Copycat (36 page)

‘But that would be nice for her, wouldn’t it?’

‘She’s too wimpy to be able to ride.’

‘Why couldn’t we go in and see them?’ Lawrence asked, confused. ‘I bet Josh’s got some wicked computer games.’

‘Shut up, Lawrence, we don’t like them. Haven’t you worked that out by now, cretin?’ said Scarlett.

‘So why did we bother to come here?’ asked Lawrence, who seemed to miss the Gordons in his own quiet way as much as Sam did.

I wasn’t allowed to forget the Gordons.

It was just as difficult at work, now that we had a local personality made good. The handouts and press releases flowed in: Jennie in America, Jennie in Germany, Jennie at the Getty museum, or in the Hepworth garden in Cornwall. At all times she was accompanied by that weird, bald American guy called Hogg. Perhaps he was coaching her with her public speaking and image, maybe he was choosing her wardrobe, because how else would she have the nous to cope with all this?

And I wondered how poor Graham was managing, left out in the cold at home.

The insurance was paying our mortgage, but only for six months. Sam was on benefit. We sold the jeep and my second-hand banger. Mark and Emma invited us to Betws-y-Coed again, but Sam said he’d feel bad comparing his situation with their privileged lifestyle, fast cars and lobsters. I know they were hurt when we turned them down.

A holiday abroad was out of the question.

We’d drawn apart from the neighbours soon after the Gordons left. It worked out as I suspected it would; suddenly our main connection was severed and everyone felt embarrassed when the last removal van left the Close. We had all behaved appallingly badly and we were sheepish around one another. It felt like the end of an era.

Our FOR SALE sign looked as rooted as the standard roses in the front garden and the riotous hydrangea. Because Sam was showing our – viewers round I was not surprised there were no takers – he was surly and resentful and showed it. The fact that we had been forced to move he blamed on Jennie Gordon.

He’d blown the whole episode right out of proportion to disguise his own sense of failure. Nothing was his fault, but some of it was mine.

So when he suggested asking them for a loan, it seemed he believed that they owed him.

‘If you can’t do it, then I bloody will,’ he told me bluntly. ‘Maybe that cow wants reminding of a few sordid incidents she might have forgotten.’

I lit a fag. My hands were shaking. ‘Blackmail, is it?’ I had to ask.

‘No, not quite blackmail.’

‘As near as dammit. Money for silence. Sam, what you’re saying, it’s loathsome.’

He sounded so bloodcurdlingly hostile, and in this mood there was no humouring him. ‘Graham deserves to know what went on. We ought to have come clean at the time.’

‘Oh? To what end? Graham is a dear, sweet, boring man, but he adores Jennie. And nothing but terrible pain could come from him finding out.’

‘He needn’t find out if Jennie pays up.’

I got up, making out I was searching for an ashtray, but really giving myself the time to sum up just what Sam was getting at. ‘Are you suggesting that I go to her house and threaten her, like some low-life mobster?’

‘Why not? I doubt you would need to threaten her. She’d give up her life if you asked her. You only have to smile nicely.’

‘You’re sick.’

‘I could have sued her, you know, she slandered me and Tina. We could have got her back then, cleaned her out.’

I said, ‘I doubt that.’

‘Martha, you’re wrong.’

‘You would have needed to prove financial loss…’

‘Fuck you.’
When Sam stood up heavily, he wobbled. His voice was thick with drink, or was it anger? He was wagging a stupid finger at me, but I felt he would rather have used his fist. ‘Whose bloody side are you on? Don’t you start lecturing me, just because no-one will pay me a sodding wage while you—’

‘Don’t!’ I said.
‘Oh don’t.’
I went towards him, held him in my arms, and I felt the shudder where the sobs should have been. ‘Don’t make out I’m against you just because of a lousy job. Things can only get better. We’ll find somewhere else to live, you’ll see, and before you know it, it’s Sod’s Law, you’ll be on your way up that old ladder again.’

‘No, Martha. Not this time.’ His voice was drowsy, so tired of it all. ‘That’s not the way, not these days. Education, hard work, shit.’ His breath was boozily warm on my ear as he whispered furiously, ‘It’s not like that now. If you don’t want to go fucking under, you’ve got to grab any chance by the bollocks and squeeze till you get what you damn well want.’

‘No, Sam.’ I helped him drop back into the chair, his weight on me felt so heavy.

‘Money,’ he moaned hopelessly. ‘
Fucking, bleeding money.
You’ve got to have it… you’ve got to get it… whatever it takes you’ve got to…’

Sam didn’t know that I had appealed to my father for help, seeing how desperate we were. I hated doing it. Debt was something my parents had never experienced and would not understand. According to them, it was simply a question of living within your means. Accounts at a few reputable stores were the only debts my mother ran up and they were paid off every month.

‘A few thousand, darling, that’s all I’ve got free.’

I tried desperately to make Dad understand.

‘Our money is tied up in long-term securities, Martha, sweetie,’ he said.

‘Couldn’t you, for my sake, get some out?’

I might as well have asked him to kill.

‘No question, Martha, we’d lose too much. It’s long-term planning that’s all-important.’ And that staid remark suggested to me that we should have been more circumspect and not gone around spending more than we earned.

‘What about a small mortgage?’ I begged him. ‘Couldn’t you and Mum take one out?’ They’d gone on safari last year, and this year they’d already booked for Alaska. Their house was stuffed with priceless antiques. They might not approve whole-heartedly of Sam – flippant, too arrogant, they’d warned years ago – but they needn’t take it out on me. ‘Just to tide us over this difficult patch?’

My father was far from heartless – he’d been over-indulgent in his time – but now it was ‘No, dear, you’ll just have to cope as best you can and sell that expensive house and those cars, eat sensible food instead of that rubbish you buy, and maybe it will do the children good to appreciate that money doesn’t grow on trees.’

Ah yes, we were feckless, they’d always known it: we chucked socks away instead of mending them; we didn’t stick slithers of soap together; we failed to use up every dried-up scrap in the fridge; we bought a new washing machine this year while Mum had had hers since she was married…

Ah yes, we were reckless: we bought gifts like computers and new mountain bikes; we went round Safeways and M&S and picked up lemon and garlic chickens, prickly pears, and avocados with sauce; we even bought pre-wrapped carrots and salads, and all for such a shocking price!

‘Why all these foreign sauces?’ Dad would ask. ‘Whatever’s the matter with gravy?’

Dark days. Hard times.

Sam would die before he asked his own father. They’d always been so competitive – that was their relationship since he’d been a small boy and he’d thrived on it. But now, since this catastrophe hit us, he’d not even told him that the firm had gone down.

So I said I would try for the loan – just to placate him. ‘But not in any threatening way. I’ll ask Jennie to come and have lunch and I’ll try and bring it up casually. But don’t hold out much hope, Sam, will you? Things can’t be the same between us, not now, not after all that’s happened.’

Sam’s smile was far from pleasant. But he didn’t follow up my promise with scathing remarks or sarcastic sneers. I had finally agreed to his mad request and he had to be satisfied with that. Maybe I could approach Jennie in a way that didn’t sound like begging – make it sound as if lunch and a reconciliation were all I was interested in. But following on our last meeting there wasn’t much chance she would believe me. Would she suspect some ulterior motive?

I had to try, for Sam’s sake.

But if Jennie refused to see me, then that would be the end of the story.

The thought of it actually made me feel sick.

T
HE THOUGHT OF IT
actually made me feel sick.

Meeting with Martha. Should I? After everything…?

This wasn’t love else I wouldn’t have gone. Love requires respect, and how could I respect a woman who collaborated with her husband to bring me and my family down by betraying such a confidence? The fact that it was a he was irrelevant. I guessed that Sam was the one who gave the
Mirror
their centre-page spread. And Martha was still with him – still, no doubt, his uncritical and all-worshipping chattel.

It wasn’t love and it wasn’t transferable. I had struggled hard to replace my idol, my long-term supreme being, with Hogg, but to no avail. Hogg had the hallmarks of a far more suitable champion – male for a start, sophisticated, amusing, worldly and, what’s more, a success, while Martha still grubbed around for peanuts on the
Express.
Nevertheless, after her surprise phone call, all struggles for freedom ceased. She was interested in me again, she wanted to meet me, I didn’t care what for, and I found to my horror that my block disappeared merely on the strength of one stilted communication.

Our meeting at the gallery didn’t count, that had been impersonal, she was there because she was press; she had not replied to my private invitation. And that took place before I realized the terrible truth that I now accepted – without her and the anguish she brought me, I was empty, I simply couldn’t work. Martha’s phone call was different… she gave me no clues as to the reason for meeting and this provided hours of fascinating speculation.

Could it be that she missed me?

Could it be that she had finally found out about Sam and Tina, and was desperate to apologize and make up for that revenge campaign which had surely been instigated by her? No-one else in the Close would have had enough influence to turn the others so completely against me.

My life was full now: I travelled, I dined, I socialized. This made me an
interesting person,
so maybe Martha wanted part of the action. What laughs we would have if we travelled together – we’d go shopping, she could choose my outfits; I could drop Gloria with her strict advice and too glossy image, and revel in Martha’s company again.

‘I was afraid you wouldn’t see me after…’

‘The
Mirror
exposé, or the Close campaign?’ Martha bowed her head, closing her eyes against my accusations. She hadn’t changed.
Had I feared she might?
She was blowzy, fat and beautiful, and her silk strapless dress was her own design – nobody else would have mixed those colours. We were sitting in the window seat at the town’s best restaurant, Willies. That was Martha’s idea. She knew I travelled around; this local venue was convenient for me – I could walk there from my house. Where was her car? She arrived by taxi.

The change of status was apparent at once. For all those years, I had been the needy one and Martha the bountiful giver, and I was shocked by the subtle reversal. I stared at her as she studied the menu, as the firelight played over her face, and I thought how I’d wanted to end my life, how I’d yearned to change places, and how I’d even hurt my child in a sick bid for this woman’s attention… But instead of remorse, there was nothing but a perverse sense of joy to discover that my passion still lived – there could be nothing worse than the death of it; there could be nothing worse than the disillusion of seeing the adored one as mundane, almost distasteful once obsession had died. And I knew this, as everyone knows it.

I adored her.

‘I don’t know what I can say to you about what went on in the Close,’ said Martha. ‘I wasn’t happy with it then, and now I can hardly believe it happened.’

I didn’t like this inferior approach. I didn’t want to see her made weak.

‘What’s the point in talking about it? It happened. We’ve gone. That was another life.’

She shook her head, closed her eyes again, and I hated this new subjection. As if unable to meet my eyes, Martha twisted the stem of her glass and watched that instead. ‘It just snowballed out of all control,’ she went on, in spite of my stated lack of interest. ‘It sickens me, I can’t explain it and there are no excuses for it.’

I went along the route she had chosen. Maybe she needed to know where I stood. My anger was still there, fuming inside, but all I said was, ‘The children were miserable. Very hurt.’

She fumbled with her unwieldy bag, delved around for her fags, offered me one and then said, ‘Sorry. I was forgetting… do you mind if I do?’

What?
What was this? Now it was my turn to look away. This was abject surrender on her part. Her fake subservience was intolerable.

I said, ‘I heard about Sam, about the bankruptcy. It must be horrendous – you must be shattered.’ In the old days she would have collapsed dramatically, raved on about creditors’ meetings, bailiffs, settlements, receivers and liquidation. Her experiences over the last few weeks must have been horrific, not least the fear of losing her home… but all she said was, ‘We’re in a mess, Jennie, it’s been quite a shock.’ And then, for the first time, she met my eyes.

I thought I’d convinced myself not to bring this up, but her reserve riled me so much that I tried to break through it by asking, ‘And Sam, how’s he bearing it, and has he told you the truth yet?’

‘Isn’t there enough shit between us without you digging around in that? Can’t you and I forget the past?’

‘Hah!’ I still admired the nerve of the woman and her resistance to facing reality. There was no future for either of us if she still believed I could shatter her marriage with a lie so outrageous as that. But could I blame her, bearing in mind the story I’d told about Sam and me in bed that Christmas? What demon inside me invented these lies and was he still there scheming, biding his time…?

I didn’t expect her question.
‘Was that true, Jennie – Sam and Tina?’

If I said I had lied she would forgive me and I’d see that fond look in her eyes. But if I insisted I’d told the truth, she might get up and walk away. I tried to avoid the decision. ‘Does it matter any more?’