Copycat (12 page)

It was anguish to sit there quietly all evening, pretending all was well, fighting the urge to rage, pace the floor, ring Martha, dash over and plead for forgiveness.

I hadn’t meant to go so far when I got into Martha’s bed. If I was queer, I was not a freak. If I enjoyed what I did, I was natural. Maybe not quite as natural as a heterosexual, but acceptable all the same. I pushed away the destructive thoughts that told me it hadn’t felt right and I reassured myself that although I had needed to do what I’d done, just like Martha, I felt no desire to repeat it.

All it suggested was that Martha loved me in some kind of sexual way.

A mistake.

I lay next to Graham, wide awake, listening to his contented snores while I curled and uncurled in my misery, in that hot, lumpy bed. I wrote letter after begging letter in my head – it’s so much simpler to say it in writing, and in the night when defences are low. It was useless to stay there and hope for sleep, so I crept downstairs to the kitchen and sat there with a mug of tea, warming my now frozen hands, as I composed my hundredth letter.

I spread my photographs over the table: Martha stuffing her face at a barbecue but still looking amazing as the camera caught her laughing eyes; Martha and me on our last London trip when we lost the pushchair in the Natural History Museum; Martha struggling in the snow with her bald old Christmas tree, two fingers in the air and her red scarf blowing.

I traced her profile with my finger.

She couldn’t have made her feelings clearer, but still the idea that my burning emotions were only a bore and a cause of distress refused to take hold in my head.

I transferred my intense thoughts onto paper.

I wanted her to read this NOW, or, at the very latest, first thing in the morning.

I knew her routine as well as my own. Tomorrow she was going to the dentist. She would take Scarlett and Lawrence to the minder’s, drive Sam to work and then bring the jeep home.

I could stick my note onto the jeep.

The need for instant relief made me reckless; passion drove me to act. I gave no thought to the risks involved: what if somebody saw me creeping across my garden into next door’s drive; what if the wind got up in the night and blew my letter away; what if Martha, furious, tore it up without reading it?

Why did it never occur to me that Sam might find it first?

The begging letter. A sympathy bid.

I was making myself ridiculous again.

I had used this same device at school in an effort to make myself popular when everything turned so black and it felt as if the world was against me.

I took it to Barbara Middleton, the worst of my tormentors, when I caught her alone in the loos drying her hands.

She gave me a questioning glance. ‘What’s this?’ She put my letter in her satchel.

‘Don’t show it to anyone else,’ I stammered, before rushing off.

I arranged my books with elaborate care, passing time. I sat in that muggy classroom all that endless afternoon, listening to the classroom clock and the window blinds as they clacked in the heat. I screwed and unscrewed the top of my pen with wet hands. I shut my eyes and prayed for a miracle. But what had I done – trusting someone as spiteful as her, giving her the ammunition she needed to destroy me? I remembered the words of that letter by heart; it had taken me more than a week to compose.

Dear Barbara

I want to say how unhappy I am and to ask you to help me. My mother has a boyfriend and he has begun to abuse me and I don’t know anyone who can help. He said he would kill me if I told on him and I think that, if she had to choose, my mother would choose him, not me. I hope you will understand. I need someone to talk to about it.

Love

Jennifer Young

While Miss Ridley had her back to the class pinning up a map of Africa, I saw Barbara’s hand move down towards her satchel which was on the floor beside her.

It was like waiting for death.

Shaking with anticipation, I watched her remove the envelope and stealthily pull it open. Judith Mort, in the desk beside her, stretched across to see what it was, but Barbara jabbed her with her elbow.

I must have bitten my lip in half. By now I knew my face would be scarlet.

She read the note quickly, glanced round and turned to the front again.

The next words cut my senses like knives. ‘Bring that paper to me, please, Barbara.’

‘Oh, miss…’

‘Don’t argue. Bring that paper to me now and put it on my desk.’

Huffing and puffing and with a brief glance towards me, Barbara handed in my note and the lesson went on without further interruption. But all my concentration was focused on the centre of misery – which spread through my whole body, burning it up. The shame. The humiliation.

What had I done?

Would my mother find out?

The rest is sadly predictable. Barbara Middleton spent the next break whispering behind her hand to her friends. Eyes were turned in my direction. I saw no sympathy in them but a kind of malevolent glee.

‘Jennifer Young,’ said Miss Ridley, as she went on her way round the class, ‘I’d like you to stay behind for a minute after four o’clock.’

My knees went weak. Half paralysed with shame, I could hardly walk. I stood beside the teacher’s desk while she flattened that damn piece of paper and looked at me for an explanation.

When I stayed silent, she asked, ‘Is this true?’

Too embarrassed to admit the lie, I nodded and whispered, ‘Yes.’

‘Would you like to talk to someone about it?’

‘No,’ I said quickly, ‘no, not really.’

‘Well, Jennifer, we can’t leave it here, dear. Come with me now and we’ll find Mrs Valentine.’ And she smiled in an understanding way, revealing oddly pink plastic gums.

It was better to play along with this than admit the pitiful truth.

That walk – I will never forget it. That walk along the corridors side by side with Miss Ridley was endless.
Squeak squeak
we went on the polished lino, as it pulled at the soles of her open-toed sandals. Through the windows I saw a group of girls. The one doing the talking was vicious Barbara Middleton.

I waited outside the headmistress’s office for what felt like a lifetime. Being such a desperately middling child I had never had the summons before.

Mrs Valentine opened the door. She was a sweet woman with a bun of white hair, an icon like a crucifix who we turned towards in prayers every morning.

‘Sit down, dear.’

I obeyed like a robot. Her lips gave out a lilac aroma.

‘Miss Ridley has shown me this note which one of her girls was reading during geography this afternoon.’ She paused to take a look at me over the top of her half-glasses. ‘I presume it’s yours, you wrote it?’

‘Yes, Mrs Valentine.’

‘And your mother knows nothing of this?’

I hung my head. No answer.

‘Tell me, Jennifer, how long has this been going on?’

I ran my foot in a tight little circle round the pattern on the carpet.

‘Don’t you think, dear, that it might be better if your mother was told?’

I managed a squeaky ‘No, Mrs Valentine.’

‘And why do you say that, I wonder?’ I heard her sit back and smelt her body as it shifted in the still air of the room. Her voice was as sweet as the inside of soft orange chocolate. When I stayed silent she asked, ‘Are you frightened that if she knew, your mother might go off and leave you?’

‘She wouldn’t believe me,’ I ventured.

‘And he might hurt you,’ she continued, following the line of the shameful letter, ‘as he has already threatened to do? What is this man’s name, Jennifer?’

My lips were sealed; I had no idea.

‘You do realize, I hope, that this cohabitee of your mother’s is no more than a common criminal?’

‘I know,’ I said in a muffled whisper. I looked at the teacher’s cushiony chest and wished I could disappear in its folds.

‘And therefore the police will have to be told.’ I wanted to die. If my mother ever heard about this, she would freak out. She would collapse. In my eyes she was sexless. She would no more dream of living with a man than put unwashed milk bottles out on the step or leave her support stockings off on a sunny day.

‘Talk to me about this, Jennifer,’ said Mrs Valentine kindly, moving to sit beside me, taking one of my sticky hands in her cool one. ‘All I am trying to do is help. You know that, dear, don’t you?’

‘But…’

‘But what?’

‘But I don’t want anyone’s help.’

‘That’s not what it says in your note.’

How could I answer? The room was stifling. I craved a glass of water because my throat was so parched I could hardly swallow.

‘You’ve made all this up, haven’t you, Jennifer?’
This jerked me awake. The shock stopped my heart. ‘What d’you mean?’ I whispered.

‘This letter of yours’, and she held it out between finger and thumb as if disposing of a used condom, ‘is nothing but a crude device to attract attention.’

‘No… no…’ I was crying now.

‘Jennifer, I don’t want to bully you, but it really is time you told me the truth. Making accusations like this is a very serious matter. I don’t know whether your mother has a male friend living at home, but if she—’

‘She hasn’t,
she hasn’t
…’ I blurted out, searching for a tissue.

Mrs Valentine handed me one. There was a pile on the edge of her desk and I wondered how frequently she had to replace it.

‘Your mother does not live with a man. Is that what you are telling me now?’

I shook my head. ‘She’s not. She can’t. She wouldn’t – because of her legs.’

‘So nobody’s done anything to you?’

‘No. No.’ I wished to God they had. How I wished that everything I had written in that wicked note was true. How I hated my mother for being unsupportive.

‘Well then, Jennifer, in that case you may as well get on home.’

‘But you won’t tell her, will you?’ I pleaded.

‘My dear child.’ The headmistress fixed her eyes on my face. ‘Of course your mother will have to know.’

I hated the teacher and I wanted her dead. I had put so much into this attempt and what had it gained me? Nothing. Nothing but the increased spite of the girls who made me so frightened. I knew they would discover the truth. Somehow they would find out. And my mother would be hurt and disappointed that I could think up such sick accusations.

I should have learned then that letters, like stomach acid, have a habit of coming back and are therefore never the answer.

It would seem that I had learned nothing as I stepped out into that dewy night with a coat over my shoulders, as I tiptoed across the misty grass which was striped by shafts of moonlight, and stuck my precious letter to the handle of the dirty jeep.

At once I felt easier. My heart lightened as I crept back up the stairs and slid into bed beside Graham.

Martha would understand. Martha would forgive me. We could renew our close friendship, with this stain wiped out – forgotten. I would always love her, of course. I couldn’t lie and pretend that had changed, but I knew now my feelings were not about lust and nor was I gay. My love for Martha was purer than that, because, although I had enjoyed the closeness of our bedroom encounter, the thought that it would not happen again didn’t worry me unduly. Although I loved and worshipped Martha, I didn’t need her as a lover.

If only forgetting had been so simple.

I
F ONLY FORGETTING HAD
been so simple.

The phone woke us up at seven in a panic. The news left me bereft. Our wonderful, kindly, trustworthy, beloved babyminder, Hilda, was dead.

Just like that.

Our kids adored her. No-one else would do. She was like the Lord, she suffered little children.

‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Please let us know if we can help,’ I weakly told her daughter.

‘Damn,’ said Sam, when I put down the phone and wiped away the stinging tears. ‘That puts the cat among the pigeons.’

‘You really are a selfish bastard,’
I turned on him in fury. ‘And if I didn’t know your nasty ways were a cover-up for inadequacy, I’d have sodded off out of here before now. Scarlett and Poppy – how can we tell them? Where can we say Hilda’s gone? They love that woman more than us. My God.
My God, how terrible.
’

‘Tell them she’s playing pit-a-pat in the sky. Tell them she’s sprouted the same tinfoil wings she made for them last Christmas. But that settles it – you’ll just have to cancel the dentist, or get a bus. I’ll take the jeep this morning.’

My whole schedule was turned upside down. ‘Oh yes, sure,
with both kids
?’

‘Dump them on Jennie.’

I searched for a plausible excuse. ‘She’s very low at the moment…’

‘So when is she anything else?’

‘The dentist will think I’m chickening out the same as I did last time. He’ll charge me the full rate, of course.’

‘Sod the dentist. You don’t have toothache. It won’t hurt to leave it a week or two.’

Total despair set in. ‘How the hell are we going to cope without Hilda?’

‘Now who’s the selfish bastard? It’s me me me with you, isn’t it?’ he joked, picking up his portfolio. ‘The funeral should be a jazzy affair, well worth keeping a window open.’

‘Just go. Get out.
She’s irreplaceable.
We’re going to miss her so much. A really sweet, decent woman. How could I leave them with anyone else?’

‘Last night you were talking about adoption.’

‘Oh piss off, you arsehole, just shut up and go.’

I was quick to the phone. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s Jennie.’

I stiffened and my fingers flew to my hair when I attempted a casual ‘Hi, Jennie.’

‘I saw Sam take the jeep this morning.’ That tense tone of voice alerted me.
So she still watched our every move.
What new mischief was this?

Before she could start, I said, ‘Yes, he took it. Hilda’s dead.’

I didn’t expect the phone to go down with quite such a crash. OK, Jennie was fond of Hilda – we all were. But how typical of Jennie to take this tragedy and make it her own. How self-absorbed that woman was, even suffering gave her a buzz. Well, I wasn’t prepared to go over and comfort her, or to share her grief. She could play the bleeding Madonna as much as she liked, it no longer cut any ice with me.