The little girl stopped walking, and Miss Sawyer noticed from behind that she appeared to lower her head and move her hand up to the side of her face, as though hiding it.
‘Dani?’ she asked. ‘Are you all right? What’s the matter?’
The little girl didn’t answer.
Miss Sawyer took a couple of steps towards her; then she bent over so that she was more on Dani’s level and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. The girl immediately shrugged her away, suddenly, as though she had been burned. She walked towards the wall and kept her face covered.
‘Dani Sinclair,’ Miss Sawyer said a bit more sharply than she intended. ‘I really don’t think it’s at all appropriate for you to behave towards your teach—’
She stopped. The moment she had raised her voice, the little girl had seemed to jump. Her arm fell limply to her side and she slowly turned round and faced the teacher. It was that look that had stopped Miss Sawyer in her tracks.
One of Dani’s eyes was almost closed. The lids were swollen and black, and the bruising extended all the way down one side of her face. A twitch of embarrassment flickered over the side of her face that wasn’t bruised, and Miss Sawyer noticed that she avoided looking her teacher in the eye.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘Dani, what happened to you?’
Dani’s face twitched again, but she didn’t say anything.
From down the corridor, Miss Sawyer became aware of the sound of her class, boisterous as she expected. She looked over in that direction, slightly panicking that if she didn’t go now and sort them out, they’d just go from bad to worse. But another quick look at Dani’s face reminded her that she had a more important duty now.
‘Come with me, Dani, love,’ she said, as kindly as she could. She offered the child her hand, but Dani declined to take it. She just followed slowly, her feet dragging, as Miss Sawyer led her to the office where she dealt with child protection issues.
It was a small office, cosy in its way. There was a wooden desk and a comfortable chair, which seemed to dwarf Dani as she sat in it.
‘Would you like a glass of orange, Dani?’ Miss Sawyer offered.
Dani shook her head.
‘What about a biscuit? I think I’ve got some chocolate ones somewhere.’
Another shake of the head.
‘OK,’ Miss Sawyer said quietly as she took her seat behind the desk. She couldn’t remember a pupil ever turning down drinks and biscuits during school hours, but then she had to remind herself that Dani had always been a bit more timid than most. ‘Now then, Dani, why don’t you tell me how you got the black eye?’
The child didn’t answer. She just looked down at the floor.
‘Dani, love, you won’t get into trouble for just telling me who it was. We can make sure it doesn’t happen again.’
‘No one did it,’ the girl replied quickly. She looked scared.
Miss Sawyer narrowed her eyes. ‘What do you mean, no one did it?’
Dani looked around the office, confusion in her face. ‘I mean – I mean … It was me.’
‘You?’
‘I got in a fight. On the way to school.’ Still she refused to catch Miss Sawyer’s eyes.
‘A fight? When?’
‘This morning.’
‘Who with?’
‘Some boys.’
‘Which boys, Dani? Why don’t you tell me?’
A look of desperate concentration passed across Dani’s bruised face, and she shook her head.
Miss Sawyer sighed. It was so often the way: kids getting beaten up and refusing to admit who it was. The unwritten code of silence was stronger in the school than she imagined it was in any prison. Even so, something wasn’t right. It took a while for bruises to come up like that. Whatever had happened to the little girl hadn’t happened just this morning.
‘Are you sure you’re telling the truth, Dani? You can tell me, you know. You won’t get in trouble.’
‘I am!’ The girl’s voice was uncharacteristically firm.
Miss Sawyer sighed. She knew there was more to this than met the eye, but what could she do? ‘All right, Dani,’ she said in a resigned tone of voice. ‘I can’t make you tell me. But if you decide you want to, you only have to say.’
Dani remained tight-lipped and looking at the floor.
‘In the meantime, I don’t think you need to be at school today. You wait here and I’ll call your mum. She can come and get you and take you home. You can stay there until your face gets better, if you like.’
As she spoke, Miss Sawyer saw something change in Dani’s expression. She almost looked as if she was about to say something, but the moment soon passed, and she went back to staring at the floor.
‘I’ll be back in a few minutes,’ Miss Sawyer said. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like some orange while you wait?’
‘What did you tell her?’
They were alone in the kitchen. Mum had arrived at school quickly with a dangerous kind of look in her face. Her eyes widened slightly when she saw the extent of the damage to her face: this was the first time she had looked at her foster daughter since the night it had happened, Dani having crept out of the house early for school that morning. She rushed Dani out of Miss Sawyer’s office, despite the fact that the teacher seemed to want to talk. They hadn’t spoken a word on the way home, Mum walking briskly and Dani struggling to keep up with her. Now she was looking accusingly down at her foster daughter, her eyes cold.
‘What the hell did you tell her?’
‘Nothing,’ Dani replied.
‘You just said you’d got in a fight?’
Dani nodded her head.
Mum seemed slightly mollified. ‘Good,’ she muttered. ‘She wouldn’t have believed you anyway.’ She sounded to Dani as if she was trying to persuade herself, but the little girl didn’t know why, because it was true. No one would ever believe her if she told them what really happened.
Mum turned away from her and took a packet of cigarettes from her bag. She lit one and sucked in deeply as the acrid smell hit Dani’s nose. She felt the familiar sensation of tears welling in her; she did her best to suppress it, but she never could. The others at school called her a cry baby, and they were right. She always seemed to be crying.
‘I didn’t break Rebecca’s toy,’ she whispered, her voice cracking.
It was as if something snapped in her mum. She turned round and there was a look in her eyes that terrified Dani to the very core. Her mum looked crazy. She stepped towards Dani, and as she did so she raised the hand that held her cigarette. As if by reflex, Dani cowered, falling to her knees and automatically raising her arms to cover the bruised side of her face as she waited for the blow. ‘Please don’t hit me,’ she cried.
But the blow didn’t come; instead, there was a torrent of words. ‘Just get out of my sight, Dani. You’re always causing trouble. You should count yourself lucky you don’t get punished more often. Go on, go to your room. I don’t want to see you any more. I’m sick and tired of having you under this roof. Sick and tired of it, you ungrateful little—’ And there her words deserted her.
Dani looked up to see that her mum had lowered her arm and was dragging again on the cigarette, fiercely, as though the smoke was the only