Page 16 of Darling Girls

He smiled, too stupid to be ashamed of his disgusting little teeth. But his eyes remained dead, empty holes in his face.

Scott, Norah had learned, was an arsehole. The type who muttered around kids and laughed too loudly around grown-ups. When he’d collected Norah that morning he’d said, ‘My, haven’t you grown?’ and his eyes had lingered on her a little too long.

Norahhadgrown in the previous few months. She was the tallest in her class at her last school, taller even than the boys. Taller even than Scott, which wasn’t hard. She had also started to become soft and curvy in the breast area (‘early for your age,’ her last foster mother told her), which, from the way Scott’s gaze skimmed her chest, had not gone unnoticed.

She crossed her arms and stared him down.I see you, arsehole.

‘Miss Fairchild is a very nice woman,’ he continued. ‘She has another foster daughter around your age.’

‘Is there aMrFairchild?’

Also an important question. At another placement, there had been aMrwho always sat very close to Norah on the couch. Norah had seen the writing on the wall long before the day he’d opened his trousers, so she had her pocketknife ready. If she was going to need her pocketknife here, it would be useful to have a heads-up.

‘No Mr Fairchild,’ Scott said.

As they walked towards the house, the front door opened and a woman emerged. She had blonde hair and blue eyes, and she reminded Norah of the Barbie she’d played with at her therapist’s office, except that the Barbie’s hair had been hacked off and this woman’s hair was shoulder-length and mousse-scrunched wavy. She wore a pink sleeveless dress with a drop waist.

‘Hello!’ said Barbie. ‘I’m Miss Fairchild.’

‘You look like Barbie,’ Norah said.

The woman blinked. Finally, she let out a short, high-pitched laugh. ‘My goodness,’ she said. ‘Aren’t you funny?’

‘Call me if she gives you any trouble,’ Scott said to Miss Fairchild. ‘I’ll be back in two weeks to check in.’

Scott always said that when he left Norah at a new placement and then she didn’t see him again for months. She wondered why he bothered.

He didn’t make eye contact with Norah as he climbed back into his car.

‘Won’t you come in?’ Miss Fairchild said, once he was gone.

Norah, clutching her garbage bag full of possessions, followed her into the house.

‘Isn’t she pretty, Jessica?’ Miss Fairchild was saying to the other child. ‘She could be a model!’

Norah snuck a look at Jessica. Despite Scott saying she was around Norah’s age, she was about half Norah’s height and – judging by her behaviour – a quarter of her intelligence. She sidled alongside Miss Fairchild, oddly close, perhaps territorial. Norah wanted to tell her to relax; she could have the freakish blonde all to herself, thank you very much.

‘First things first,’ Miss Fairchild said when they reached the stairs. ‘I want you to know that whatever happened at your last place will not happen here.’

‘What happened?’ Jessica asked.

Miss Fairchild nudged her sharply. ‘Jessica!’

But Norah didn’t care. She looked directly at Jessica. ‘I kicked my foster brother in the balls when he crawled into bed with me. He was a perv.’

Miss Fairchild exchanged a glance with Jessica, the two of them raising their eyebrows in sync. They reminded Norah of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

‘Well,’ Miss Fairchild said finally, ‘I want you to know that you’re safe here.’

‘Good,’ Norah said. She was relieved to hear it, but she had her pocketknife for back-up all the same. After the experiences she’d had, she wasn’t inclined to take anyone’s word for it. ‘So what are the house rules?’

It was yet another question she’d learned to ask upfront, before she could be found guilty of an infraction she didn’t know about or that had been newly created.

‘We all pitch in with the cleaning,’ Miss Fairchild said. ‘It’s a big place so there’s a lot to do.’

This was fine by Norah. At her previous placement the house had been verging on squalor. The kids all had to share a bed, and in three months the sheets hadn’t seen the inside of the washing machine. When she offered to wash them herself, she’d been told she was a snobby little brat and made to sleep on the floor.

‘Is there a particular chore you’d enjoy doing?’