Four Waifs on Our Doorstep Read Online Free PDF Page A

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couldn’t let go of his responsibilities towards them. In between looking out for them and reminding me to change the younger ones’ nappies, he kept nervously gazing up the stairs. I
guessed that perhaps he was thinking of food.
    ‘Are you hungry again, Hamish?’
    ‘Yes. And we need to get more food,’ he answered.
    ‘We’ve still got plenty left,’ I said in a gentle voice.
    ‘No, but we need more cereals and more milk and more pasta and . . .’
    ‘We can go later on this afternoon.’
    ‘No!’ He was shaking. ‘We have to go now.’
    ‘Come with me,’ I said. I took him up to the kitchen and opened the fridge, and all the food cupboards. ‘Look, Hamish. We have loads of food – much more than any of us
can eat in a week.’
    ‘But we might run out of bread, or cornflakes, or . . .’
    ‘It’s OK,’ I said, putting my arm round his reluctant, bony body, trying to soothe him. I wanted to tell him that if we ran out of cornflakes, we could have Rice Krispies, but
I thought it was too early to suggest such a thing. ‘We won’t run out of anything before this afternoon. I promise you we will go to the big supermarket at teatime and stock up on
everything . . . as much as you like.’
    He looked at me with amazement. ‘Anything?’
    ‘Yes, whatever you think we might need.’
    ‘But we have to go every day,’ he insisted, anxiety creasing his face. I always had to go every day to get food.’
    ‘If that’s what you want, Hamish, then that’s what we will do.’
    ‘Yes, because we mustn’t run out of food.’
    ‘No, we will never let that happen in this house,’ I assured him. ‘Did you sometimes run out of food before you came here?’ I asked gently. It was too early really to be
probing for information of that kind, but he was so panicky I thought it might help him to talk about it.
    ‘We didn’t really have food,’ he said. ‘The social workers used to bring us nappies and money for food, but Mum sold some of the nappies and I don’t know what she
did with the money . . . Dad was always being arrested, and he left when I was about four.’
    ‘Did anybody bring you food?’
    ‘No. We used to be left alone a lot, and if we had a bit of bread, I made the younger ones toast. Sometimes I found a potato or two and I used to cut them up and heat some oil to cook them
in. But mostly there was nothing for us to eat, so I went out in the evenings.’
    ‘On your own?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘How did you get out of the house without anyone noticing?’
    ‘I just opened the door.’
    ‘Didn’t anyone realise?’
    ‘No. Most evenings we were on our own anyway.’
    ‘So you let yourself out of the door?’
    ‘Yes. I went to Tesco’s, round to the back, and got food out of their bins. I always took it straight home for Anita and Caroline to eat.’
    ‘And for you too?’
    ‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘Other days I used to rob some Pringles and stuff like that from a local shop, and take them back to the house to feed Anita and Caroline. Once we were so
hungry that we sat down outside the shop and ate them all straight away. But the shopkeeper must have called the police.’
    ‘Did they catch you?’
    ‘No. We ran away, down the alleyways.’
    ‘How old were you when you first had to go and find food?’
    ‘I don’t know. As long ago as I can remember,’ he said. ‘We were always hungry, Anita, Caroline and me, so I had to find us food.’
    ‘And what about Simon?’
    ‘I had to tell Mum to feed Simon.’ He hesitated. ‘Have we had breakfast?’
    ‘Yes, when you got up.’ I smiled gently. ‘Are you hungry again?’
    He nodded.
    ‘OK, we’ll take some fruit juice and biscuits down to the playroom to keep you all going. Will that be OK for now?’
    ‘Yes.’ As we went back down to join the others, there was a knock at the door and it was Jane, our adopted daughter who lived nearby.
    ‘How’s it going?’ she asked, making a funny face.
    ‘Bedlam!’
    We followed Hamish