Copycat

by Gillian White

  Who has the last word? This is my story after all. Shouldn’t I have the last word?

  THIRTY-SIX

  Martha

  WHO HAS THE LAST word? This is my story after all. Shouldn’t I have the last word?

  So here I was in Piglets Patch, the house Sam and I had originally wanted before the deal fell through and we decided to move to Mulberry Close. And here I was playing personal assistant to the famous sculptress, Jennie Gordon. I didn’t get paid much, but the rent, council tax, water rates and the use of a new Vauxhall Corsa were thrown in to compensate for that.

  This was the turning point in my life when I stopped stepping out of the vicious circle. The pull of the vortex had beaten me. ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’… and all that stuff.

  When I got home after lunching with Jennie, I found Sam had packed his bags in my absence, sodded off and left me with his iMac and a box of CDs. A note said he could no longer tolerate living under the same roof as a dyke, and other malicious insinuations.

  I think he knew the truth would come out.

  This was so sudden, so jarring, just as unexpected as the firm going bust; and I must have been going around with my head in the sand because, once again, he gave me no clues. And according to Carl Gallagher, who seemed quite excited by the whole idea, Sam and Tina had a flat in Glasgow. They’d arranged this escape for months. Glasgow – of all places?

  ‘But Tina’s an Essex…’

  ‘Yes, she is,’ said Carl, ‘no call for niceties now. But she’s got her own income, she works from home, and it’s never mattered to Tina where she lived. Flats in Glasgow are probably cheap.’

  Carl was wearing that pleased silly look – cat got the cream – and it was obvious why. All Tina’s fears had been justified; he’d been screwing some other woman for years, and she wasn’t slow in moving in, either.

  But me, poor me. What was I going to do now? Talk about getting out while the going was good, dumping your garbage on the mat with your front door keys and a pile of bills.

  ‘Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘Daddy’s gone to live in Scotland, Scarlett.’

  ‘For ever?’

  ‘Darling, I just don’t know yet.’

  ‘He’s left you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he has.’

  ‘But he hasn’t left us,’ she told me triumphantly. ‘We had a talk about divorce at school. Daddies who leave still love their children and want to keep in touch, it’s just the mummies they can’t stand.’

  ‘Well, that’s good, so long as you understand that, Scarlett. And please make sure that Lawrence does too.’

  But when I tried to tackle Lawrence, he was too engrossed in Tomb Raider Four and groaned, ‘Hang on, I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘It’s about Daddy, Lawrence,’ I said in a meaningful tone, the same one I’d used for the facts of life and why head lice only choose clean hair.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘I know all about that. I’m nearly there, Mum, I’ve reached level five.’

  So against all the expert advice, I left him.

  The owners of Piglets Patch had gone to build a dam in Peru, leaving the cottage with an agency for a three-year contract. Jennie dug out this marvellous information after I rang her to confirm the loan and admitted that I was leaving the Close and looking for somewhere to rent. ‘It’s no good,’ I told her. ‘They want me out. They want me out now. And anyway, I can’t afford it. I’m handing in my keys and going.’

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, ‘don’t do anything, let me check with Hogg. He has a list of places for clients who come to the UK on courses or sabbaticals. Let me check this out and I’ll ring you back.’

  She did more than that, she was amazing: she organized everything, paid the deposit, removals, the lot; and said I could stay here rent-free provided I did some work for her. ‘Higher rewards than a small-time hack.’ Blackmail, no other word for it. But who was I to argue?

  In other circumstances I’d have laughed at her, scorning this manipulative streak – now more forceful than ever – as she used me in her weird games like some disposable lighter.

  And as if she expected some argument, she was quick to defuse it with a positive approach. ‘Think of the fun, like the best of the old times. I need a PA, you need a home and space to find your feet again. This is a professional arrangement, signed and sealed, legal. Straight. And, Martha, you need me now Sam has gone.’

  She didn’t have to put it that crudely. The offer was tempting from the word go; I hardly needed convincing. And she was proving a forgiving friend after all the damage Sam had done to her, supported by my weakness. I was still disgusted with myself at what I had allowed to happen. Jennie had never meant to be mean, never meant to hurt me.

  The bailiffs came round the following day. I suspected Sam knew they were coming and pissed off just in time. They called when I was at work but Hilary Wainwright told them what time I was expected back, and the devils came an hour earlier to make sure they caught me. Scarlett and Lawrence were terrified.

  I wouldn’t have minded this rough intrusion if I had been intending to fight tooth and nail, but I’d already come to terms with the fact that nothing was mine any more. They were rude and they were threatening, and I was an innocent party. How can these bullies be legally entitled to ply their terrible trade in any civilized society? The bastards tried to make off with Lawrence’s bloody computer. They took the kettle. They eyed the cats – all toothless, worthless, thank God. I screamed at them and I cursed Sam for abandoning us to this dreadful fate. I detested him for all he had done.

  And so the idea of Piglets Patch, starting afresh in the way I had originally dreamed – elderflower wine and bluebells for the kids – was doubly attractive to me after that. A real refuge from hell. And although I knew she was using me – Jennie made no bones about it – I wasn’t going in with my eyes closed.

  Funny, I’d have called myself strong before this. I thanked God that Jennie didn’t have money when she was at her most passionate.

  So here I was, installed in comfort with a new computer and fax machine. There might be no mulberry tree in sight, but Jennie was still going around as if she found that old treadmill irresistible. The cottage, full of the children’s friends or empty, according to their social diaries, was a constant delight; an enchanting place with its fringe of thatch, flagged floors, peeping windows and bread-oven fireplace.

  ‘But what do you do all day, Martha?’ asked Peter Taylor, my old editor, calling me on the phone to see if I was up for a feature.

  ‘Oh, I drive over to Jennie’s if she needs me. I make reservations, write letters, keep books, consult her diary, e-mail her clients all over the world, and when she travels I’ll be free to go with her. Graham’s job, of course, is to look after the kids whenever he’s at home.’

  It was not a stretching schedule and left me with time on my hands for reading, freeing bits of the unruly stream and getting back to my painting again. The financial pressures were off me. I didn’t long for work like I used to; I was fonder of my own company now. And, if I wasn’t summoned to her house, invariably Jennie would come round for coffee. Here, contact with people was not so important as it had seemed in the Close. There was more of nature going on, a buzzing of colourful life, a living and a dying which made boredom impossible, and the cats were in seventh heaven.

  ‘As long as you’re happy,’ said Peter, surprised, ‘but there’s always a job for you here, in case you change your mind.’ I think he saw me as Jennie’s stooge or a flunkey who had lost all ambition, identifying with the vegetables I had planted in the garden. But if I was empty of enterprise I was content with my new-found peace.

  I missed Sam, however. I wept at night for the empty place in the bed. I carried out long conversations, trying to make matters right. I forgave him. If he’d found someone else, then it must be my fault. I saw Tina as the enemy, not him. The only communication we had was through infrequent letters demanding money. I had not
taken up Jennie’s loan, although it was there should I need it. But not for him.

  Sometimes, unable to sleep – when everything was quiet save for the cries of the owls in the wood, when the wind in the trees sounded mocking, when defeated by exhaustion – I wondered if I’d given up my soul. I wondered if that was possible. Was Jennie, so single-minded, so obsessed and so determined to keep me, draining me of the life I had left?

  Was I now exclusively hers?

  Or was it me who was feeding off her by giving in, too weary to fight? Who was the parasite, her or me? Had I subconsciously fed on her unhealthy worship for years, and was I now too weak to resist?

  But as time went on there were changes. I began having nightmares and strange dreams. The dream feeling kept following me even when I was awake, and it brought a strong sense of unreality.

  The crocuses appeared again under the old apple tree by the gate. Thrushes flew to and fro, collecting twigs for their nests. New life for them, but for me? For her? Sometimes, alone at home so much, I was convinced I was losing my mind. The meaningless chatterings in my head sounded like the wind as it gusted down the chimneys. The innocent light of shadows on grass tired me like my own thoughts; the rain cascading on the windows turned into mocking laughter. Solitude became too much and I longed for Jennie to come.

  Jennie came and cried on my lap, and her tears were tears of hopeless longing.

  ‘I love you,’ she insisted, ‘how I love you.’

  So selfish, so remorseless was she, and yet now, all resistance gone, I held her and comforted her. Like a grotesque parody of a motherly embrace. But the mother was only a vacant lump.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE DIFFERENCE WAS – WE seemed to be equal. That superior/inferior relationship between us had dwindled away to stagnation. It was wrong. How could anything work like this?

  She came to my house and I watched her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, that last day.

  She looked lovely in that bright summer dress, with the straw hat down her back on a string: Quite poised and peaceful.

  It was just an ordinary school day. In a week’s time we were flying to New York for a meeting with Demetrius Hogg, and I was already half packed and looking forward to a change of routine. We might have some fun there, like the old days. We’d both been shopping for the trip. I rubbed my temples hard as I looked up against the sun. A headache coming on? The sky seemed a peculiar colour. ‘Just reading the paper,’ I told her. ‘Join me.’

  ‘Don’t get up. I’ll make the coffee.’

  I watched her.

  There was a sudden cold gust of wind that did not suit the warm morning. That snort of laughter – did it come from me?

  As she left I watched her shadow as she ducked to avoid the apple tree. She expanded, contracted, broadened and thinned like a character from Alice in Wonderland. She gyrated inside me in nightmare. She looked out of a livid mist and took on a distorted, deformed appearance. One minute all was beautiful, and the next, as my breathing increased, I sensed an evil presence that felt as if it was throttling me. And I had a breathless sense of being on the brink of some discovery. I had handed my soul to the powers of darkness. It was then that I began to fight to control the swelling panic in my chest. I struggled to find normality, but this terror filled the whole of my consciousness. Was I having a heart attack? Was this a stroke – at my age? Would I wake to find myself paralysed, dependent on others for ever? Dear God. I tried to clear my throat just to hear that comforting sound. These were bad feelings, I could smell them, like flesh decaying behind hedges.

  The laugh that exploded out of me while I waited for her to return was more like the gasps of a convulsive fit. After so many years, hilarity and grief finally met in one circle and that was the sound they made. And volcanic anger caused the trembling. So much ferocity in so feeble a container.

  I watched her.

  She came back. She sat down on the wicker chair and put the tray carefully on the small table. She brought the phone out with her. She’d important calls to make.

  But now the pain was coming again, the blade of it twisted inside me and ripped up towards my guts. I fought to control the bile. She looked over and asked, ‘Are you cold?’

  Stupid question – nothing more than a gesture of possession. If I was cold, she must be too. We were as conjoined as Siamese twins, not at the stomach, the chest or the back, no, we were conjoined at our souls. We should have been aborted – that would have been the kindest way out. Foetuses for the incinerator. No human beings could survive like us, playing a frantic game of blind man’s buff, bumping into the edges of life, tumbling into mountains of obstacles with no real identity of our own. We drained the lifeblood from each other. All I needed was one scalpel; sharp metal, shiny. One slice, one deep and bloody gouge to complete the separation.

  I watched her.

  ‘Need a blanket?’

  I think that this silly question caused the detonation. The force sucked everything out of me and the light left my eyes and my brain together. Now everything was swallowed up by a vast and unbearable vacuum of rage.

  ‘I’ll get one.’

  ‘There’s a rug in the hall.’

  ‘I know.’

  I went.

  The mahogany knife block stood proud in the kitchen. And down the side of the butcher’s block was a miniature axe for chopping off fat. She used it for splitting coconuts, too, and she used the blunt end for cracking nuts. It was a most useful tool. I’d been round here for enough meals to know where everything was in this house. I knew that she kept it sharp; all her knives were regularly checked.

  I picked it up and stared for a while – like you stare into those 3-D pictures and find a pattern hiding there. The metallic shine broke up in my head and turned itself into a million stars. When I touched the blade my finger bled, but it was a tiny wound, no more than a paper cut.

  I was a child again, in the kitchen with my mother, polishing the silver with black stains on my fingers. I was weary, so very tired. To be an object of desire, to be the ultimate beloved must be just as exhausting as being the obsessive. We had both of us suffered so much for so long.

  With a plan firmly fixed in my mind I collected the tartan rug from the blanket box in the hall. Hidden beneath it, in my hand, I gripped the handle of the axe. It was a pretty weapon, sometimes used to chop kindling, quite light – not hard to gain the right impetus, as if it had been honed and balanced especially for a woman’s hand. A man might well have scorned it as a murder weapon.

  We were joined at the head so it was the head I must aim for, as careful as any surgeon choosing the line of an incision.

  She never looked up when I brought it down, aiming for the parting which separated the right side from the left side of her brain. I brought the axe down with all my strength and it stuck in her skull. She fell forward, then jerked back and stared inanely into my eyes. And then she lurched towards me, fighting, struggling for her right to devour me.

  There was a scuffle. Fearing a second blow would be necessary, I desperately tried to free the axe, but each time I pulled, I heaved with such strength that her whole body weight shifted and eventually she fell off the chair. If she had a sense of danger, it was only for a second. There was blood. Her head was sliced open to reveal chunks of brain with hair attached to the pieces. What had I expected to see, cupid hearts in a river of scarlet? I stayed with her in that garden so long that evening came, the buzzings increased, and her face turned from deep red into a black fur of flies.

  The separation had been successful. I sank to the ground unable to move. When she finally closed her eyes I knew that the love had always been real for her. Dying left a trace of warmth like my tears on shredded paper, like the last of the snowdrops on the grass. It was over, dear God, at last it was over.

  The Crown Court. The final judgement. And then we were left, one of us dead, the other alive to serve the life sentence for us both.

  Murder wit
h intent. In court it sounded cold-blooded, inevitable.

  Who was the victim, who was the killer? I still can’t answer that question with honesty.

  Prison seems to suit me. I have been confined for so many years – she kept me a prisoner – the routine meets my needs.

  The children are well and growing up fast, in the care of the reliable Graham to whom forgiveness comes naturally because he’s a decent man, and wise. Sam visits them when he can and sends over-indulgent gifts when he can’t. They don’t have much contact with me, I’m afraid. I never miss a birthday or Christmas, but the prison visits were not a success and we decided to let them peter out unless the children changed their minds. By the time I’m released they’ll be married with children of their own, no doubt. I keep a photograph on my cell wall behind my bed: all four of them are smiling, lying there in the long grass when we went on holiday to Betws-y-Coed, and I think about what innocent fun it all could have been.

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  THIS STORY IS BASED on edited extracts from the diary of the victim with permission from her next of kin, and from the transcripts of statements by the accused, both to the investigating officers and to the police psychiatrist before the trial.

  The author thanks all those who, by way of opinion or professional expertise, contributed to this work.

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