought of this mystified her. What kind of words could they be that even Mister Hardy didn’t know? Where had they come from, and where would she find them? If she knew the names of everything in the world, would that use all the words up? And when all the words were used up, did someone make up more? She fell asleep at night trying to count the number of words she knew.

  But too soon, it seemed, she was told that school was to be closed for the Easter holidays.

  ‘Aren’t you lucky?’ Carmel said to her, spraying her as she laughed. ‘You’ve only just got started, and it’s the holidays already. Just don’t get under my feet, any of you. Thank the Lord one of you at least is going away for Easter.’

  ‘To Susie?’ Abela asked.

  ‘Not you. You can forget about Susie. But no school, Abela, for two whole weeks! Think of that!’

  She couldn’t bear to think of it. Two weeks without Mister Hardy or Jasmine. Two weeks of shouting Carmel and growling The Dad, of giggling, teasing nights, of listening to Cathy and Lola fighting and crying. Two weeks, she knew, were more than she could bear. She lay in bed watching the moonlight sliding over the rooftops like water, drowning the dark houses with silver light, and she knew what she wanted to do. She was frightened at the thought, but she knew she must do it. Be strong, my kuku, be strong, be strong.

  She would go home to Bibi.

  16

  Rosa

  IT WAS THE day of my level nine when everything went wrong. All night I dreamt about skating; in my dream I was as free and graceful as a swan, and at the end of the session the coach said I was so good that they were going to get me an audition for the big ice-dance show next month. It was going to be televised, and I would be the child star in it. I swooped gracefully round the rink, glittering with sequins, and all the people cheered.

  Nothing like that happened.

  I did not want Anthony to come skating with us that day. I asked Mum if he could stay with Nana, just this once. But Mum said that Grandpa wanted to give skating one last chance, so he and Anthony would definitely be coming too.

  ‘What’s wrong? Not nervous, are you?’ she asked.

  ‘A bit,’ I said.

>   ‘Oh, Rosa, there’s no need to be scared. It’ll just be like an ordinary lesson. You’ll sail through it. I’m the one who’ll probably flop.’

  She didn’t understand. I wanted her to say, ‘All right. Just me and you today, like old times.’ But she didn’t. Those old times had gone for ever.

  So, I did something stupid. It was like the episode with Molly’s boots. Once I get a silly idea in my head, I just go and do it. Act first and think later, that’s Rosa, Nana says. This is what I did. While Mum was in the bathroom putting in her fiddly contact lenses, I got the kitchen scissors and snipped through one of the laces of my skating boots, nipped upstairs with it, and was standing outside the bathroom door wearing a look of total desolation when she came out.

  ‘Look what he’s done now!’ I wailed, dangling the pink snipped-off lace like a dead worm between my finger and thumb. Anthony came out of his Wallace and Gromit room and stood next to me, gazing up at me, saying nothing at all.

  And neither did Mum say anything at all. She simply went into her room and came back with her rusty Ebay skates, unlaced one of them, and handed the lace to me.

  ‘Use that,’ she said.

  ‘But it’s black!’ I wailed. I could hear myself, I can hear it now, a silly little-spoilt-brat waily voice, and I couldn’t do anything about it. ‘It’ll look awful on my pink boot.’

  ‘She could have two black laces,’ Anthony said helpfully. ‘That would look better.’

  ‘She can have one,’ said Mum. ‘And like it.’

  Silently I collected my boots and skating skirt and followed Mum and Anthony down to the tram stop. Anthony was holding Mum’s hand. He tried to hold mine, too, but I wasn’t having any of that. No swinging him between us like a shopping bag. I was still moaning inside myself.

  When we arrived at the rink, Grandpa was waiting for us, full of grim determination. Anthony ran to him and flung his arms round Grandpa’s legs, nearly toppling him over. Mum said she was going shopping, as she couldn’t skate with only one boot.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I said, and she gave me a quick hug.

  ‘Good luck,’ she said. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  I watched her go, and my despair trudged after her like a shadow. I needed her with me that day.

  And I didn’t feel fine. I felt like a freak, with my pink skirt and pink headband and red-heeled boots and one black lace. And it was all my own stupid bratty fault. I didn’t want to skate after all; I just wanted to run after Mum and tell her the truth about the lace. I wanted her to shout at me enough to make me cry, and then to forgive, to put her arms round me and hug me again, really tightly. But the time for that had passed.

  ‘Ready?’ Grandpa grinned at me. He wasn’t feeling as brave as he looked, I could tell that, and that gave me a bit of courage. We all stepped onto the ice together, stoical Grandpa shook hands with us both ceremoniously as if he never expected to see us again, then I went off to my level nine class, Anthony whisked himself over to level two, and Grandpa shuffled and wobbled to the beginners.

  I took a deep breath. Rise above it, I told myself. Put it all behind you. Nana talk, that. I could just hear her. Think about now, go for the now moment. That’s the sort of thing she says. Now is the time that matters. OK, Nana. And somehow, it worked. I did everything right. I was a swan. But Mum wasn’t there, and I didn’t feel any kind of elation. Someone had stolen it away from me.

  It was when we were doing the free skating as the public was coming in that the worst thing and the best thing happened. I noticed that Mum had come in. She was sitting near the café with her flask on the table and, I was sure, our muesli bars. I waved to her and began to float, languidly, effortlessly, my very best skating. She would know I had passed, and this was for her, just for her. Then I heard Anthony shouting my name. He was skating towards me, in that knees-out, elbow-waving, froggy way of his, shouting over the canned music and pointing at my boots. I was furious. He was spoiling my moment for Mum. Did he want everyone to notice my one black lace? Did he want to ruin it all for me, making everyone laugh at me? I turned my back on him.

  ‘Rosa, look at your boots! Look at your lace!’

  I ignored him. I stretched one leg behind me and did a slow spin round, just for Mum, building it up, building it up, faster, faster.

  ‘Rosa!’ Anthony shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Look!’

  And I did look, and I was too late.

  One of my laces, the black traitor lace, had come unfastened and had coiled itself round my blade. As I spun, it locked. I lost my balance, crashed over, and a pain like broken glass sliced through my ankle.

  People came rushing to lift me up, but Anthony was there first. He was crying. For the first time since I had met him, he was crying. He knelt on the ice, holding my hand in both of his, and the tears were streaming down his cheeks. Two men skated over to me and carried me off the ice, and Mum came running from the café area, white and anxious, and people clustered round, but in all that time Anthony never let go of my hand, never stopped crying. Somebody brought a car to the emergency exit to take me to the accident unit at the Hallamshire hospital, and he ran along beside me as they were carrying me out. I leaned over and hugged him.

  ‘Don’t worry, Anthony,’ I said, smoothing his face, wiping his tears away. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  Anthony and I had a lot of fun together while my ankle was getting better. We did the Lord of the Rings jigsaw that Nana bought for me, and played some crazy computer games. We watched some totally surreal Japanese animations on DVD. I read stories to him, and he and I enjoyed it so much, that closeness, that wonder of story, that I decided to teach him to read. It was the best thing I have ever done, hearing him saying the letters as I pointed them out to him, watching him frown as he tried to make sense of whole words, seeing his face light up as he came to the end of a little sentence and understood it all. Soon he was reading to me, faltering and glancing up at me every now and then to make sure he was getting it right, simple words, but he was getting there, and then I would take over and read him some of the wonderful stories that Mum used to read to me.

  I love reading, I love words, I hoard them and gloat over them the way I gloat over shoes. I love books. And now I’ve passed on that love to someone else. Now I know how Grandpa feels when we’re playing the piano together, and we make music out of what just looks like a dance of dots and tadpoles on a page. Richer, that’s how I feel.

  Anthony’s social worker and Molly came round quite a few times, and it was obvious that they were both really pleased with the way things were going. Then came the big day, nearly three months after Anthony started to live with us; the apricot slices and red shiny shoes day, when they both came together. Of course, Molly had talked to Mum and me about this already, and Anthony’s social worker had already talked to him. We knew what question was going to be asked, and they knew what answer was going to be given. But it was still achingly nerve-wracking, for all of us. I was a bag of jitters. We tidied the room as if we were expecting Prince Harry to pop in. Anthony helped to set the tray for tea. We lit the fire. Mum had filled the room with daffodils. It was a few days before Easter, and the sun was full of hail and the rain was full of blue skies, that sort of day. And Molly said,

  ‘Well, Jen and Rosa. You’ve been having a lovely time with Anthony. Would you like to tell him what you told me earlier? Would you like him to be a member of your family?’

  Mum and I dared to look at each other. Her eyes were sparkly, and I should think mine were too. My throat felt as if an apple was stuck in it.

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Mum. ‘We would, wouldn’t we, Rosa?’

  Anthony’s social worker said to him, ‘And how about you, Anthony? Can you remember what you said to me this morning? Would you like Jen to be your new mummy, and Rosa to be your new sister? Would you like to grow up in this family?’

  Anthony’s eyes were as round as plates. He looked solemnly from one to the other o
f us, as if he was reaching deep down inside his thoughts to a place where none of us had ever been. I was begging him inside my head, ‘Say yes, say yes, Anthony.’ My fists were clenched tight round my knees.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  17

  Abela

  I RAN AWAY on Easter Sunday. We had painted eggs for breakfast. Lola had gone to spend the weekend at her cousin’s hotel, and Cathy was very upset about this. She sat at the table sniffing noisily, bashing her boiled egg with a spoon until Carmel took it away from her and threatened to send her to bed like a naughty little girl. The younger of the Oladipo boys had been given a chocolate egg by the man at the paper shop where he worked on a Saturday, and Carmel told him he must share it with us. He sulkily broke one of the halves into little pieces and passed them round. I watched him out of the corner of my eye, but he didn’t give any to me. I didn’t care. He was the one who had kicked my car into the gutter.

  Carmel went to church, and took her sons and Cathy with her. I would love to go, I would love to sing with all the people like we used to do at home, to listen to the rainbow of sound and slide my own voice into it, my yellow voice. I had not heard my voice singing out loud for months and months. But I knew that this was my chance and I said no, so she shook her head at me and told me to stay in my room and say my prayers instead. The Dad growled at me to say them quietly because he was listening to a cricket match on the radio.

  I went upstairs and put my blue kanga on, then wrapped up my poor scribbled-in book and my battered car in my spare one. I left my school uniform and the tights and shoes neatly on my bunk, and I wrote a little note for the secretary. ‘Dere Mis Mownt. Thank for the very nice clothe. I hope a notha girl like them too.’

  Then I went. The Dad had fallen asleep over his cricket match; his snores rumbled like thunder.

  I walked out of the house and closed the door softly, so softly, behind me. I was going to Bibi.

  18