Copycat (31 page)

And then the secrets nobody knew: I’d deliberately hurt my child to get Martha’s sympathy, I’d faked a miscarriage and frightened the children in my care with my bouts of frenzied screaming; I had even welcomed my own mother’s death.

At weekends, in an effort to protect the children, we took them for days out – anywhere. Anything was better than sitting around at home and feeling all that hostility closing in on us; anything rather than gaze out the windows to where our enemies gathered. We attempted a kind of enforced joviality, but, of course, that never worked – even at the best of times we weren’t really like that.

We tried to anticipate future attacks and guess what form they might take. Who was at the heart of this devilish revenge? We failed to find any answers. We only knew that when we went out, we had to keep our heads held high.

The silent phone calls came from the children. I could hear them laughing behind their hands. We never knew how much vandalism was caused by our neighbours, and how much by the estate kids whose troublemaking on the way home from the pub had escalated since last year, to every homeowner’s horror.

My washing line was laden with clothes when somebody sliced it in half.

Our flowerbeds were trampled into mud. The heads were cut off our roses.

They slashed the tyres of Graham’s car. Some of my pottery tools were stolen.

A dirty old mac was left on the doormat. Graham was nonplussed but I knew what it meant and I detected Sam’s hand somewhere in this. This was the ultimate stab in the back. Martha must have told Sam my story of how we two had first met, and Sam would not hesitate to turn this into public knowledge. But this didn’t cause any more dismay; I already lived in a fog of horror.

My pleasure came in the few split seconds I was relieved from pain… those moments before waking up every morning.

I deserved this vilification. Over the years I’d brought it on with my appalling behaviour, but my family were innocent. Maybe I should go away for a while, perhaps until the house was sold. My brain played around with this new idea. The thought of flight was appealing – any action seemed attractive, any action promised some hope of relief.

Graffiti was scrawled on our garage door; Graham painted it over. It came straight back.

And all the time I marvelled – how could Martha have a hand in this?

Did she honestly know what was happening?

But she wouldn’t see me: she refused, even when I called on her at work.

‘Martha is busy,’ was the message that finally reached the front desk. What was she – cool, amused, hostile, controlled?

I even turned to God, to the stern God of my mother. ‘Forgive me for all that selfishness, oh God, please tell me what to do.’

There was no point in crying out loud.

Nobody wanted to hear me.

On weekdays I was alone in the house with nothing to do but think, or work. I rocked, I moaned, overwhelmed by the thought of my children being turned into victims, like me. I thrust my fingers into my mouth and bit them to cause some alternative torment.

Then I would force myself into action. I worked from the moment the family departed until the time they came home. And often, at night, after they were asleep, I wrapped up warmly, turned on the studio lights, lit the heater, and worked myself senseless till dawn, experimenting with new forms, new glazes, while I moved around the howling corridors of nightmare.

The house alarm didn’t cover the garage and I was in mortal fear of some child creeping in and destroying my work. Slowly, it became very precious to me. I went overboard with padlocks and bolts.

‘I don’t care what they smash up just so long as we stay safe,’ said Graham.

‘But they wouldn’t seriously hurt us, would they?’ I was astonished that he might think otherwise. It was me they were after, it was me they detested. What might they do – shave off my hair, tar and feather me, break my kneecaps? This was absurd.

‘I just don’t know anything any more,’ Graham confessed without expression. ‘How can I know, how could anyone know? This is all beyond understanding.’ He kept a poker beside the bed.

‘I’ve had it before,’ I reminded him, ‘most of it. And it felt just as bad when I was bullied at school and nobody bothered. At least this time there’s two of us. Imagine if we were alone and didn’t have each other.’

We were so used to abusive calls that Graham always answered the phone in the evenings. That screaming sound was so threatening then, and that jerk of anticipation the phone seems to give before it actually starts to ring. Everyone jumped when the phone rang; we all stopped what we were doing and stared around with frightened eyes.

Total relief.
We breathed again. This was a dealer called Hamish Lisle, a bit of a joke between us, and Graham gave me a wink.

‘Thing is, old dear, I’ve got someone here who would just adore to meet you. Wondered when would be a good time?’

Hamish, with his gaudy silk waistcoats, ran a London art studio with his great friend Tomikins.

I instantly panicked – evenings were out and so, just lately, was every weekend. And if anything ugly did happen, I’d hate to have to explain our position to an almost total stranger. ‘It’s tricky just now, I’m not too well…’

‘I wouldn’t bore you with this, my darling, but it’s all rather exciting at this end. Demetrius Hogg? Name ring a bell? Big in the trade in the USA, wants to meet with a view to buying for an important client from Baltimore. Catch my drift? Not one to turn down…’

‘Who did you say?’

‘Demetrius Hogg.’

I’d heard of him. Who hadn’t?

‘I presume you’ve got something to show him?’

‘There’s quite a bit of stuff hanging around. I’ve been working hard just recently…’

‘Splendid. Say no more. Why don’t we make it Wednesday. I’ll run the guy down and we’ll have some lunch after he’s taken a gander. What d’you say?’

‘Wednesday sounds fine.’ What else could I say, faced with an opportunity like that?

‘Lovely, darling, must go. Chin chin.’

I put the phone down slowly. It was a voice from another world and sometimes it was hard to imagine that there still was such a place. The Close was all-encompassing when you rarely left it, like me. Even the children: I’d allowed the Close and its people to become all-important in their lives. We were trapped here, flies in a web.

I was never more sure that we must escape.

If only I could live without Martha.

I abhorred myself, loathed and disgusted myself, for even thinking that way.

I had to get shot of that woman.

I
HAD TO GET
shot of that woman.

But was this the way? Was this cold-shouldering fair or acceptable? Sam told me to leave it alone; my judgement had been warped for so long when it came to that scheming woman, it was time I shut up and toed the line. Group pressure would force the Gordons out and that was the unanimous aim.

‘
But the kids?
They can’t be included in this.’ I can honestly say I had no idea at this stage of the level of cruelty towards the Gordons. I would not have tolerated it for a moment.

‘Children survive, they’re hardy animals,’ Angie Ford assured me – she who knew nothing about them, because she didn’t have any. ‘Face it, Martha, if the Gordon kids stay around here they’ll suffer much more in the end. Nobody genuinely likes them, they’ve been mollycoddled for far too long.’

‘
But I like them.
I’m very fond of them.’

‘They wouldn’t thank you in the long run for keeping up this pretence. Let them make their own friends for a change, let them be themselves instead of just shadows of others.’

So I was being thoughtless by worrying too much. But I couldn’t stop aching for poor little Poppy, although I’d never forget the way she’d performed at school, dropping Scarlett in it like that for something she’d never done. It was just the fact that my kids were being used that I couldn’t stomach. Anyway, Jennie’s kids were OK, no pressure would be put on them, my neighbours weren’t that sort of people.

We’d tried discussing this rationally at first. Anthony Wainwright had talked to Graham and suggested it would be best if they moved, but Graham, apparently, wasn’t convinced. Everyone in the Close had their reasons for wanting the Gordons out, on top of the general agreement that Jennie was a scandal-monger, unbalanced, volatile, and a snake in the grass. She’d fallen out with everyone, causing all kinds of unpleasant repercussions. She’d lied about bedding Sam years back, and now she was after splitting the Gallaghers, not just me and Sam. And I understood it was generally known that Jennie was infatuated with me. Tina, no doubt, with her big mouth at its busiest.

To her shame Scarlett coped well without Poppy, but then she’d been trying to distance herself for so long that her freedom came as a blessed release. Lawrence, of course, never turned a hair. ‘Just so long as there’s no unkindness,’ I stressed. ‘Staying at arm’s length from the Gordons does not mean teasing. It does not mean tormenting them.’ But surely Scarlett knew better than that; she was not an insensitive child.

‘Some people
are
being horrid,’ said Lawrence.

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Scarlett quickly shut him up.

‘I hope that’s not true. Scarlett?
Is it?
’

‘Lawrence is just goading you. Nobody’s bothering much at all.’

‘Because I couldn’t stand that kind of wicked behaviour.’

‘But you do it,’
accused my daughter. ‘You’re not speaking to Jennie.’

‘That’s different. You know why I won’t speak to Jennie, and that’s because she sometimes twists things that people say and causes all sorts of misunderstandings.’ I’d explained this to Scarlett already. I’d told her the adults were dealing with this, that the youngsters must keep out of it. ‘But I’d never be deliberately cruel and I know you wouldn’t be either.’

Sam was too outspoken. I worried about his attitude. Listening children take things at face value, and he didn’t bother to curb his anger. ‘They’ve been telling malicious tales… from the moment we met that sodding family they’ve hung on to us like leeches – bloodsucking, draining energy… and those bloody kids are no better.’

‘Graham’s OK,’ Lawrence put in mildly.

‘Graham’s as bad as the rest of them. It’s time that wanker put his foot down and realized just what a cow he married. They’re losers, the lot of them, they deserve all they get.’

Scarlett’s eyes gleamed in bright fascination. Neither of them had heard Sam or me raving in this hostile way before. This was an eye-opener for them both, and for me, too, to be honest.

It was weird how this unhappy campaign began to take over our lives. Soon our main topic of conversation was the goings-on with the Gordons and we’d gossip over fences like gnarled fishwives; we’d sneer down the phone, reviving old rumours, mulling them over and pulling the Gordons to pieces. It was appalling how it became so absorbing.

It verged on the thrilling. There were enemies in our midst.

Collective hatred was so easily fuelled. I worried the children would be infected.

Sometimes at work I’d look forward to six, so I could get home to hear the latest. It was more intriguing than
EastEnders.
And when the FOR SALE sign went up next door, it left us feeling thwarted rather than triumphant.

We had achieved our aim so simply.

What about Jennie’s violent love…
did this mean it had left her? Could a miracle have occurred overnight? She must be resigned to living without me.

‘That place won’t sell in a million years,’ said Hilary Wainwright unkindly. ‘Not now they’ve put up interest rates as well as stamp duty on these types of houses.’

There was a perverse sense of relief; we were reluctant to be deprived of our prey.

Sadie summed up the communal feeling. ‘For all their airs and graces, what are they? One old slapper and a dirty old sod.’

No, no, this was crass, I couldn’t accept this level of spite. ‘That happened a very long time ago and it was told to me in absolute confidence.’

‘Martha – she lied!’ sneered Sam. ‘Just another bid for attention. What a squalid imagination that woman’s got – did she ever speak the truth, one wonders? She’s even gone as far as to throw red paint in her own swimming pool to exact some mean revenge, that new copper told me. Jesus Christ, Martha – get wise. She’s going around slandering us as we speak. They’ve got to go to stop any real damage.’

By the way everyone looked at me I could see they thought I was spoiling their fun – one good word for Jennie put a dampener on the proceedings. In my neighbours’ eyes, I was the victim of a vicious and mean-minded attack.

A delicious community fear was born, which left us all imagining that Jennie, in her madness, possessed special powers to hear and see through walls, to cast spells. Everyone loved to speculate on what her next evil deed would be, which one of us would be ill-wished, when would the next wicked spell be cast? Improbable, I realize that, but that was what happened.

‘How pretentious she is, turning that garage into a workshop,’ sneered Tina. ‘And what she does in there is rubbish. I mean, has anyone seen it? It’s so spooky. God knows what sickos are buying it, if what we hear is true. No, the real truth is that Jennie’s using that garage to spy on us. There’ll be complaints about the youngsters soon. We’ll hear what scandalous acts they’ve been up to. She’s so transparent, the woman’s pathetic.’

‘She can’t see out, there’s no window,’ I mentioned.

‘That woman has ways of seeing through stone.’

What started as a mild idea to suggest to the Gordons that they weren’t welcome fed off itself over the weeks and turned into a witch hunt, the kind of hatred that leads to tragedy, when emotions are encouraged to run too high. I was afraid it would end with someone blabbing to Graham about Jennie’s fatal attraction and then we’d see, and presumably enjoy, the explosive flak from all that. And as her passion for me was the underlying cause of this chaos, and as everyone but Graham now seemed to know, it was obvious that that particular secret was out.