Copycat (8 page)

It was Graham I felt sorry for now.

They might not suit each other in bed but Graham and Jennie were friends. He must have been on the receiving end of Jennie’s recent emotional turmoil.

Dear God, what had I done? And was this my fault as well?

If only we could have stopped it there.

I
F ONLY WE COULD
have stopped it there.

To appreciate how desperate we feel living here at the moment, it’s important to have a rough idea of the layout of Mulberry Close. Most people say it’s a frying-pan shape but I see it as a mirror with a handle, like the one the wicked queen used to consult in
Snow White.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

Who is the fairest of us all?

And in the Close, Martha would win. Sadly, for me, there would be no contest.

The handle of the mirror is a box-hedged road, and when this road meets the green with the mulberry tree in the middle it swings round in an oval. Around this oval sit our six lodges, ranch style, the most prestigious on the estate, most of the others being semi-detached and completely cut off from us higher mortals.

Yes, ours was an exclusive zone.

A ten-minute walk down the road there’s a small shopping centre, horribly utilitarian – a Mace, a laundrette, a post office-cum-deli. The fish and chip shop at the end of the block means the place is always strewn with paper and thick with flies.

At night this is a no-go area. The predatory young congregate here and it’s sad to see their lethargy, their low expectations when, after leaving the swirly-carpeted pub with its revolving stools, its chips with everything and its squirty plastic sauces, they are reduced to sitting on benches, bedecked with nose-rings and tattoos, shouting and making trouble, with nothing to energize them but extra-strong cans of lager.

The girls sit cross and solemn beside them, tough little arms dangling out of tight T-shirts.

People have warned us that investing money in a house attached to such an estate shows a serious lack of judgement. But, as Graham insists, wherever you live you’re fifteen minutes from trouble these days; even far-flung country villages attract teams of thieves from the cities.

Our lodges were built fully fitted with alarms and safety windows.

But even though the location is dodgy, most people admire the houses themselves. Their wood fronts shine, as if polished, under two triangular roofs, one rising above the other for a splendid 3-D effect. The small gardens in front are open plan – which does attract passing dogs – but the backs are fenced and large enough for a reasonable game of badminton.

So when Martha described Piglets Patch, the cottage she first had her eye on, I understood immediately why the Close and her didn’t quite fit.

‘But the children will thank you one day,’ I said. ‘They’d hate to be dumped in the middle of nowhere; streams and puppies and picnics.
Adventures.
Fiction. A fantasy. Mulberry Close is more realistic.’

And I wondered what Martha would say if she saw the place where I was brought up: Stella’s Walthamstow basement, dug out between advertisement hoardings. I had told her some of my past, but not all.

But Sam was the snob, not Martha, and he, so happy to broadcast the fact, forced me to defend ‘the underclass’. He turned me into a loony lefty.

He was postage-stamp close to Hitler. ‘Castrate the buggers’, ‘string ’em up’, ‘deport them’.

Martha smiled but did not argue and her lazy attitude drove me wild.

She said, ‘He says these outrageous things to annoy you. You’re not going to change him, so why bother to argue?’

I bothered because he made me feel stupid and I knew how he’d sneer if he guessed at my background.

Martha used that same sad smile when Stella ranted on at her most vindictive. ‘Hang, draw and quarter… send them back where they came from…’ Her remarks made me wince, I was so ashamed.

‘Shut up, Mum,’
I would groan in despair, making sure Martha knew that these views weren’t mine. In her bovine complacency she said nothing.

And when, at her worst, Stella’s face contorted, when she said that her neighbours came straight from the jungle, when she said hooray for the National Front, Martha would merely change the subject.

I saw this attitude as a weakness. ‘You would do anything to avoid a scene,’ I said accusingly.

‘But there’s just no point, Jennie, why can’t you see that? It’s a generation thing, you can’t change her. And fat people are known to be easy-going.’

She was just the same with Sam. It incensed me to see how she rushed around him while he treated her with such casual arrogance. If Martha had planned to go out for the evening and the precious Sam had made other plans, she wouldn’t ask him to babysit. No. Scarlett would be dumped at our house where me and Graham would be happy to have her. And when Martha was trying for that first part-time job, Sam was disparaging, no help whatsoever.

‘It seems like he doesn’t want you to work.’

‘He doesn’t care either way,’ said Martha. ‘Just as long as he’s not affected.’

‘He’s so selfish,’ I told her warily.

‘Yes, he’s a bastard,’ was all she replied, absent-mindedly stroking Scarlett. But I saw how unhappy Sam made her and I knew that he had a wandering eye.

Although Sam could have helped with the feeding, he never got up in the night for the babies. And if one night was particularly fraught, he would move to the spare room for peace and quiet.

When we enrolled for water aerobics, Martha’s main reason for going was Sam. She wanted to get her shape back for him. And when we went to Italy, it was Martha who put down her knife and fork after the babysitter’s intercom call, it was she who went upstairs every time to get Scarlett back to sleep.

And yet she had such strength and confidence. She so easily coped with two squalling babies, saucepans overflowing and telephones ringing, while Sam, the slob, sat around eating toast and reading the
Independent’s
sports pages.

‘It’s not fair,’ I said. ‘Sam should help more.’

‘It’s just not worth the hassle,’ she answered. ‘He is clumsy, inadequate,’ and then she laughed, ‘but not in all departments.’ And I cringed. How I loathed it when she talked like that. She could be unpleasantly coarse at times.

Scarlett was not even a year old when Martha started scanning the local papers.

It was a dismal time for me.

‘Why don’t you look for a part-time job, Jennie?’ she asked with a pencil between her teeth and rigid with concentration as she sat up at her breakfast bar. ‘Get out and about a bit.’

‘I never want to go back to work. It was more boring there than it is at home.’

‘You meet more people, get a better perspective. You don’t want your brain to disintegrate and end up riddled with gaping holes.’ She was swamped by her latest fashion creation and her scraped-up knot of hair wobbled wildly. ‘Taxi drivers’ brains are larger because of the information they store.’

‘Well, I use my brain more at home than at work.’

‘Go back to school, then. Take up a challenge.’

And I wished that I was a doctor, a surgeon, a lawyer or even a teacher, to shine more brightly in Martha’s eyes.

The last time we went to Safeways together – long ago now but I still remember – we stopped for a coffee and a bun, and Martha laughed so much she choked and spouted a mouthful over the table, her greedy fingers gleaming with butter.

At the park I didn’t tell her that her skirt was hitched up in her knickers and a passer-by tapped her on the shoulder.

She struggled from the changing room in Gap, hopelessly overweight as ever, to show how the press-studs refused to meet and her bulges dangled over her skirt. ‘These mean little people that take size ten,’ she said in a voice brimming with malice. I thought I would wet myself in the shop. I left at once with my legs tightly crossed.

Whatever we did and wherever we went was a fun event with Martha. Even a torpid day in the garden watching the sprinkler’s liquid branches was a joy. So was a winter afternoon watching old films with the kids asleep and a bottle of Safeways’ Bulgarian wine and the room fugged up with Martha’s smoke.

My mother would have had a stroke.

But Scarlett was a year old and Martha wanted her life extended; tea and fruit buns weren’t enough.

She was after something spicier.

I shouldn’t have hinted at how needy I was.
Was she uneasy in my company now?
I had made myself pitiful and unequal.

But I had such confidence in her wisdom: if she had some idea of what I was suffering, maybe she could sort me out. All she did was to suggest a hobby. ‘Perhaps it would help if you took up painting.’

Was there a name for my addiction? Was it so uncommon? Maybe I was not alone. There might even be a cure.

If only someone could make it right.

Was it possible that I’d told Martha the truth about my embarrassing feelings for manipulative reasons? If she knew how I felt, might it strengthen the bond? Why did I desperately want her attention? Round and round in my head it all went till the feelings themselves seemed to fill my eyes.

It had started off with jealousy, and I hadn’t even recognized that until Graham casually pointed it out. And that was soon after we met.

Then came that empty feeling; I was half a person without her.

After this came the longing to be her, to emulate not just her style, but to actually turn into Martha, to be the person I so admired.

Don’t think these were just passing niggles which nagged at me every now and again while piercing the tomato puree tube, scattering the daffodil bulbs or trying to prise out a new toothbrush. I woke up with this obsession first thing every morning and it kept me awake, tossing and turning, each night. I imagined crazy scenarios: me and Martha forever together, her need for me turning stronger than mine, or me suddenly possessing some marvellous talent that Martha would have to admire.

God knows what this must sound like to people who haven’t been through it – this moving away from grace towards a serious corruption.

It had no name.
Was I queer?
All the time this worried me. Did I want to take Martha to bed? See her without her clothes? Touch her? Stroke her or, in some way, like a man, possess her? I imagined her body brought to me on a trolley, docile flesh decently covered. Would I uncover it if I could?

And if not, what were these ecstatic emotions? Surely something as fierce as this must have sex at its core?

Even now I can’t answer these questions, but I can swear on my children’s lives that I never consciously felt any of these physical manifestations.

The little I had confessed to Martha – my growing dependence, my jealousy – only made her more anxious about me. She agreed that this state was unnatural and became as keen as I was to sort something out. Laughingly, she once called it a crush and when I wailingly disagreed, ‘It’s far more powerful than that,’ she told me she thought there was nothing more powerful than that adolescent first passion. ‘There was this boy called David Fuller. Jesus, I used to give him money. Horrid, spotty little bugger.’

‘I just hope it doesn’t last,’ I said, still hoping for an answer, as if this was thrush or cystitis to be looked up in the
Well Woman’s Guide.

‘These things mostly burn themselves out,’ she decided, rattling ice cubes with nonchalance.

But that was nine years ago, so obviously she was wrong.

Sometimes, horrified that I’d told her too much, I wondered if Martha had spoken to Sam.
And what if this got back to Graham?
He wouldn’t begin to understand. But no, Martha wouldn’t tell Sam. They didn’t swap news like we did and she’d know that Sam would snigger, and he was indiscreet in his cups. No, I felt fairly safe that Martha would keep my sickness to herself.

We should never have discussed it, because after I’d let those first feelings out my behaviour began to deteriorate. I had thought she might make concessions.

Her friendships were increasingly hard to bear.

I begrudged any interests that excluded me.

And my excuse for my moody behaviour was that tired and meaningless phrase,
‘But, Martha, you don’t understand.’

It’s a wonder it took her so long to hate me. I was walking on dangerous ground.

Once again, as in childhood, I grasped at weird straws, wishing that something dramatic would happen so that Martha, a fat woman with holes in her tights, would make a fuss, would notice me. If our house burned down, if Poppy was ill, if Graham crashed his car… Nothing fatal, of course, just enough to get Martha’s undivided attention, so she would spend more time round at my house – or, better still, me at hers.

So that in the end I began to will it, and if Graham was late home from work I would look at my watch and start hoping…

And if Poppy had a temperature, I would dip the thermometer in warm water to send it up a degree or two before I rushed over to show it to Martha.

Oh yes, yes,
I did these things.

And this was ME, such a dull and middling, straightforward person. ME. A frump. The mother of such an adorable child. Reduced to this. If anyone had told me this would happen, I would have laughed in their faces. You flick through stuff like this in the hairdresser’s:
I MARRIED A ONE-LEGGED MONSTER; MY BABY WAS NOT MY BABY; I WATCHED MY MOTHER KILL MY FATHER; I FELL IN LOVE WITH MY NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR.

I hid my face in my hands and wept.

And I couldn’t begin to know, at this stage, how bad this was going to get.

A
ND I COULDN’T BEGIN
to know, at this stage, how bad this was going to get.

There was something fishy behind the idea: why would Jennie, of all people, want a pool in her garden when she could barely swim? On our Italian holiday her crab-like breaststroke only just kept her buoyant. If waves lapped at her chin she panicked.

She was disturbed. I suspected her motives and went round feeling guilty for being so damned uncharitable.