Mummy’s Little Girl: A heart-rending story of abuse, innocence and the desperate race to save a lost child. Jane Elliott

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СКАЧАТЬ at one o’clock,’ he told her. ‘I’ll see you there.’

      Dani nodded, and quickly left.

      At lunch it was only her and the grown-ups. She was invited to sit at their table, but she didn’t speak to them, and Christian barely even looked in her direction. For Dani, it couldn’t end quickly enough, and she was grateful to be able to go back to her room and sit on the bed, where she listened to the persistent rain falling outside. She willed the afternoon to pass slowly, but time flew and soon she heard the sound of the other children coming back from school. She was still sitting on the bed when Kaz and Vicki burst in.

      They were shouting at someone down the corridor, and as they fell into the room, they laughed boisterously. At first they seemed not even to notice Dani, but when they realised that she was sitting there watching them, their smiles fell from their faces.

      ‘Still here?’ Vicki asked spitefully. ‘Not gone home to Mummy yet?’

      ‘Surprise surprise,’ Kaz added.

      ‘I wish you hadn’t ruined my bear,’ Dani said.

      The two girls looked at each other. ‘Who said it was us?’

      Dani shrugged.

      Vicki stepped up to her. ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘you go telling anyone things like that, and we’ll give you a bruise on the other side of your face. So you’d better shut it.’

      Dani clamped her lips tightly shut. As she did so, Vicki tapped her three times on the bruised side of her face with the flat of her hand. Dani winced, but that just made Vicki and Kaz giggle. They continued giggling as they left the room.

      The evening passed slowly. Dani remained in her room, apart from at dinnertime, when, as before, nobody spoke to her. Even Christian refrained from coming up and offering her a cheerful word, though he cast the occasional glance in her direction while they were eating. After dinner, part of Dani longed to go into the day room and watch the others playing snooker and table tennis, to try to chat to someone or maybe even just look at a magazine; but no one asked her, and she was too unsure of herself to brave being with the others of her own accord. So she went back to her bedroom. Her little prison. It seemed to her that she would spend the rest of her life sitting on that bed.

      She brushed her teeth and washed her face before anyone else started getting ready for bed – that way, she would be able to avoid any encounters in the bathroom. She would have liked a bath, but the lack of privacy prevented her. Maybe tomorrow, when everyone else was at school, she’d be able to; but just now the idea of taking her clothes off in front of the other girls sent a shiver down her spine. Once she had washed, she got into her pyjamas, climbed into bed and waited for the inevitable onslaught from her two room-mates as soon as they arrived.

      It was gone eight o’clock when Kaz and Vicki sauntered into the room. For once they were silent, and although they cast the occasional scornful look over at Dani as she lay beneath her duvet, they didn’t make any of the comments that she was expecting. They just got ready for bed, turned the lights out and fell silent.

      As soon as the lights went out, Dani pulled her covers over her head and retreated once more into her little cave of darkness, and for the first time that day, she felt a moment of comfort.

      It didn’t last long.

      It couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes before they charged into the room. In the darkness, Dani couldn’t tell how many of them there were – five, maybe six. Someone ripped off her duvet. She was already in a foetus-like position, but she clamped up even closer when she realised what was happening.

      There was laughter as they pushed her and poked her. They called her names that she didn’t even understand. Dani cried out – in little more than a pathetic whisper.

      ‘Shut up,’ a voice hissed, and she recognised it at once. It was Dingo, the boy she had met at breakfast: the boy who was supposed to be looking after her.

      She whimpered again; someone punched her and hissed once more. Then she lost control. A scream, loud and desperate, escaped from her lips; and once she started, she couldn’t stop. Startled by the sound, by the vehemence of it, everyone around her instantly melted away, disappearing from the room as quickly as they had appeared. But Dani still didn’t stop screaming. She just couldn’t.

      Kaz and Vicki said nothing as Dani lay there, still scrunched up, her duvet on the floor. Tears seemed to take over her whole body. She was shaking with them. And still the screams came.

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