Mummy's Little Girl, JANE ELLIOTT [mini ebook reader TXT] 📗

if they found out the dirty truth about their daughter: terrified of encountering the boys again. Now it was all different. She was still scared, but scared for different reason. Scared for her baby. Scared of what would happen when she took her home. Scared of the life she would have.
As these thoughts ran through her head, Hayley wondered whether this was what it was like to be a grown-up.
About five minutes after the midwife had left she summoned up the energy to get out of bed. Her legs felt weak as she steadied herself by the side of her bed, and she was sore from the birth: but she took a couple of tentaive steps towards the chair over which her wet clothes had been laid. She took off her stained hospital robes, and with difficulty pulled on the still damp jeans and T-shirt, which were clammy and cold on her skin. Gingerly, she stepped towards the door out into the corridor.

Itwas almost midnight, but the maternity ward was still buzzing with activity. Mums in labour walked up and down the corridor, some of them pushing drip stands along with them. Harassed hospital workers rushed in and out of rooms. Nobody paid any attention to a young girl walking unobtrusively past the reception desk and out of the main boby of the hospital.

It was a relief for hayley when she saw that the rain had stopped. If she’d had the money, she would have taken a bus home but she didnt, so there was nothing for it but to walk. It took half a hour to get back to the estate, and by the time she got home, her mum and dad were fast asleep. She crept silently into the bathroom, where she romoved her clothes before moistening some tissue and using it to wipe away the stubborn streaks of blood from her inner thigh. Then she rolled her clothes up into a little ball, returned to her room, climbed into bed and pulled her blankets tightly around her.

As she lay there, waiting for sleep to come, hayley felt as through a part of her had been torn away. She felt a desperate, gaping emptiness. She felt as though she was no longer whole. Her body ached for the little girl she had only glimpsed for a matter of seconds.
Yet what else could she of done? Bring her back here, to this place? At least now her child had a chance- a chance of life in the hands of the kind doctors, and a chance of happiness in the hands of whoever she ended up with.
A chance a happiness. If she could give the little girl that, then perhaps she wasn’t so worthless. It wasn’t much to cling on to but it was something.
A chance of happiness.
The words echoed around hayley’s head as she lay there in her little bed untill eventually, overcome with exhaustion and emotion, she slipped into a troubled, dream-filled sleep.

It was a bit more than half an hour after she’d left hayley that charity returned to the girl’s room. She didnt know why, but somehow she wasnt surprised to see that she was no longer there.
She felt a pang. On some level, she had hoped that maybe she had been getting through to the girl, but now she realised how thoughtless she had been to leave her alone. If anyone needed help, company and security, it was the frightened little thing who had given birth in that room less than an hour ago. She sighed.
There were procedures in place for this kinf of event. Charity immediately informed hosptial security what had happened; then the police were called. There would be statements and interviews in due course, but charity knew it would all be in vain- the girl had not given any information about herself, not even her name. The midwife found herself wondering whether she had come into the hospital intending to abandon her child, but she soon brushed away that thought. Chances were that the giel didnt even know herself. Chances were that she was too scared even to get her childish thoughts together.
Charity did everthing, that was required of her in kind of daze. Her shift was supposed to end at midnight, but it was pass two o’clock by the time it was all done. Even then, tired though she was, she didnt leave for home. There was something she wanted to do first. She slipped down to the shop on the ground floor. It was empty, apart from the bored, pimply young man behide the counter. Charity couldnt afford much, so she chose the smallest toy she could- a little pink and blue teddy bear, not much bigger than her hand. She paid for it, and then headed back to maternity suite.

It was never easy going into the special care baby unit, but tonight’s trip was more difficult than most. She walked into the observation room and saw them lined up, those fragile little bundles of life. There were seven of them tonight, all lying on their sterile incubators, their stillness giving no clue to the desperate struggle each of them was making for their very existence.

The little girl the midwife had delivered lay at the end of the row. She was smallest of them all, and she lay so still that had in not been for the regular pinging of the heart monitor by her side, you might never have known she was alive. A feeding tube had been inserted into her impossibly tiny nose, and a little oxgen mask covered her face. The baby was bathed in the glow of ultra-violet light to prevent jaundice.

How long charity stood and stared at the child she could not have said. Eventually, though, she was awakened from her dream-like state by a voice.
“You should go home”.
She turned around. One of the doctors was standing just by her, a quietly spoken Asian man by the name Sunil, whom she had always found to be very friendly.
“I just wont to see how she was getting on” she said quietly.
Sunil, nodded and gave a sad little smile. “Too early to say”. Charity was pleased that he didnt offer any platitudes they both knew that the baby’s life hung in the balance, and it would have been disrespectful of him to pretend that wasn’t the case.
“Is this the one”? he asked. “The one whose mother left”?
The midwife nodded.
“Did you deliver her”?
“Yes” she whispered.
“Well then” sunil continued “as her mother is not here to give her a name, I think she should be named after the person whose hands brought her into the world, dont you”?
The midwife blinked, and was surprised to feel tears in her eyes. She turned back to the incubator. “Charity”. She dont think so, she told the doctor “This little girl will need enough charity in her life as it is” The doctor shrugged. “That is true” he said. “But she needs a name and i think you should choose it”.
Charity’s eyes mised over. I was pregnant once”, she said “oh, i lost the child. But that didnt stop me giving it a name”. She smiled. “Dani. That’s what we’ll call her”.
Sunil put his hand on her shoulder, and then left the observation room. The midwife knew that she too should leav soon, but she allowed herself a couple more minutes with the little girl. It didnt seem right just to leave her. On a whim, she stepped out of the observation room and checking to see that no one was watching, walked into the special care ward itself and up to the little girls perpex cot. She lay the soft toy she had bought on the clear cover no doubt it would be removed by a doctor, but she didnt know what else to do with it. It lay there a floppy and seemingly lifeless at the baby herself.

“Just get through this , my little love”, she found herself whispering to the child. “Jusr get through this. Nothing you’ll ever have to do in your life will be nearly as hard if you van just get through this”.
She drew a deep breath and did her best to steady the emotion that was suddenly threatening to overcome her.
“Keep fighting little DANI”, she breathed. She did her best to smlie at the baby. Who didnt even no she was there; then she turned and left the ward, closing the door quietly behind her.

Chapter 1

Twelve years later


Dani Sinclair heard the bell go for morning break. All around her, her classmates scuffed their chairs back and started talking. The teacher at the front of the class- Mr Wynn- called out something, but it was lost in the hubbub of noise as everyone hurried out excitedly for breaktime.

Everyone except Dani.

Nobody stopped to run out to the playground with her. Nobody called to her, or smiled at her, or paid her any attention at all, And for that, Dani was pleased. When the other children did pay attention to her, it wasn’t the kind of attention she wanted.

She was the last to leave the classroom, and Mr Wynn hurried her on. “come on dani” he said impatiently. “Outside for break-time, please”, Dani nodded timidly and left the classroom: Mr Wynn followed her out into the playground.

It was clear winter’s day, cold enough for the raw chill of the air to burn Dani’s bare legs. Her school skirt was short, nat as fashion statement, but because her mum-her foster mum, actually- had not bought her any new clothes for ages. All her school mates seemed to have new trainers every other week, and they certainly noticed that Dani was not as well dressed as them. It was one of the many things that they used to pick on her.

She skirted round the edge of the playground, trying to make it look as if she was busy doing something when in fact she was busy doing something when in fact she was just wandering aimlessly. As she passed certain groups of kids, they shouted names at her, but she was so used to them doing so that she hardly heard them.

Dani had been wandering for perhaps five minutes when they stopped her. Ashley and Tammy were the two most popular girls in the class. They had long hair and wore perfume and make-up, even though you weren’t supposed to at school. It made them look much older than their twelve years, and it also put them on a different side of the look pretty. Aahley and Tammy were mean girls. They were always teasing her for being so quiet, always picking on dani, always trying to get her to say dirty words she didn’t wont to say. They made her cry on an almost daily basis, and she hated it when they turned their attention to her.