The Girl Who Saw Lions Page 15

  ‘I’ve moved her things,’ Carmel says to Miss Carrington. ‘When Abela first came I thought it would be a good idea to put her in with Lola and Cathy, give her someone to talk to, but I can see now it didn’t work. I’d no idea what was going on up there. So, you’ve got your own room now, Abela,’ she says to me. ‘My big lad’s got himself a job in Gravesend, so you can have his room for a while. Come and have a look.’

  I love my new room. It has yellow yellow sunshine walls, and lots of pictures, happy pictures, happy children.

  ‘These are all my children,’ Mrs Oladipo laughs. ‘All the children who’ve stayed in the house with me and Tomi. Do you want your picture here, Abela?’

  I keep my head down but I make it nod. My only picture is in the passport book that has disappeared somewhere.

  ‘Well, we only have smiling children on the wall here, so when your lovely big smile comes back, we’ll get the camera out. Now, are you hungry?’

  I make my head nod again.

  ‘Good girl. Just for tonight, you can have your tea early, before Lola and Cathy have theirs. They’re talking to Miss Carrington first. They’ll be good girls now, I tell you. But from tomorrow, we eat together, we’re a family again.’

  And she bends down and hugs me cuddly soft again, and I never had that hug since I said, ‘Bye-bye, Bibi’. I don’t hug back; I keep my arms stiff like trees.

  Then she takes me down and I eat my tea and The Dad growls and chuckles and watches TV while I eat, and then he switches it off and goes out to mow the grass and the house is sweet with a green smell that comes through the windows. Miss Carrington comes back from upstairs where she’s been talking to Lola and Cathy, and they follow her down and look at me like sheep through their floppy hair.

  ‘Hi, Bella, how’re yer doing?’ Lola says, sloppy with chewing gum.

  ‘Glad you’re better, Bella,’ Cathy says.

  I say nothing. I don’t look back at them. They go in the kitchen and eat their tea all on their own. Miss Carrington and Mrs Oladipo sit with me on the settee and Miss Carrington opens her bag and brings out my blue letter.

  ‘Have you read this, Abela?’ she asks me, and I make my head nod again, but I don’t look at her or at anything. I am watching the window where the sound of mowing is coming from but I am not seeing anything.

  ‘I’m going to read it out loud,’ she says. ‘I want Mrs Oladipo to hear it, and I want to make quite sure that you understand every word. When I’ve read it in English for you both, I will read it again in Kiswahili, and then we will talk about it. OK?’

  I nod again. I bite my lip because I know it will shake. I close my hands tight like knots of rope round my knees. I do not want to hear the words again.

  ‘It’s from Susie,’ Miss Carrington explains to Mrs Oladipo. ‘She sent it to the flat for Abela. I suppose she thought it would eventually reach her through the social services.’ She makes her throat do a tiny cough. ‘Dear Bella, I hope someone sends this to you. I don’t know where they’ve taken you. I have bad news for you. I’m sorry I haven’t been a good person to you but I’m not your mother and I shouldn’t have pretended I was your mother. I was wrong to do that. Your Uncle Thomas is not coming to England. He is not allowed to come. That is why I married him and why I pretended to be your mum, so he could come here. I think you should go back home now. But I have very bad news for you. Your Uncle Thomas has told me on the phone that your grandmother has died of malaria. I am very sorry. Love, Susie.

  When Miss Carrington finishes reading the letter in English Mrs Oladipo says, ‘Oh my God,’ and holds my hand. Miss Carrington reads the letter in Swahili and I understand some bits better, but the bit at the end I know already, I have understood all those words. I have understood that I will never, never be happy again.

  Judith Carrington had to wait until the next case conference was held before she could discuss Abela with her team leader, Denis, and the other members of his team. She told them how Abela had run away from her foster home to try to get back to Tanzania, and how she had been taken to hospital after being found in a traumatised state in a shed.

  ‘Was she unhappy at this foster home?’ the team leader asked, frowning.

  ‘It wasn’t ideal,’ Judith admitted. ‘She had to be taken to a place of safety when the woman she was living with was arrested, and the Oladipos had a spare place. I think also that my colleague chose to send Abela there in the first place because the Oladipos are black.’

  ‘But aren’t they Nigerian?’

  ‘I believe so.’

  Denis rubbed his hands across his hair, making it sit up in thoughtful spikes, then smoothed it down again. ‘Sending a Tanzanian child to a Nigerian foster home because they’re all black makes as much sense as sending a Russian child to a French home because they’re white,’ he murmured. ‘Anyway, so you sent her back to them after she left hospital.’

  ‘I did. At least it was familiar. I believed she would make progress with them.’

  Denis glanced down at the notes, reminding himself of the facts. ‘So she’s an immigrant?’

  ‘Possibly illegal, almost certainly an orphan,’ Judith said.

  ‘And has she made progress?’

  Judith sighed. She had been a social worker for fifteen years, apart from the year off she had just given herself. In all that time she had seen many children in desperate situations. She never grew hardened to their plight, but she did learn to distance herself. But Abela had touched her in a way that no other child had. ‘She’s been through an awful time. She’s had nightmares, cried a lot. I’ve been visiting her every week for six weeks and now I’m working with Mrs Oladipo to help her through her grief.’

  ‘How is she coping with it?’

  ‘She understands that she’ll never see her family again. She’s let go of that longing. But she needs to have something to put in its place. Hope.’ She didn’t need to utter the word, surely. She was with people who understood how important and how fragile hope was.

  ‘No living relatives?’

  ‘She has an uncle. She’s very frightened of him. She put a letter in the school worry box to say that he wanted to sell her.’ Judith riffled through some more papers and put them on Denis’s desk. ‘I think it’s probably true. I’ve done some investigating… there’s confirmation here that he was deported from England over a year ago and will never be allowed to return – he had no work permit and there is unconfirmed suspicion that he was involved in child trafficking.’

  ‘So she can’t go to him,’ Denis agreed. ‘What do you recommend, Judith?’

  Judith leaned forward eagerly, glancing round at her colleagues. ‘I recommend that Abela should be allowed to stay in England in the care of the social services. I think she should be placed for adoption as soon as possible.’

  She sat back and closed her eyes, and she felt again the sweltering heat of the African sun, the chant of excited voices as boys ran to greet her bus with their trays of fruit and cakes, and the little girl holding a strip of material over her mother’s head to give her some shade. She could hear her colleagues murmuring round her, discussing Abela’s case. None of them knew Abela, yet her future was in their hands.

  At last the committee came to a decision. They agreed that Abela should be placed for adoption, but not that she should be kept in England.

  ‘It’s not in her best interests,’ Denis said, as Judith started to protest. ‘She’s only lived here for six months. I think we agree.’ He glanced round at the others in the team. ‘We should make arrangements for her to be repatriated so that the Tanzanian social services can place her for adoption in her own country.’

  Judith Carrington could have cried with frustration.

  20

  Rosa

  CATS KNOW WHEN their owners are unhappy. It’s uncanny. Our Twitchy, totally independent, freeloading, who-do-you-humans-think-you-are, you’re-just-here-to-feed-me attitude, just changed completely after Anthony went. She started to sit on Mum’s kne
e without being invited, purr like a tractor, do cute dabby-paws things with passing spiders just to make us smile. She never behaves in such an undignified way usually. Then one day she disappeared for a week. When we found her again in the drawer of an old filing cabinet that was going rusty in the coal-hut, she had become the proud mother of four unbelievably tiny kittens. Pink-mouthed, wobbly-legged, stretchy, yawny, blinky and totally absorbing. I could watch them for hours, forget homework, no problem. We named them Little Chap, Wonky Tail, Belly-burster and Fancy Pants, and we were crazy about them all. We had a riotous time while they lived with us; they chased everything in sight, including their own tails; they rolled on top of each other and cuffed each other; they scrambled inside my school bag, curled up inside flowerpots; they had no idea how to be good, and they just played from sleep-time to sleep-time. When they were eight weeks old Mum said we had to find homes for them. She wouldn’t listen to my pleadings – ‘No, we can’t have five cats, no, not four, not three, not even two. I mean it, Rosa.’

  So I found homes for them, all with kids from school, which was quite neat because it meant that I would be able to visit them. Their new owners named them Freddy, Nutmeg, Beatrix and Sheba and lugged them away in cat boxes, taking all that fun and wonder away with them. So we were alone again, and the house felt empty, and that night Twitchy prowled round all the rooms howling deep in the back of her throat for the kittens she had lost.

  During this time Molly visited us again. We never really expected to see her again, which was sad because I had come to really like her, with her faded, hippy clothes and her spectacular shoes. But after Anthony left, we put all thoughts of adoption behind us. We had tried and failed, Mum said. Never again.

  ‘You mustn’t say that,’ Nana told her. ‘Never say never again. Just think, Jen – twelve months before you were born, I had a miscarriage. It felt like the end of the world. I had grown to love that baby inside me so much. She died when I was six months pregnant. It was a terrible experience, wasn’t it, Charles?’

  Grandpa nodded and cleared his throat abruptly, as if he’d suddenly thought of a tune he wanted to hum. His fingers tapped on the tabletop.

  Nana put her hands over his, stopping the silent arpeggio he was playing.

  ‘That’s it now, I thought,’ she went on. ‘I’m never going to try again. I can’t put myself through all that grief again. But I did. We did.’ She glanced at Grandpa, and they exchanged the slightest flicker of a smile. ‘It took a lot of courage, but we tried again. And if we hadn’t – just think! You would never have been born.’

  But Mum could only look inside herself. She wouldn’t go into Anthony’s room with its Wallace and Gromit wallpaper. She had a photograph of him in there, but she wouldn’t go in to look at it, not that I knew of, anyway.

  So when Molly came round, Mum greeted her politely and asked her in, but she didn’t offer her a cup of tea, and they didn’t chat like old friends. I know she blamed Molly because the adoption had fallen through; I think she felt that if Molly had been more thorough, Anthony would never have been placed for adoption in the first place.

  ‘I’ve just come to see if you’d like me to keep your name on the books,’ Molly said.

  I clenched and unclenched my fingers. And Mum said no. She didn’t look at me, didn’t look at Molly. Her face was white.

  ‘That’s it then,’ said Molly, closing up her folder. ‘Gosh, the end of the story. I’m so sorry, Jen. You have a lot to offer. Let me know if you ever change your mind.’

  ‘I won’t,’ Mum said. ‘That’s it now.’

  But life is full of little miracles, Nana says, and not long after all that, something totally unexpected happened, and it’s changed our lives again.

  It started with a phone call, one blissful Saturday when I was just setting off to skate. It was my first time since the accident; my broken ankle had taken ages to heal, and the doctor said I must be very careful or I’d do myself permanent damage. So I was nervous about going, even though I was dying to get back into skating again, but Mum and Grandpa said they’d go with me. The phone rang just as I was sorting out my things in my room. I had gone off the Barbie pink stuff, totally and utterly. Leave them to the five-year-olds. I just chose the black tracksuit trousers I use for games at school, and an olive-green sweatshirt that used to be Mum’s. I didn’t want to shine, not any more. I wanted to blend in with the crowd, not be noticed, not be seen.

  ‘Oh, brilliant!’ I heard Mum say as I ran downstairs. ‘That’ll be really wonderful. I’ll look forward to it.’

  She put the receiver down and swung round to me. Her eyes were shining, and her voice was happier than it had sounded for ages.

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked.

  ‘Never you mind. A surprise. You’ll find out. Quick now, we mustn’t be late.’ And that was all she’d say, though her face kept dimpling into smiles.

  Grandpa was waiting for us outside Ice Sheffield as usual. She linked her arm in his and skipped him through the door, which is something I’ve never seen her do before. Grandpa raised his eyebrows at me and I shrugged. Perhaps she’s in love, I thought wildly. Perhaps she’s got a boyfriend!

  Well, then I forgot about Mum and her peculiar cheerfulness, because I was really nervous about going skating again and it was all I could do to get myself laced up and ready for action. Mum and Grandpa held my hands when we stepped onto the ice, then he let go and flapped to the side, saying he was bound to fall over and bring me tumbling down with him. He tottered round slowly, his arms windmilling out and round in his efforts to stay upright, whistling to himself to show how carefree he felt. I knew his heart was thumping as loudly as mine was.

  Mum kept hold of my hand and we did a whole circuit together, slow and steady, and then she said, ‘You’ll be fine, off you go now.’ She let go and I was free; I could do it, I was myself again. Paige twisted and shimmered in her new dove-lilac outfit, smiling graciously at me. I heard the screech of Jamie’s ice hockey blades behind me, and then he streaked past, hands flapping hello. He yelled to me to race him. Toby tore after him, head down, grunting with the effort of keeping up, and I shrieked, ‘Yeehah!’ and pushed myself off after them both. It was a great feeling, skimming in and out between the other skaters; I felt completely confident again. I slowed down to get my breath back, and did a gentle spin, and that was when I saw the little boy in the middle of the rink, right in the glowing square of sunlight that came through the window. He had no style whatsoever. He was completely fearless. He was laughing across at me. I could hardly believe it; I daren’t believe it.

  I glanced over to where Mum was skating with her friend Pat. She saw me and waved, and I pointed. She saw him too, her face lit up, and we both skated towards him.

  ‘Anthony!’ I shouted.

  He flung his arms wide, lunging towards me like a dog let off its leash, and I just caught him before he catapulted into me. I lifted him right up and hugged him, tight, tight. We were all laughing, Anthony, me and Mum, and then the man who I recognised as Anthony’s father glided up towards us, slow and easy and smiling, and stopped right next to us, neat as a cat. I think that’s the best day of my life. So far.

  21

  Abela

  EVENTUALLY THE TANZANIAN social services wrote to Judith Carrington to say they did not want to take Abela into their care. They had thousands of homeless children to care for, they told her, and though it was the way of Tanzanian families just to accept homeless relatives into their midst, there were still too many children to find homes for. They had located Abela’s uncle, Thomas Mkumba, and his case was being investigated by the police. Anyway, he refused to be Abela’s guardian, denying at first that he even knew her, even though they had papers where he was claiming to be her father in order to get a permit to return to England. They confirmed that they were investigating the charge that he had been involved in child trafficking. There was no way that he would be allowed back to England. They did not think he would be an appropriate pe
rson to bring up a little girl.

  ‘Glory be!’ Judith Carrington said out loud as she was reading the letter. ‘How long did it take them to come to this conclusion?’

  Another case conference was called, and Judith took the letter and read it aloud to Denis and her colleagues. ‘In our opinion, it would be in Abela’s best interest to stay in England, if a suitable home could be found for her. We would be happy to support Miss Carrington’s suggestion that Abela could be placed for adoption in England.’ Judith put the letter down and looked round at the other social workers.

  ‘She’s a very, very brave child,’ she said. ‘But I think she’s been through enough. She’s been abandoned. I’d like to find an adoptive family for her as soon as possible.’

  ‘Well,’ said the team leader at last, rubbing his hair into spikes again. ‘We can see that Abela is a special case. Has she been granted residence in this country?’

  ‘Not yet,’ Miss Carrington admitted. ‘Nobody has applied for it.’

  ‘Then that’s the first step. If residence is not granted, she must be transferred to the care of the Tanzanian authority and that’s the end of the matter. And if it is granted, then we’ll take her case to the next adoption panel.’

  He smiled at her. ‘Any more clients to discuss?’

  ‘They’re not clients,’ she said, as she did at every meeting. ‘They’re children. And I have forty on my books.’ Forty young lives, and they were all in her care, all special cases. ‘All needing hope.’

  22

  Rosa

  IT WAS A gorgeous summer that year, a summer of trips into Derbyshire, picnics at Padley Gorge and camping out at Edale, swimming in the open-air pool at Hathersage, cycling round Ladybower. Nana and Grandpa usually came with us, and, sometimes, Anthony and his father. He says we’re an important part of Anthony’s little life and he wants us to keep in touch with him. But I’ve seen the way he looks at Mum, and I’ve seen the way Mum looks at him. Nana sees it too, and no one says anything to anybody. Funny, isn’t it? It’s like a little candle just flickering in a still room. Don’t breathe, or it might go out. Sometimes I daydream about us all living in the same house, but I don’t mention it to a soul.