Bad Little Girl(10)

‘Lorna, I think Mr Potter is about to wake up. What do you think?’

And Lorna would push her quiet blank face towards the glass, and say in a rusty-sounding, rarely used voice, ‘Not yet.’



* * *



Claire asked the class to draw their ideal Christmas Day. There were a lot of banana-fingered Santas and crooked Christmas trees. Claire exclaimed over them all, and arranged a little gallery beside the Quiet Area. Only Lorna, and Feras (or Feral, as he was jocularly known by the SENCO), hadn’t finished theirs by the last day of term. Feras and Lorna didn’t get on. Claire had seated them together, hoping Lorna’s quietness would rub off on him in a positive way, but the opposite seemed to have happened. Feras’ face shone with indignation, and every few minutes he’d yell, ‘She’s staring! Miss, she’s staring!’ and throw an ineffectual punch in Lorna’s direction. Eventually Claire separated them, placing Lorna near the toilets where she was given the job of tidying up the paint pots, but still Feras feared her, and he cried big, angry tears.

‘I’m sure Lorna wasn’t staring, Feras, really.’

‘She was! She is! Now! SHE IS RIGHT NOW!’

Claire glanced at Lorna’s face, scrupulously blank and turned halfway away from them. ‘She isn’t. Feras? Look. She really isn’t. Now, how about your Christmas picture? Can we finish it before Dad comes? Imagine how lovely it will look on your bedroom wall!’

‘Don’t know where it is.’

‘It’s just there, on the drying rack by the loo. Go and get it and I can help you with the sparkles.’

‘She’s over there though.’

Lorna turned mournful, stricken eyes on Feras. Claire felt immensely sorry for her, and simultaneous irritation towards the boy twitching at her side. ‘I’m asking you to go and get your picture, and stop being silly.’ Surprisingly, he ducked his head, sped to the drying rack, and plucked up his picture without saying a word.

‘Glitter?’ Feras liked glitter.

‘If I open it for you, do you promise not to use a lot?’

His vague gaze drifted down to his glitter-crazed picture. ‘Promise. Red?’

Talking Feras down from his inevitable glitter high took some time; it was a while before Claire realised that Lorna wasn’t in the room any more, but in the toilets, twisting paper into little pellets, her face as smooth and inscrutable as an egg. She was more than usually unkempt today. Her hair was matted at the roots and she wore the same grimy polo shirt she’d had on the previous week. The floor was littered with paper, but half of what she was ripping up remained in her hand – her Christmas picture. A puppy sat next to a tree, ringed by a smiling family and painstakingly coloured hearts. Claire watched as Lorna’s dirty, chewed fingertips ripped the puppy’s head off and began methodically screwing it up into a ball.

‘Lorna! Your beautiful picture! You worked so hard on it!’

The girl started. Her eyes widened and her lips pulled back into a nervous smile.

‘It’s shit.’

‘We don’t use that language, Lorna. And it certainly isn’t – rubbish! It’s a beautiful picture! Look at all those pretty hearts, and all those lovely smiles. It’s very cheerful!’

The girl’s face darkened. ‘It’s rubbish.’ But she stopped ripping it up.

‘Well, I think it’s lovely. Why destroy it?’

‘Don’t like it.’

‘I’d love you to draw another one? But I’m worried that it won’t be ready for when Christmas comes.’ The girl smiled again, but her eyes took on a dull sheen that Claire recognised all too well. ‘Lorna? Don’t cry, now.’

She knelt down, took one of the child’s hands, and a wave of unbearable empathy washed through her for this lonely girl, staggering towards her now, clutching at Claire’s cardigan, kneading it with her hands, crying, choking. Then her chest heaved and she began to cough. Claire knew that cough, and deftly steered her towards the toilets, just before the vomit came. There was nothing in the girl’s stomach, it seemed, except the milk she’d drunk at break time. When she stopped choking, Claire scooped the dangling ropes of spittle and snot away with a wet wipe. She carefully washed her hands and led Lorna to the Calm Down Corner.

‘Lorna, did you eat your lunch?’

‘No.’

‘Why not, poppet?’

‘Didn’t like it.’

Lunch had been pizza and chips. What were the odds Lorna hadn’t liked it? ‘Really? Lorna? Did you feel poorly then too?’

‘No.’

Claire tried to remember seeing Lorna at lunch. She was on first sitting. They sat on tables according to surname. Who else began with a B? ‘Do you sit next to Shane Briggs?’

‘No. Caitlyn Carr.’

Caitlyn Carr. Troublesome girl. Bit of a pincher. ‘Are you friends with Caitlyn?’

‘No.’

‘Did Caitlyn say anything a bit unkind to you today at lunch?’

‘Can’t remember.’ But Lorna shook suddenly and a few more tears leaked out.

‘You must tell the teacher, Lorna, if someone – anyone – is being unkind to you.’

‘None of them like me.’

‘Oh, Lorna, I’m sure that’s not true.’ Claire knew it was true. Poor little lamb. A year had done nothing to rehabilitate her.