The Girl Who Saw Lions Read online

  ‘I’ve brought a photograph of her.’ Judith took a picture out of her bag, and Abela looked sideways at it, the smiling, friendly face, the floppy brown hair. She looked kind.

  ‘Her name’s Jen Warren. There isn’t a daddy in the house,’ Judith went on. ‘Just this lady and her daughter. This is Rosa.’

  ‘She is like me,’ Abela whispered, surprised.

  ‘Well, she is. A bit like you. Her daddy came from Tanzania too.’

  Abela held the photograph in her hands. She turned it over, and then looked at it again, at the happy, friendly, smiling face of the girl who might become her big sister.

  ‘All right,’ she whispered. ‘I try.’

  But as soon as Miss Carrington had gone she burst into tears. Carmel stood with her arms round her, rocking her gently backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

  ‘There, there’, she said. ‘You cry, honey, You cry. That’s real good. That’s real good.’

  26

  Rosa

  AND THAT WAS how my little sister came to live with us. It seems like ages ago now; it feels as if she has always lived here. But it was ages before it all happened. I couldn’t believe how long it took, all those meetings, all those talks. Mum met her, and I met her, and she came for tea, and she came for a weekend, and she came skating with me and hated it and fell over and cried. She met Nana and Grandpa, and loved them. And at last she moved in with her little bag of belongings. I was so excited that day, so proud and nervous. I took her to meet some of my friends, the ones who had adopted Twitchy’s kittens.

  ‘This is my sister, Abela.’

  I’m used to saying that now.

  Abela started at our local primary school, the one I used to go to, after Christmas. Mum met her every day and walked through the park with her, holding her hand. She had three months’ adoption leave, just as if she’d had a new baby.

  Abela didn’t call her anything at first, but then she started calling her Mummy. That was strange, but nice too, and right. I taught her how to make apricot slices. At first Mum talked to her a lot in Swahili, and I felt really out of it, and so they started to teach it to me. It’s like a secret language now, that the three of us share when we’re out together. Often Mum talks to us both about Africa, but she always talks about the good things, the friendly people and the proud, strong women that she knew when she was there, the beautiful places she has seen in the towns and in the countryside. We’ll go there, one day, very soon. Mum’s already saving up. She, Abela and I are going to Africa, to Tanzania, to Abela’s country and to mine. It’s our promise to each other, our holiday in Africa, and nothing, nothing is going to stop us doing it.

  Her English is getting better all the time, but she likes me to do ‘lessons’ with her. I help her to write letters to Mrs Long and to Carmel. She’s so funny, the way the tip of her tongue wriggles on her bottom lip when she’s writing. She covers the letters with pictures of animals, birds, flowers, and kisses. Her friend Jasmine came to stay for a weekend, and they giggled and cried so much that I got fed up and moved into Anthony’s room. It’s still his room, he comes to stay occasionally. I haven’t got anywhere of my own any more, just mine.

  And then, Adoption Day came, in the Easter holidays. We all went to the County Court: Mum, Grandpa, Nana, me and Abela, and Judith Carrington and Molly and some other people who we didn’t know. It wasn’t a big exciting place like they have in TV courtroom dramas; it was just a sort of office. We all sat round the biggest, shiniest table I’ve ever seen, with the judge at one end. She wasn’t at all frightening; a gentle-looking woman with droopy eyelids and amazing fluffy hair, just dressed in ordinary clothes, which was a bit disappointing. My stomach was doing its butterfly quaking, and goodness knows how Mum and Abela were feeling, holding hands next to me. But everyone smiled, the papers were signed, and it was all over in two minutes.

  Abela asked the judge where her wig was, and the judge sent the clerk to fetch it and then put it on Abela’s head, and we took a photograph of her; one huge smile under a frosty grey wig. Grandpa called her the wise old bird after that.

  So that’s how she became my little sister. It still isn’t easy, for me or for Mum or for her. I got jealous when Grandpa started to teach her piano, but as soon as she was adopted he bought her a guitar and paid for her to have lessons on that instead. She sings when she’s playing, in a lovely, high, golden-yellow voice.

  I love it when Mum and I go out together, skating or shopping, just us, and leave Abela with Nana. I love it when I go to Grandpa’s on my own for my piano lesson. But I love it, too, when Abela and I do things together. She’s so funny, she’s got a giggle that’s like a stream bubbling, and once she starts, I get it too. We drive Mum mad when we’re giggling.

  We squabble sometimes. I pull her hair and she scratches me. She wants to know my secrets. She hangs around listening when my friends come round, when I just want to be on my own with them and dance in our bedroom and have a good time and talk about the boys we’re crazy about. It’s a real drag, sometimes, having her around.

  And I have a sense that deep down, she’s wiser and cleverer than me, she knows things that I will never know and she has seen things that I will never see; she’ll do things that I will never do. I look into the blackness of her eyes and I see wild creatures and unknown frightening places and unbearable sorrow. She has come through all those things; but they’re part of her for ever, they have made her what she is. I think she will become a great person.

  I wouldn’t be without her. Not for anything in the world. I love her, really love her. And she loves us. She’s my little sister, and we’re her for ever family. She belongs.

  Acknowledgements

  A little girl called Halima made a great impression on me. This story is not about her, but it is because of meeting her that I wanted to write it.

  I talked to many people while I was writing Abela: The Girl Who Saw Lions, and would like to thank in particular Julie Jarman, Dolores Long, Tricia Murray-Leslie, Helen Kendal and the Adoption Team in Sheffield, Maria Oldroyd from the Asylum Seekers Unit in Sheffield, Pat Reed and, of course, my husband Alan Brown for his enormous encouragement.