The Homes Read online

  She likes to dress smart, too; I suppose she thinks if she looks good it will make us want to look good. Jonesy doesn’t really care but I try to do my best.

  ‘Whit’s going on, you two?’

  ‘Jane Denton’s done a runner, miss,’ says Jonesy. ‘Gone off with a fella.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ says Mrs Paterson.

  ‘Everyone says so.’

  ‘Well, everyone might not be right, you know.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  Mrs Paterson opens the door to see what’s going on outside, before shutting it again.

  ‘Right then, Jonesy, upstairs and git your hands washed, they’re a mess.’

  I go to go up with her, but Mrs Paterson grabs my arm. ‘Not you.’

  ‘Miss?’

  She moves me round to look straight into my eyes. ‘I will not have young ladies of this house fighting. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘And, Lesley …’

  ‘Yes, miss?’

  ‘Well done, you.’ She squeezes my arm. ‘You’re a brave wee girl, but don’t ever do that again, you hear? Now, have you had your tea? I think Cook has left it out for you.’

  I smile at her and she smiles back. She does like me. I feel warm all over and safe for the first time today.

  *

  In the evening all the talk is of Jane Denton. Jonesy is telling everyone just what she thinks she’s getting up to while we’re all stuck here. I don’t know where she’s learnt all this stuff, not from me. She can be quite crude when she puts her mind to it.

  Everyone’s buzzing about it. My fight is forgotten. It was only this morning, but it’s old news. I am so tired after not sleeping last night, and not eating breakfast or hardly any dinner. I hope Jonesy doesn’t keep me up tonight with her tales.

  I know Jane. She used to live in our cottage a few years ago, though she’s fifteen or so – three years older than me – so I’ve not really spoken to her since she left. She’s pretty; she’s got this scarf and she knows all the boys like her.

  I’m not surprised she’s got a boyfriend. When she walks down the pathways all the boys watch her. I wonder if she even knows they’re doing it – they pretend that they haven’t seen her and then as soon as she’s gone past they all turn round and nudge each other.

  Maybe one day the boys will do that when I walk past. They don’t at the moment. I’m not ugly, but I’m not one of the ones they go crazy for. It doesn’t matter anyway as none of the boys our age are interested in girls; they’re only interested in football and hitting each other, and I can’t tell which one of these things they like more.

  If people say anything about me when I go past it’s something about being stuck up or a swot. I’m not stuck up. I might be a bit of a swot compared to them, but that’s only because I like the schoolwork. They just hate me cos they hate all school, they can’t understand how anyone can like it. Besides, I don’t care what they think, I’m going to leave here one day, and if I can leave with qualifications, it means I have a better chance of never having to see them again.

  I lie on my bed and do my homework while Jonesy, Pam, Mary and Shona look out the window. They’re watching people going past, and squeaking whenever they see another police car.

  Pam thinks Jane Denton will be fine, she’s just ‘done a runner’, which is a common occurrence in the Homes. Jonesy, of course, thinks she’s off with a man. Mary and Shona think she’s been kidnapped. I wish they would go downstairs while I’m trying to work. I don’t say anything, though, I just let them get on with it.

  At lights out they are still talking about it. Mr Paterson comes in specifically to tell them to shut up. I think of saying, ‘And so say all of us,’ but I don’t, I just lie there in the dark thinking how much I love that gate.

  4

  My first memory is of falling down the steps at the Homes and cutting my arm. I must have been three or four at the time. I was running out of the cottage with some of the others when I stumbled. I put my arm out to break the fall but the speed I was going I missed getting it down on the top step so I went down the two steps and landed on my arm and shoulder.

  I was wearing short sleeves so I got badly grazed and blood started to come out. I remember lying there calling for help and crying. Someone came, an adult, though I don’t remember who, and they took me to the infirmary over the other side of the Homes.

  Jonesy was there then. I remember her trying to hug me as I cried, as if she was trying to squeeze the pain out of me.

  Jonesy is Morag Jones. She is my best friend. She has been in my cottage as long as I can remember and always has the bed next to mine. Even when we have to move beds, which we are made to do each year, she will somehow arrange it so that within a few days we are sleeping next to each other again.

  They did once try to have us permanently on different sides of the room, but Jonesy just talked non-stop, and she would talk over the other beds to me, until the people in between moved so she could be next to me.

  Jonesy has always been a bit scrawny. She eats anything that comes near her, but she’s built like a skinny dog, all bones and excited energy.

  We are going to be friends for ever and when we leave the Homes we are going to go and live in Glasgow and get a flat and get boyfriends who will buy us nice dresses.

  She sometimes gets us into trouble with her never-ending talking, and she gets the odd belt for it. She will cry and be quiet for the day afterwards, but then she will start again. You can’t stop her talking. In science we have learnt about an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Jonesy’s talking is an unstoppable force.

  We are both twelve. She is obsessed with boys and when we will get boobs and how we can make ourselves pretty. She wants to marry a soldier when she is older. She says they get regular money and they are away a lot so she can have the place to herself. Her dream husband isn’t such a dream that she wants him around all the time.

  I don’t know who I want to marry. I certainly don’t know what job he will have, but I want him to be kind, and I want him to be smart, and have a nice suit that he will wear to take me out, and I will have a nice dress, and when we walk past people they will think, She looks nice, I bet they have some money.

  Jonesy and I always look out for each other. The Homes is a dangerous place and you need people to look out for you, your ‘team’. The adults aren’t always that bothered so unless you have people who can back you up, you are in trouble.

  There are a couple of little gangs that the boys are part of. I think that some of them are part of it so the other gangs can’t pick them off. The older girls in our cottage look out for us, which I am grateful for, but then they can be nasty sometimes if they are bored and want someone to pick on. It’s like they won’t allow other people to pick on us, but they will pick on us if they want. Like we are their toys to play with.

  Me and Jonesy, for ever joined at the hip. ‘The Chatter Twins’, Mrs Paterson calls us. We look so different, we act so different, but we are definitely twins who are lost when we are separated for too long.

  Having a friend like her makes it bearable to get up in the morning. You need someone like Jonesy in a place like this. She can be a bit annoying sometimes but everything else about her more than makes up for it.

  5

  The next morning there’s a scrambling up the stairs then the door is kicked open.

  ‘She’s deid!’ comes the cry from Jonesy. ‘She’s deid!’

  ‘Who’s deid?’ asks Shona as she jumps off her bed.

  The other girls crowd round Jonesy; she’s bent over panting. ‘Jane … Denton … deid … the woods.’

  ‘Jesus bloody Mary and Joseph,’ says Pam.

  ‘Holy shit,’ says Shona.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ says Mary.

  Eldrey says nothing. She doesn’t talk much.

  The room is lit up with excitement, we’ve never heard news so bad. I don’t say anything either; I’m stunned. We all t
hought Jane was going to be with that fella she was supposed to be seeing.

  Jonesy recovers her breath a little. ‘I saw her body, there was blood everywhere, it was disgusting.’

  ‘Where was it?’

  ‘The woods over the back, behind Cottage 12. I was going to get the post and I heard all this shouting and screaming and some people were running away from it and others were running to it. When I got there everyone was just stood round her staring.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone try to save her?’ I say.

  ‘They couldn’t, she was too deid. It was obvious she was deid, her eyes were bulging out and everything. I’ve never seen a deid body before, it was horrible.’

  ‘Eurgh,’ says Pam.

  ‘Do you want to go and see it?’ Jonesy asks.

  ‘No,’ says Pam.

  ‘Yes,’ say Shona and Mary.

  Eldrey still says nothing.

  I say, ‘I dunno, it’s wrong, isn’t it?’

  Outside we hear sirens.

  Everyone looks out the window as police cars and ambulances go up the path. Kids are standing in the porches of their cottages, trying to find out what’s going on.

  We see Mr Gordon, the Superintendent, storm down the path to a police car. He looks so angry. Someone is going to get it really bad today.

  Mr Gordon is a bastard. It’s funny that so many of the children here really are bastards, but the Homes are run by another sort of bastard. Jonesy calls him the ‘Bastard of the Bastards’ but never when adults are around.

  If you get on the wrong side of him, you are going to have a very hard time at the Homes. He likes me because I work hard, but I am still so scared of him that sometimes I think I will wee myself if he looks at me badly. I just try to keep out of his way. I’ve heard the stories of what he’s done when he’s angry; I don’t know if they’re true, but I don’t want to find out.

  He is a bald man who always wears a suit, and he constantly looks like he has been stung by a bee, but is trying not to show you how much pain he is in. It seems like his body is trying to burst out of his clothes. I don’t know if he got big after he bought them or if he bought them small so it showed up his size; either way, when he is walking you get out of his way.

  ‘Back in your houses!’ he barks. ‘Back in your houses or it’s the belt!’ Other grown-ups are issuing the same orders as they follow in his wake.

  We run down the stairs and stand on the porch of Cottage 5. Mr Gordon is talking to a policeman and Jonesy is edging nearer to hear what they are saying. You’re gonnae get killed next if the Super catches you, I think. And he does catch her. While listening to the policeman talk, he gives Jonesy a stare that could stop a tree falling.

  Jonesy comes back to us and we go back into the house. Everyone is listening to her as she has all the information. She has seen the body. She describes it over and over again: the stab marks all over Jane’s chest, in her neck and even her cheek.

  ‘Her knickers were off, just sort of on one leg by her ankles,’ said Jonesy.

  ‘Why would you take your knickers off unless you were having a wee in the woods or a grown-up told you to? Why would someone stab you for that?’ says Eldrey.

  ‘You’re an idiot, Eldrey. Someone’s done something to her. Raped her,’ says Jonesy.

  ‘What’s raping?’ says Eldrey.

  ‘It’s when they stick it in you but you don’t want them to.’

  Eldrey looks thoughtful. No one asks any more questions.

  By the time she has finished, I can see the body every time I close my eyes and all I can think of is Jane. Why would someone do that? How could they do something like that here? The woods are only three hundred yards away; the killer could have walked past our front door.

  ‘Didn’t she use to live here?’ says Shona.

  ‘Aye,’ says Mary. ‘Left about six years ago to go to a cottage where she had more friends.’

  ‘You can move to be with your friends?’ asks Pam.

  ‘You have to have friends first.’ Jonesy gives her a look, then carries on with more of the details. When Jonesy finally stops talking, we don’t know what to do next. We are supposed to have breakfast and then go off to school. How can we go on as normal after what has just happened?

  Mrs Paterson walks in and says, ‘Right, you lot, I want you to have eaten your breakfast and have your school uniform on in the next fifteen minutes or there’ll be trouble.’

  No one moves until she says, ‘Don’t make me get Mr Paterson, because then you’ll be in real trouble.’

  Mr Paterson is not just a threat; he is the punishment. I am not sure what Mrs Paterson sees in him. He’s quite grumpy, and for a man who has to work with kids he doesn’t seem to like kids very much. Perhaps he thinks that it is Mrs Paterson’s job to care about them, and his is just to dish out the punishments.

  I wouldn’t say he was handsome – Mrs Paterson is definitely the better-looking of the two – but she does like him, even if he is a little shorter than her. She never wears heels as he would look even shorter still. If you mention that he’s short, you are for it. And not a one-off, you are going to get it loads. Jonesy did once and she gets it loads off him. That said, there are some girls he just takes against in here. I am usually fine unless I have done something really bad, which I rarely do.

  6

  Each cottage has children of all different ages, but the same sex, so as to keep us apart. Not that it always works. Some of the older girls in our cottage have come back with the remnants of the woodland floor on their backs, and everyone knows what they have been up to.

  The price of ever being caught is that you take such a beating you’ll think twice about doing it again.

  The Patersons are quite strict houseparents compared to some of the others. When you go to other cottages their houseparents do seem kinder, but then maybe that is because we are guests and they are as strict as Mr and Mrs Paterson once we have gone.

  There is also a cook for each cottage. They sometimes change, so we just call ours ‘Cook’. Our cook has been with us for many years, but we still call her Cook. We get three meals a day, which is much better than many children in ‘normal’ families get, so we are told.

  Religion is strong in the Homes, which you can tell as the names of the roads in the village are things like Patience Avenue, Holy Road and Spirit Street. The founder of the Homes is buried along with his wife in the church cemetery. He has a strange presence here. When I was very young I would often confuse the image of him and God, and to me he was like a god in that he was around us at all times, and I often had a feeling he was watching over us. There were many paintings of him in and around the village and there is a picture of him in every cottage. I wonder whether he would have wanted that. He doesn’t sound like the sort of man who would appreciate pictures of himself everywhere.

  There’s also a lie that this is a happy place. It’s not. When people come to visit – important people like mayors and politicians and famous people – we all have to pretend that everything is lots of fun and we spend our whole days smiling. All the grown-ups get scared that one of us will misbehave and tell them what it is really like. If important people think it is fun, fun, fun here, they will never do anything to make it better.

  There are around twenty-five children living in Cottage 5. I think we have a good cottage. The sort of ‘middle’ girls live in our room. Then there’s a room for the ‘big’ girls, who we are all a little scared of but look up to at the same time, and a larger room for the younger girls, who we can get to do what we want. Finally there are a couple of babies that we help to look after.

  Some other cottages are much less nice – Glenda McAdam’s, for one – and some of the boys’ ones are pretty rough. Cottage 14 is bad as their housefather, Mr Roberts, really likes to dish it out. You can tell boys from that house as someone has always got a black eye or a limp.

  We’ve got two little two-year-olds. I suppose they’re not really babies, but they are in terms of the
house. Everyone calls them ‘the babies’. Some nights we have to help prepare the tea, sometimes we have to lay the dining-room table, sometimes we have to bathe the babies. Their names are Betsy and Alvin. They are usually quite fun to bathe, but they get really excited and you can end up soaked.

  They are jolly, though, all smiles, although Betsy bites if you are not careful and Alvin can scratch, but other than that they are good fun. When we get bored we race them. Alvin wins if he’s not distracted. Betsy’s probably my favourite, but Jonesy likes her too and we often try to be the ones to bathe her.

  Jonesy sometimes points out that there are only two willies in the house, Alvin’s and Mr Paterson’s. Sometimes Alvin pees in the bath. I think he does it on purpose. He looks so happy when he does it that he can’t not be doing it intentionally. Jonesy once held him up and pointed him at me when he did it. She’s gross.

  The babies sleep down at the far end of the landing. We’re lucky to be up our end as we are quite far away from them and they can really greet sometimes. I think they put them near the big girls’ room so they know how much hard work little children are and don’t get pregnant.

  7

  After breakfast I leave for the bus. I don’t want to go; I want to stay to find out more news about Jane Denton. All day at school I think about nothing else. I don’t really have any friends at the grammar so I don’t have anyone I can talk to. I think of mentioning it to a teacher, but even though this is a good school, and not full of dafties, if they see you trying to suck up to the teacher they can give you hell for it, so I don’t do or say anything.

  At dinner I sit on the wall where I usually sit, wondering what is happening back at the Homes. I tend to just sit by myself at dinnertime. No one really bothers me, but then I don’t really play with the others much. They all have their own groups that they keep to. I speak to them in class and sometimes when we are eating but mostly I just keep to myself.