Four Waifs on Our Doorstep Read Online Free PDF

and the biscuit tin down to the playroom. The noise was almost deafening and the scene was chaos. Anita and Caroline were fighting each other for the same toys, arguing,
shouting and pulling each other’s hair.
    ‘I’m having it.’
    ‘Mine!’ grunted Caroline.
    ‘I saw it first.’
    ‘No.’
    ‘But I picked it up.’
    ‘Give me.’
    And all this was littered with words and expressions they shouldn’t have known.
    ‘Stop it!’ shouted seven-year-old Hamish . . . and they did. Well, for a few seconds at least. He was the one who looked after them, and he was the one they respected. He was in
charge, but I could see that mentally he was desperate to be a little boy and to play with all these wonderful toys.
    ‘I hungry!’ wailed Caroline.
    ‘Can we have breakfast?’ pleaded Anita.
    ‘You’ve had breakfast,’ I said, ‘but Hamish has brought you some biscuits.’
    The toys were thrown to the floor and forgotten as the girls rushed to the biscuit tin. That left Simon still sitting where I had put him, and facing the corner. He seemed oblivious to
everything.
    ‘Come on, sunshine,’ I said as I picked him up and gave him a biscuit. ‘We need to feed you up, so that you can play with the others.’ He didn’t fight me, but he
was completely unyielding. There was definitely something not right with this child.
    Just then, the doorbell rang. I went upstairs carrying Simon. It was my old friend Marion popping in.
    ‘How are you getting on?’ she asked. ‘Do you want me to go to the shops for you?’
    ‘You’re an angel.’ I smiled. ‘This is Simon. Come down and meet the other three.’
    ‘Simon – that’s a nice name,’ she said, lifting her hand to stroke his cheek. He flinched and pulled away. I shifted him to the other arm, to help him to feel safer.
    We all sat in the playroom, watching the children and planning out what we needed to do that day.
    ‘Those clothes they’ve got on are filthy, Mum,’ whispered Jane. ‘And the kids desperately need a good scrub!’
    ‘Yes, I decided not to bath them until they’ve calmed down a bit and we’ve got some nice, new, clean clothes and pyjamas for them to put on afterwards. I was going to take them
clothes shopping, but I don’t think that would be a good plan when they’re all so hyper.’
    ‘No,’ she smiled. ‘And they’ll look like they live in
Little House on the Prairie
if you go shopping for them, Mum. Why don’t you leave that side of things
to me. I can see roughly what sizes they need.’
    ‘Thanks, love, that would be a great help. They are all older than they look, so get what you think will be best — they need one or two of everything, just to tide them over for a
few days. We can go and buy some more things for them when they’ve settled in . . .’ — I lowered my voice — ‘. . . if we need to. They might not be staying for very
long.’
    While Jane and Marion were at the shops, the children gradually began to wear themselves out a bit, and their high-spirited fighting turned into a mixture of manipulation and attention-seeking.
If Caroline came towards me, Anita pushed her away; if Hamish wanted to tell me something, the girls shouted over him. Hamish hovered on the edge, between boy and surrogate parent.
    When Mike came back into the room, Anita and Caroline rushed towards him to vie for his attention.
    It was time for more food — almost a continuous feast. Jane and Marion got back at around lunchtime, along with Brett and Laura, and Marion’s girls, all laden with carrier bags.
    ‘We’ve spent about three hundred pounds,’ said Jane anxiously. ‘Is that all right? We did manage to get a lot of clothes.’
    ‘Of course,’ I laughed. ‘That’s not bad at all . . . as long as they fit!’
    ‘We’ve kept all the receipts,’ said Marion. ‘Just in case.’
    Hamish, Anita and Caroline were very excited to see other children arriving, but when we started to pull all the new things out of the bags,