Forget Me Never

time together. ‘I’m fed up with him and his stupid new friends,’ I added.
    ‘Didn’t seem like he’d changed last time I saw him, a couple of weeks before my party,’ Paloma said. ‘You were matey enough then.’
    I started to make a daisy chain, not meeting her eyes. There was more to our falling-out, but I wasn’t confiding in Paloma. I liked her best out of the girls from school because she stuck up for me – Paloma was sometimes teased about her weight, so she knew a thing or two about fighting back – but she did have a big mouth. Eventually she got the message and changed the subject, but I knew she’d try to get the full story later. When she invited me to the cinema the next day, I passed. Julie would have bugged me about that if she’d known. She was worried I didn’t seem to have many friends. It wasn’t true – there were always people for me to hang out with if I wanted – but I just wasn’t close to anyone. Not like I had been to Dani, or to Reece.
    I think maybe the reason I don’t have many friends is that people are always so curious about my life. In the old days kids wanted to know what it was like to be in care, especially as I sometimes exaggerated the less pleasant bits. More recently I guess people just noticed me because I was different. Once I skived off school and went to Hampstead Heath instead, but I didn’t get into trouble. Broom Hill’s head teacher thought I was ‘troubled’, so he just sent me to have a long talk with the school counsellor. The other kids really resented that and said I’d got off easy. I used not to care about gossip, because people said stuff about Reece as well, but it’s not so easy putting on a front on your own. Especially as since Paloma’s party everyone really did have gossip about me. Horrible, embarrassing, true gossip.
    Hendon, in north London, was where I lived. Reece used to say that if there was ever a nuclear war, the two things to survive would be Hendon and cockroaches, which tells you quite a bit about Hendon. I didn’t think it was so bad – miles better than Hackney, where I used to live when I was being fostered by Mr and Mrs Ten Paces (whenever they went out she always walked about ten paces behind him. I didn’t blame her – he was a bit weird, very picky about what she cooked for dinner, and he shouted at the telly a lot). Sure, Hendon had it’s share of fried-chicken shops and launderettes and depressing, poky newsagents, but there was Brent Cross shopping centre nearby, some quite decent parks and a big aeroplane museum.
    My latest foster-mum, Julie, lived on an ordinary back road in a terraced house. It was OK – always noisy, as the two other foster-kids were primary-school age, but I could go out if it got too much. I’d miss it when it was time to move on. Julie had been very kind to me, especially since Dani died. When I’d mentioned I felt bad for not realizing how depressed Dani must have been, something Julie said had really stuck with me.
    ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for this, Sophie. Yes, you two were close – but people can be very good at hiding things. Danielle clearly didn’t want you to know how sad she was feeling. It’s hard to help someone who won’t let you help them.’
    Her words made me feel a little less guilty – though later I wondered if that last bit had been partly directed at me.
    I was thinking about this the day I turned down Paloma’s cinema offer. I’d decided to get busy to stop myself feeling bad about that, so I began to sew. Sewing, while an ‘uncool’ hobby, was something I really enjoyed. I liked to pick up clothes from the charity shop and customize them with unusual buttons and scraps of fabric.
    I hadn’t got anything particular I wanted to work on that morning, so I dug through my wardrobe for inspiration. There were probably loads of old clothes I’d forgotten about at the back. Sure enough, I found some – including stuff that had belonged to Danielle.
    ‘Jesus Christ,’ I muttered. Lots of her things had been passed on to me, but that didn’t stop me feeling odd about it, now that she’d gone. I pulled out a pair of Dani’s jeans and held them against me. They’d be a good fit. Maybe I could lop a couple of inches off the legs and wear them as cut-offs.
    There was a funny bulge in the pocket of the jeans. It was a memory stick. I knew it wasn’t mine – I always used the ones school issued us with. It had to be Danielle’s.
    May as well