Plot Summary
Minutes after being born, April was abandoned in a dustbin behind a local pizza restaurant. She was sent into the foster system after being found and reported by a staff member. On April's fourteenth birthday, she gets into an argument with her latest foster mother, Marion, over not getting a mobile phone. On a whim she decides to skip school and revisit all the various homes she's lived in.
Her first stop is Pat William's house. Pat, who makes a living temporarily fostering babies, looked after April for the short time before she was adopted. She finds that she remembers little of it and Pat remembers little of her. However, she does befriend Tanya (Bad Girls), a rare older child Pat is fostering.
April then visits the graveside of her adoptive mother, Janet Johnston. April was adopted by the Johnstons and lived happily with them till her parents marriage began to deterioate and Mr Johnston walked out, leading Mrs Johnston to become depressed and eventually committ suicide in the bathtub.
April's next home was Sunnybank Child's Home, a foster home run by a duo known as Little Pete and Big Mo. April quickly becomes friends with an older girl, Gina, who sees April's small size as an advantage she and her friends could use in their thefts. Eventually one night they're caught, leading Gina to be sent away. A few months after that, Pearl, a new girl arrives and begins to sadistically bully April. The carers are totally oblivious and make things worse by pairing them together in everything, as they believe April needs a friend. Eventually April snaps and pushes Pearl down the stairs.
Cosequently, April is removed from the home and sent to Fairgate, a boarding school for children with learning difficulties. She stays there for five years, becoming friends with a disabled girl called Poppy and forming a close bond with her history teacher, Miss Marion Bean. When Marion decides to retire, she refers April be moved to a mainstream school and offers to foster her.
As it begins to get dark, April realizes she's completely lost and not sure how to get home. She manages to find her way to the pizza place where she was left, and while wandering the alleyway she discovers a phone number written scribbled on a bin. She dialls it on a pay phone, hoping it might be her birth mother, but instead it's the waiter who found her. He comes to meet her at the restaurant to talk about the night she was found, and she makes up with Marion.
Read more about this topic: Dustbin Baby
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