The G File

1987

She knew that she would wet the bed during the night, and she knew Auntie Peggy would be angry.

It was always the same. Whenever she had to sleep at Auntie Peggy’s instead of with her own mother, that’s what happened.

Mami. She wanted to be with Mami. To sleep in her own bed in her own room with her doll Trudi under the duvet and her doll Bamba under her pillow. That’s what ought to happen; and when it did happen and she fell asleep with the lovely smell of Mami in her nostrils, her bed was never wet when she woke up. Well, hardly ever.

Auntie Peggy didn’t smell anything like Mami. She didn’t want Auntie Peggy to touch her — and thank goodness, she didn’t do. But they slept in the same room, separated by a big blue curtain with splashes of red and some sort of dragon pattern, or maybe it was snakes; and sometimes other people slept there as well. She didn’t like it.

Neither did Trudi and Bamba. When they slept at Auntie Peggy’s, Trudi had to sleep under the pillow as well, so she didn’t get any pee on her. It was cramped and awkward — but obviously she couldn’t leave her dolls at home as Mami had suggested. Sometimes Mami could come out with the most ridiculous things.

One week, for instance, she had said: You can stay with Auntie Peggy for a week — I have to be away in order to earn lots of money. When I get back you’ll have a new dress and as much ice cream and goodies as you can eat.

A week was a lot of days. She didn’t know how many, but it was more than three and all that time she would have to sleep in that awful room with cars and buses driving past in the street all night long, hooting and braking and rattling non-stop. She would wet the bed, and Auntie Peggy wouldn’t bother to change the sheets, just hang them over the back of a chair to dry during the day — and Trudi and Bamba would be so sad, so very sad, that it simply wasn’t possible to console them, no matter how hard she tried.

I don’t want to be with that awful Auntie Peggy, she thought. I wish Auntie Peggy was dead. If I pray to God and ask Him to take her away and if He does that, I promise not to pee a single drop all night long: and when Mami comes to collect me next morning and takes me home, I won’t need to be here ever again. Never ever.

Do you hear me, God? Please send Mami back to me, and take away all the pee and Auntie Peggy. Kill her, or put her on an aeroplane to Never-Never Land.

She clasped her hands so tightly that her fingers hurt; and Trudi and Bamba prayed along with her as ardently as they possibly could. Perhaps things would turn out as she wished, despite everything.