Copycat (7 page)

It was so unbearably sad.

I saw this as the day when she would be sent to a slower, less challenging class. She would mix with less able pupils. She would lower her own expectations. One day soon she would wake up feeling cheated; she would suffer that raw awakening that comes when you face mediocrity and watch the privileged ones move ahead – not because of superior abilities but because of their natural appeal, and their cunning.

The day when your dreams are betrayed.

It was all so unfair, UNFAIR, UNFAIR.

I was ashamed of the strength of my feelings.

Like my daughter, Poppy, like my mother before me, my unhappiness was making me vicious.

And this after everything else that she and I had been through.

A
ND THIS AFTER EVERYTHING
else that she and I had been through.

Jennie got pregnant with Josh because I was pregnant with Lawrence. When I first said this Sam called me paranoid, but there were other clues that I failed to mention – and not just buying strappy sandals or getting a furious urge for Pot Noodles. It was illnesses, unbelievably – not just ours but our children’s.

This wasn’t like Munchausen’s Syndrome; it was no straightforward cry for expert attention using Poppy as bait. And I haven’t yet seen a label put on these particular symptoms, but after the initial shock there was no doubt left in my mind – she was
copying.

It beats me how Jennie conceived in all the dire misery of that Italian holiday. I can only presume that their Friday night date was too much of a habit to break.

Of course, she had known that I was ‘carrying’, ‘with child’, ‘up the spout’. When I first suspected, panicked, cursed Sam’s loins and his creeping hands, she hurried straight round to the nearest chemist to pick up a pregnancy testing kit.

Positive. But please,
please, could it be wrong?
We hadn’t planned this. This was too soon.

Every morning, expectantly, she would enquire into my condition, and then take my dramatic reaction at face value (it was more the response of a shocked prima donna). She was at her most priggish when I said I’d get rid of it.

‘But you can’t.
You can’t possibly.
’

My arguments were with myself. ‘Why not? There are too many kids in the world already.’

‘It’s murder,’ she said, ‘taking a life.’

‘Bollocks. Don’t come round here spouting that mumbo-jumbo. I’m not a pro-lifer and nor are you.’

‘You don’t have to be a fanatic to know what’s right and wrong.’ And that little self-righteous nose tilted at the sharp end. ‘You have no reason to have an abortion. You should have behaved more responsibly.’

‘Oh yes? Like you and Graham?’

OK, that was unkind, and Jennie was taken aback. ‘What d’you mean by that?’

I got up to rescue Fishcake the cat from Poppy’s inexperienced maulings. She treated my cats as if they were toys; I was glad I didn’t own a pet Rotty.

‘Jennie, I know you’re on the pill and that’s very commendable, but I am too fat to do that and that’s why we use a more hazardous method.’

‘Yeah, your repulsive old cap. No wonder it failed, it must be rotten. And you never keep your appointments, so that must mean you subconsciously wanted this baby.’

Jennie was right; my cap was disgusting and I felt uncomfortable wearing it. And I do mistreat the stuff I dislike. My jug kettle in hearing-aid beige, a wedding present from an old aunt, is stained and unpleasant and handled roughly because I want one I can use on the Aga. Same with my torn, brown ironing board. Same with my shoes: I prefer my old Scholls or I would rather go barefooted. Oh yes, my cap was a nasty sight and I shouldn’t have left it out in the upstairs bathroom, but then I didn’t expect my friends and neighbours to be up there rooting about.

Once Jennie asked, ‘Have you got piles?’

Surprised, I said, ‘No, but Sam has. Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

Now that was a lie, I knew. She had been in my bathroom cabinet. ‘But he’d hate anyone to know – his health image. His vanity.’

And another time she gave herself away. ‘Why does Sam use an old-fashioned razor?’

‘Because he’s like Esau, an hairy man, and nothing else will do the job properly. Why?’

Jennie shrugged.

‘For the record, I use his old razor blades.’

At that time her questions weren’t too out of line, as we frequently discussed more personal matters than those. What really baffled me was why she was interested. I rarely bit back whatever she did. Already, a level of consciousness warned me that I must be careful with this sensitive friend, who was flattened by crudely gesturing drivers, floored by brusque checkout girls, felled by rude ticket collectors and fatally wounded by frosty doctors. She rolled all these tiny insults up and threw them into the air and they fell back around her in clusters and stuck like she was a figure, trapped, in a glass-ball snowstorm.

I understood how reliant on me she was growing. She didn’t attempt to disguise this need and I did feel the first stabs of unease. Sometimes she made small attempts to explain, but I hated to hear her demeaning herself and I worried because she sounded so vulnerable. ‘I wish I was more like you, Martha.’

How little she really knew me.

‘I feel so alive when I’m with you.’ And her voice was tremulous, almost religious. Perturbed by this as I watched her finger moving over my table squiggles, I busied myself looking for a missing sock which Sam had raged about that morning. I delved around in the empty washing machine. I sorted through the ironing pile. I had promised to go to Marks and buy him a new triple pack. ‘I miss you so much when you’re not around.’

Tears threatened behind her voice.

‘What would I do without you?’

It was after this curious episode that she started being offhand with my friends. Again, it was hard to nail this down. It wasn’t outright rudeness, but she was cold, she was abrupt, in a way I hadn’t noticed before.

I wished I could talk all this over with Sam, but he was the type to misconstrue it. ‘Dyke’ would be his gleeful reaction. Sam was hysterically heterosexual; he had no time for gays and he made a point of staying up late to watch any film with an adult warning in the corner. Mostly, they sent him to sleep.

Sexual preferences should be kept private, Sam maintained, while happy to broadcast his own smutty wit with the lads, given the chance.

And anyway, this wasn’t a problem with Jennie. There were no sexual undertones here – it might have been simpler if there had been. I could have just told her that wasn’t on.

For the second time Jennie was pregnant and I was pregnant, so once again we were thrown closer together. We passed going to and from the clinic. I started the iron pills, she finished hers, I was over the morning sickness while she still spent hours with her head down the loo.

We bought our daughters baby dolls in an effort to lessen the sibling blow and encourage that helpful, motherly instinct that I was certain I had missed out on. Poppy poked the eyes out of hers and Scarlett buried Rosebud in the sandpit.

I got up one morning and, sick with horror, discovered bloodstains on my sheets.
How? Why?
I was never ill. My body was a perfectly functioning machine despite the smoke that was dragged down its throat.

Sam scooped Scarlett from her cot and whisked us to St Margaret’s where they tilted me up on an iron-hard bed and kept me in for a week under observation.

When I got home, Jennie moved in.

‘You’re a fool. You must rest,’ she ordered, ‘and come to terms with the fact that you are as vulnerable as everyone else. You can’t carry on with your terrible habits. You have to stop going riding with Emma. You can’t meet Jayne for those raucous reunions. You’ve got to cut down on the booze and the fags.’

‘Oh piss off, Jennie.’

‘You must think of the baby now, not yourself.’

‘Bollocks. And, I suppose, if it was a question of saving mother or baby, you would happily give up your life?’

‘Yes, actually. Yes, I would.’

She never failed to amaze me.

Next, dear God, I caught her telling my old friend Stevie that I was too ill for visitors.

‘Who was that on the phone?’ I asked her. I was pretty annoyed that she’d answered it. It was my house, dammit, I could still walk and talk.

‘No-one important.’

Christ! ‘Jennie, tell me who it was!’

‘It was Stevie.’ She gave me a sideways glance.

I’d have liked a chat. ‘What did she want?’

‘She wanted to come over for lunch.’

‘Oh?’ I was pleased. I was bored. ‘What time?’ The question hung in the air.

‘I told her she couldn’t.’

‘You what?’
I turned savage. Being stuck indoors, resting, was driving me nuts. ‘You had no bloody right, you’ve got a goddamn nerve…’ I went to the phone and dialled Stevie’s number.

‘You don’t understand.’ Jennie crumpled, wringing the dishcloth between her hands. ‘I can’t bear it!
Why
do you want to be with these people? I’m never enough. You pretend to be friends, but you just feel sorry…’

‘Stop it, Jennie! Now!’
I was livid. ‘Why can’t you think of me for a change?’

‘I just can’t stand it,’ she cried. ‘Not one more minute. It goes on and on and it just won’t stop and I just dunno what to do…’

I put the phone down quietly. ‘Look, Jennie, I do try to understand how unhappy you are, but I can’t change my life to suit you. You make me feel guilty, responsible for you, and that’s not fair, that’s too much. You talk about friendship but this isn’t…’

She wasn’t listening. She was irrational. ‘You twist every single thing I say, when I only want what’s best for you.’ She backed away. ‘Go on, call Stevie.
Call her!
And no doubt you can have a laugh about that dumb woman at number one… Here… here’s a bottle of wine, crack it open with your precious Stevie and fall about the room together.’ Like a mad woman, she ransacked the kitchen drawer for the corkscrew. She thrust the wine into my face, then picked up Poppy and rushed from the house, leaving the door wide open behind her and that damn jug kettle boiling furiously.

‘I can’t solve all your problems for you,’ I called out after her, but she didn’t hear.

I smoked two fags in a row. I wondered if I should follow her over.

The next thing I heard was Graham’s car pulling into next door’s drive.

I was worried. ‘Everything OK?’ I called. Feeling like a louse, a nosy neighbour.

‘No!’ he shouted dementedly, dashing towards his door with his keys in his hand. ‘Jennie’s just been on the phone. My God, she’s started bleeding.’

There was Jennie, washed out and subdued, rocking like a knitting granny but clutching her stomach with anguished hands.

The washing machine beside her was whirring, its soapy window frothing pink.

Bloody hell, had I brought this on with my temper? I couldn’t do enough to help. ‘Hang on, sweetheart, hang on, we’ll soon have you in hospital. Don’t give a thought to anything here. I’ll take Poppy, I’ll look after Graham…’

‘Let’s just get her out to the car.’ And then Graham asked, as if suddenly struck by it, ‘Why didn’t she call you first?’

I knew very well why she hadn’t called me. ‘What about an ambulance?’

‘No, the car will be faster.’ He handled Jennie so gently, with so much love. He supported her completely and she leaned on him as together they swayed down the drive and he lifted her into the car. I was struck by how tiny Jennie looked, all bone and sinew with such narrow, childlike shoulders, and wondered how much of this was my fault.

After the car drove off I took Poppy home, called Tina – my neighbour on the other side – to come and watch the babies while I headed straight back to number one to clear up the mess. Blood spreads in such a sinister way, like oil burning in Kuwait, black and red – both such dangerous colours.

Their bed was in total disarray. I’d never seen it so messy before, as if someone had had nightmares in it. The duvet was pulled back to reveal a rumpled underblanket, but of the sheet and of Jennie’s clothing there was no sign.

Jesus Christ. She couldn’t possibly have stopped in the middle of all that mayhem to clear up after herself, like a bitch when it’s given birth?

And then I remembered the washing machine.

I made coffee and sat at Jennie’s table, smoking and mindlessly watching the machine going through its cycle, the water getting pinker and pinker. How the bloody hell had she managed, in the face of all this, to clean up after herself
and turn on the washing machine
?

Everything in Jennie’s kitchen was carefully in its place, save for one drawer which was slightly open. I went to the drawer beside the cooker where Jennie kept her herbs and spices, neatly arranged in their pots of course, unlike mine in screwed-up paper bags. It was Jennie’s habit to empty everything into her matching containers: even her cornflakes and her spaghetti; even her milk went into plastic bottles with cows and daisies chasing round the sides.

Only the flavourings and colourings were allowed to stay in their little glass bottles.

I took out the cochineal and lifted it to the window.

I ran my finger round the lid.

Nothing.

But I should have known.

It was also a habit of Jennie’s to wipe round rims before screwing on lids.

I paused at the sink to inspect her cloth but it hung hygienically, whiter than white, over her gleaming taps, and beneath it her blue washing-up bowl, not congealed with old fat and gravy, sat upside down, clean as a dinner plate.

What the hell was the matter with me?
Why was I so suspicious? Good God, if this was revenge, what did that turn Jennie into? What I was thinking could not be true and I felt ashamed of myself. Here I was, prying and poking through my friend’s kitchen when I ought to feel flooded with sympathy over the fear she might lose her child.

Smiling at the sight of her airing cupboard, I remade Jennie’s bed in a way that I never made mine. If these responses portrayed psychological states, then I was the mad one, not her. I concentrated on hospital corners and stayed to fiddle with the end result until not a crease, not a dent in the pillow, remained. A photo of Jennie and Graham on their wedding day sat in a silver frame beside the lamp on Jennie’s bedside table and I pondered on the wisdom of that, to come to bed and be reminded of that stark, unnatural day full of tight, unnatural smiles; the promises made, as old as the ark.