Roxy's Baby by Cathy MacPhail Page B

you choose, it’s safer for the other girls if you can’t tell exactly where you’ve been.You can understand that, can’t you?’
    Roxy nodded, but she still wasn’t satisfied.
    â€˜You’ll learn as you go along, Roxy, that everything we do here is for your own good, and the good of the baby.’
    Roxy’s chores for the day, if they could be called that, were to tidy the living room, and give it a dust and a vacuum. As she worked alone in the living room, the house seemed unnaturally quiet. She could hear some girls laughing upstairs, hear their voices carry into the still, hot air outside. Roxy switched on the television. Perhaps, she thought, there might be some news of her disappearance, though she could hardly bear to think how she would feel if she saw her distraught mother on the screen at some kind of news conference.
    Nothing happened.
    She pressed every button on the remote control, then did the same thing on the television itself, but no picture appeared. There was only a screen full of snow.
    Babs wandered in from upstairs, fanning herself with a tea towel.
    â€˜Babs, the television isn’t working.’
    â€˜No, it won’t,’ Babs said casually. ‘It only works forvideos and DVDs. You can’t get any programmes on it.’
    â€˜Can’t they get any reception here?’
    â€˜They think that if we heard any news it would only worry us. You know, maybe seeing bombs going off or murders “might harm the little babies”.’ Babs did a fair impersonation of Mrs Dyce’s husky voice. ‘“And we can’t have the little darlings coming to any harm, can we?”’ It didn’t seem to bother Babs. ‘Who wants to hear the news anyway? Doom and Death, that’s all there is. I suppose it’s sensible when you think about it. As long as we’ve got plenty of videos, and lots of CDs, I couldn’t care less.’
    A little ‘guideline’ Mrs Dyce had forgotten to mention.
    Yet perhaps it was sensible. Everything they did was thoughtful, for the good of the girls, and their babies.
    So why did she still feel that somewhere, deep inside her, a warning bell was ringing?

Chapter Ten
    Yet, as one sultry day followed another, that warning bell grew fainter. Roxy found she was enjoying herself. The morning breakfasts were fun, sitting outside in the sun, with Anne Marie, eating cereal, drinking orange juice, watching planes fly overhead.
    â€˜We must be close to an airport,’ she said to Anne Marie one morning as they watched one fly low above them.
    â€˜We’re on a flight path anyway,’ Anne Marie agreed.
    â€˜But which airport?’ Roxy looked at Anne Marie. ‘Don’t you ever wonder exactly where we are?’
    But Anne Marie didn’t. ‘You question everything, Roxy. Were you this much trouble at home?’
    And she had to admit that she was.
    Their chores were never too heavy, just as Anne Marie had told her, and amazingly, even Roxy almost enjoyed them. She had caused mayhem at home,refusing to tidy her and Jennifer’s room, leaving heaps of dirty washing lying on chairs or in corners. Here it was different. She didn’t have her mother’s constant nagging, or her sister shouting her disapproval at her. In fact, here, because she was the youngest, she was treated in a special kind of way. Looked after as if she was the baby of the family.
    In these first days she hardly thought of her mother, and when she did it was defiantly. One day she would be able to tell her how well she, Roxy, had done without them. Did she think of her mother crying, worrying over her? Let her cry, she thought. Though half of her was sure her mother wouldn’t shed a tear. Glad to be rid of her and have only Little Miss Perfect left in the house. At times, it almost felt as if she was at boarding school, in one of those novels where the girls packed into each other’s dorms at