Paradise Lodge by Nina Stibbe

barging, and silence was a mysterious luxury. I can’t say I enjoyed it as such—I was lonely, and I didn’t know myself in solitude—but school was worse somehow and every minute I wasn’t there made it harder to go back.
    On the Friday of that week, my mother decided she couldn’t cope with being back at work after all and walked in the front door swinging the tot-box and saying she’d had it with the Snowdrop Laundry—they showed no support for working mothers—and she was going to start a pine-stripping business. I helped her drag a painted blanket box and a small varnished desk in from the back of the van and, after Danny had had a bottle and nodded off, she applied a thick layer of Nitromors to the blanket box and asked why I wasn’t at school. I’d had plenty of time to think up an excuse but decided to tell her the truth.
    â€˜I couldn’t face it,’ I said.
    She got us both a cup of econo-coffee and, while the Nitromors went to work dissolving the layers of gloss paint and filling the house with strong fumes, we discussed the world: people, life, babies, dogs and school.
    â€˜Don’t screw up, Lizzie,’ she said that day, ‘please don’t screw up.’
    â€˜No, I won’t,’ I said.
    â€˜Promise me I can trust you to have a great life.’
    â€˜I promise,’ I said.
    And, at the time, I’d meant it. But then only a short while after that I’d bumped into Miranda Longlady and we’d walked up to Paradise Lodge together and got the job.
    My mother dropped me at work in time for me to start the second part of my split shift. I should have been doing double biology. Later she read me a short story she’d written entitled ‘The Modern Alternative’ about a girl on her way back in time to Ancient Greece, with only a Peter and Jane for guidance.

9. The Baby Belling
    Mr Simmons was suddenly taken away. He wasn’t fully officially convalesced (paperwork-wise) but the horrible Miss Pitt came and took him anyway. He hadn’t wanted to go and there was quite some struggling and shouting and, if you believe Matron (and you couldn’t always, as you know), Pitt darted him, and she and her pal, the family doctor, took him off. I watched as they helped Mr Simmons over the rickety tiles and down the steps, partially dragging him. She and I locked eyes and although it wasn’t school time, and I was doing nothing wrong, I knew she had it in for me. I shrank away out of habit, and then—realizing that it was her doing something despicable, not me—I stood up straight and watched with my hands on my hips as she protected Mr Simmons’ head before pushing him into the passenger seat of the doctor’s car.
    â€˜Drive on, Roger,’ she called. Then she got into Mr Simmons’ Rover and drove away herself.
    Matron was quite heroic and stood in front of the cattle grid with her arms out like Gordon Banks in his heyday. And only jumped out of the way at the last minute.
    Later I was ordered to Room 8 to collect up all Mr Simmons’ bits and bobs. As I folded that day’s paper I was relieved that it wasn’t me who had to break the dreadful news to the owner.
    As well as being sad and disturbing, Mr Simmons’ departure was part of a negative trend—to use the business parlance—because he was by no means the only patient to go. Three others also left around that time. All had gone to Newfields, and the gloomy talk the owner had delivered from the chaise longue began to seem less ridiculous.
    This made the staff furious with the Owner’s Wife. ‘She’s stealing our patients,’ they said. And in a way, it was true. The patients’ relatives would have seen the home’s glossy leaflet and read about all the nice features that I’ve already mentioned (such as the close proximity of Bejam and the giant Co-op) and the less advertisable benefits (such as being