Copycat (27 page)

Alas, Jennie was due for one of her ghastly confessions.

I was so tuned to it, I could smell it coming.

‘But don’t say anything you’ll be sorry about afterwards,’ I reminded her for the tenth time. ‘I know you have this compulsion, this confession thing which you have to obey, but please try to be selective.’

Her mood-change was instant. ‘You’re not interested. You find me boring.’

Jennie told so many conflicting stories, depending on who she was trying to impress, that I’d stopped taking much notice when she launched into one of her make-believe modes. And her fantasy tales ranged over all subjects – from her childhood to her wedding day, from her ‘big house with grounds’ to her meeting with Graham. This time, she warned me, she’d be telling the truth and it was how Graham and she had first found each other.

‘Jennie, I don’t find you boring, however you tell it, whether you and Graham met in the loos of the biscuit factory, or over the counter at the bank, and then there’s the picnic version. I don’t care where you met him; I’m just relieved that you did. You mustn’t feel you have to justify everything you say, even lies, to me.’

‘I just worry I would be betraying Graham.’

‘Well then, that’s easy, let’s change the subject.’ The weather was icy and I was driving. The car was fugged up with throat-parching heat. Every so often Jennie leaned forward and wiped the screen with her glove. We were on our way back from the Marks superstore, making the most of a precious hour free of kids. We had reached the blissful stage of being able to leave them to play in the Close, just so long as they had a house to go to and Angie promised to keep a lookout. It was a Saturday morning: they could watch TV or play on the green with the other kids, in safety. Most likely, as it was cold, they’d all be huddled up in our house, eating crisps and watching cartoons.

Poppy and Scarlett were nine years old; the boys were only six, not really old enough to be left alone, but the Close was a very safe place. There were lots of responsible adults around and all well known to the kids. Although the prestigious Close was surrounded by a sink estate, we’d never had any trouble from there. We wouldn’t be gone longer than an hour. Graham was playing golf. And God only knew what Sam was up to; I’d stopped asking.

Jennie went on, sounding ominous. ‘I’ve never told anyone this before.’

I groaned. ‘So are you sure you want me to know?’ I wasn’t remotely interested in what had happened in Jennie’s past – or in anyone’s past for that matter. Today was all that counted.

‘I have to tell you.
I need you to know.
’

‘But maybe I’d rather not hear it.’

I was concentrating hard on the road. They’d given black-ice warnings and I never understood what black ice looked like. The whole road could be sheer black ice, for all I knew. I wished she would shut up or get it over with quickly. I couldn’t wait to get home in the warm and make a huge mug of hot chocolate, with a flake. Or two. Or three.

‘Graham and I met in a car.’

‘That’s a new one,’ I said, from a distance.

I gave her a glance, just a quick one. The driver behind was becoming frantic, infuriated by my crawling pace, and I feared road rage might be imminent. Should I accelerate and throw caution to the wind? The bastard behind clearly thought so. Maybe he knew the road better than me. Jennie said that there had been times, hair-raising times she could never forget, when she’d been coerced into driving at breakneck speed to pacify the pig in the car behind. Risking her life to please some turd.

It happens. I’d done it.

But Graham, when pushed, would drive slower, while Sam gestured obscenely out of the window. And I wondered how much was given away by a person’s reaction to driving pressures.

‘He was kerb crawling,’
Jennie said.

I started with amazement. Then I laughed. ‘A habit of his you forgot to mention.’

It took time to register that this was no joke. My woollen gloves itched my fingers. I took the tip of one in my mouth and struggled with a hairy tongue to tug the damn thing off. I prickled all over. Jennie’s imagination was wild. What the hell was she going to say next?

‘Light me a fag, will you, Jennie? Front pocket of my bag.’

‘I know where you keep your fags,’ she said crossly, annoyed by the interruption.

Did she know what kerb crawling meant? Perhaps not. Maybe she’d misunderstood the term? She had been known to be silly like that. ‘What do you mean, kerb crawling?’

The hand that passed my cigarette shook. ‘Come off it, Martha.’

‘You mean, kerb crawling to pick up a pro?’

‘Yes,’ she said firmly, ‘that’s what I mean.’

Graham?
That was laughable. That quiet, gentle, studious man – a manager with Essex Water – whose sandals and brown socks heralded the first chirpings of summer? Whose knitted scarf signified winter?

‘Jennie, shut up. This is outrageous.’

‘He picked me up,’ she said. ‘That’s how we met.’

‘And I’m Cherie Blair.’ I refused to indulge her.

She hissed her annoyance. It looked as if it might snow at any moment; the black wires of the power lines cut into a greying sky. I opened the window a fraction. The air was so cold it seared the throat, but I needed to puff out my smoke.

‘He picked me up and I was glad I’d found another punter.’

‘OK, Jennie, OK… if that’s what you want me to believe for some strange reasons of your own…’

‘I was lonely. So was he. We’d both decided we’d not find anyone, nobody could love us. We were both looking for comfort.’

‘OK, Jennie, so that’s how you met?’ I didn’t need to look at her. I knew she would have her eyes closed in the way she did when she got intense. She’d be missing the squiggles on my kitchen table which she liked to trace when she got emotional.

Damn damn damn.
What sort of reaction did she expect? The only natural one was humour, but I knew she wouldn’t appreciate that from the depths of her special slough of despond. If I took this too lightly I would wound poor Jennie, but what I couldn’t understand was the way some people guarded their secrets, nursed them, wrapped them and hid them away – I could never do that. Sam might call me a prima donna, and yes, when I had pain I let everyone know, so it didn’t assume such an enormous significance or turn into a closeted skeleton.

So why not tell the world about Sam?

That was different. Perhaps I’d been wrong? If I’d shared it, maybe I wouldn’t be feeling so hellishly ill with it all.

‘I got in his old blue Metro and we drove to the car park beside the bakery. I usually took the punters there.’

I kept my eyes glued to the road. Was Jennie telling me she was a
whore? And did she really think I’d believe her? ‘
Usually?
So this was not a one-off?’

‘I was in business on Formby Road for six weeks.’

She sounded sincere, but she was expert at lying and fantasizing – I knew that to my cost. I’d play along just to humour her. ‘Good God, the risk,
you could have been killed.
’

‘At the time I wouldn’t have cared.’

Could this be true? Could all that crap about being a virgin when she married Graham be a he? All that high-handed moral stuff… I was so stunned by what she was saying that I couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d said she’d once been a serial killer. It was too fantastic for words. This wasn’t like Jennie, this was far too extreme.

‘You see these,’ Jennie went on calmly, as we passed a row of Thirties houses with red brick porches and bay windows. The lights from within made patterns on the otherwise colourless scene. ‘See how they look, so warm and inviting… all the happiness in the world behind those safe, closed doors.’

‘But how wrong you’d be if you believed that,’ I told her firmly.

‘Especially when it’s cold out here. But that’s what other people’s lives looked like to me then. When I saw couples holding hands, some with babies in prams… and in the shops when I watched busy women filling their trolleys and rushing off to somewhere special, while I shopped for just Stella and me – liver, cabbage, tinned rice pudding – and I knew my trolley was missing something, something I wanted so much for myself.’

‘I know what you mean. We’ve all felt like that…’

‘No, Martha! You haven’t! Not like me!’

There was no point in interrupting, even to help her along. Jennie was determined to hold centre stage and from there she stumbled and blundered on, although her words were so strained, her heart was so pained for her own sake that I wished she would stop, whatever the truth.

‘I was twenty-one,’ she said, ‘and had never had a boyfriend. When I’d finished work, I’d get something for tea and go straight home to cook it. Then when Stella was watching her soaps I’d say I was going out for a walk, just to get out of that flat for a while and spend some time on my own. She didn’t like it. But walking the streets alone in the evenings – and I even sat down in pubs made me feel more lonely and cut off from the world. The only people who talked to me were dirty old men or yobs who would shout unkind remarks.’

I could hardly bear to hear this. That she’d been lonely I could easily believe. ‘What about the cinema, with someone from work?’

‘I didn’t get on with the girls at the bank. It was cliquey. They all had social lives, I knew that, it was all they talked about. They were friendly but we had nothing in common.’

‘Like that Back To Work course at the tech?’

‘I don’t seem to get on well with women.’

‘Well, that’s no tragedy…’

‘Don’t patronize me!’

‘Damn you, I’m not. I’m agreeing.’

‘So I picked up my first punter by accident. I didn’t know he was looking for sex. He pulled over, really chatty and nice, not bad looking, though his face was a bit pitted. He bought me a drink and for half an hour I could pretend I had a lover, too. Did I want to go for a ride in his car? God, I was so naive! Incredible, when I look back, but I went for fear of upsetting him – what if he wanted to see me again?’

‘The bastard.’

‘No, he was kind, he was patient. It was only when he drove me back and gave me a twenty-pound note that I realized what it had been about; I realized that I had a new name. And he wasn’t going to ask me out, not ever.’

‘But you, a virgin, and so prissy, you must have been horrified to do that with him after only half an hour. You’re so disgusted by bodily functions…’

‘It was vile. I’d never seen a man’s prick before, only children’s on beaches. I couldn’t believe the size of the thing, and the colour, all veins and wrinkles. I was so glad I didn’t have one. I closed my eyes and I thought: if this is what I must do to keep from feeling so lonely, then I’ll do it, I don’t care.’

This was just too fantastic, but something about how she told it rang true. And yet I couldn’t be certain this wasn’t one of her games, a bid for sympathy or a cry for attention. ‘Poor you. No wonder you’re so anti-sex – having used your body for barter. Poor you, poor Graham.’

She didn’t even hear me. Jennie’s wounds went deep, much deeper than I’d realized. She was still reliving the whole ghastly mess while I crept round icy roundabouts, turned on the wipers to clear the sleet and wondered if my lights should be on. The people we passed were rubbing their hands and turning their coat collars up. If only we could get home. If only we could have this bizarre conversation in front of a fire with a bottle of wine. I couldn’t give the responses she needed with my mind on so many other things.

‘We were like computer parts,’ Jennie said, ‘both products of sterile environments. He’d led much the same sort of life, huddled round
Coronation Street
with Howard and Ruth, joining in with their social life… garden centres… church fetes… coffee mornings. A full-grown man, and that was his life. Howard couldn’t drive, you see, so Graham bought the Metro. He even drove his father to work rather than let him go by bus.’

‘No wonder he’s so shy,’ I said.

‘We both were. That was the trouble. We didn’t know how to make friends, we’d never acquired the knack.’

I gave her a quick look of affection. ‘Oh Jennie, you’re both so much better now!’

She shrugged her shoulders. She gave a sigh. ‘That’s because we’re together. Finding each other was a miracle, we needed each other so badly. But one thing we agreed on and that was we’d never have sex till we married. I hated it and he was ashamed that his first experiences had been paid for. I didn’t want him to see me as some slag who did it for money.’

‘Well, no. Definitely not.’ Sod it, sod it. Why did nothing go smoothly for Jennie like it did for most other people? She was always being cheated or disappointed or misunderstood.

‘So keeping sex for Friday nights seemed like a sensible thing to do.’

‘It never got any easier?’

‘It’s something we don’t talk about. We don’t want to bring that old stuff back.’ She paused for a while, eyes still tightly closed. The sleet was coming down more thickly – thank God, we were almost home. I could have murdered a brandy. Jennie had finally managed to convince me and I knew no-one more cynical than me. ‘If Graham knew I’d told you, he would kill me.’

‘You don’t have to worry about that.’

‘But you went and told Tina Gallagher about what happened between us that day.’

This sudden statement was a slap in the face. It wasn’t expected. I was guilty as hell and there was a moment’s embarrassed silence. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I don’t know for certain. I guessed it.’

What did it matter how Jennie knew, it was my betrayal that I had to put right. ‘Tina caught me at a terrible time,’ I told her, at my most coaxing. ‘And I’m sorry I told her, I regret it now. I don’t normally go around shooting my mouth off over tricky situations, but that was an extreme. You can trust me as far as Graham goes and I’m glad you’re able to talk about it with me. But I think you should have told Mr Singh.’

She was angry, as if I’d thrown back a precious gift, or suggested she give it to somebody else. ‘Why would I tell Singh? What good would that do?’

‘It could be that these awful experiences triggered off your fixation on me.’