Copycat Read Online Free

scrawled on the blackboard, thin wispy scrawls with red and blue chalk. Nobody knew what they were but me. And they wrote underneath in mauve, “legs eleven”. But they didn’t stop there, they went on and on.’
    ‘Only because you let them.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘You should have fought back. Thrown their books down the loo.’
    ‘And then some other kids joined them. People I thought were my friends.’
    ‘Picking on somebody else is a way to make sure they don’t pick on you.’
    ‘I know, I know.’ At last Poppy drained that dratted bottle. Jennie tried to smile, a tired one, purified by pain. She started to tidy her layette, a basket in pink waterproof gingham in which she kept her oils and creams, half-opened packs of this and that, sacred ceremonial ointments. ‘It sounds obvious now, but it wasn’t then. I used to break my heart at night thinking how hurt Mum would be if she knew. She kept asking me what was the matter. She asked so gently, so tenderly, how could I explain?’
    That first spring at Mulberry Close was so wet the earth gave out seaside smells and the rain went on interminably. To venture out meant getting covered in mud. The heart-shaped leaves of the mulberry tree which stood on the green in the centre were splashed with tar and cement. Sam could do nothing with the new garden. The clay was too heavy to move, so the patio slabs, the sand and cement stayed stacked at the back of the garage, and when the roses arrived in their little brown sacks we dumped them in the shed and forgot them.
    I grew fatter and slacker and more depressed, while next door Jennie smiled radiantly and oozed with an eerie confidence, her whole house organized to create an aura of peace and goodwill.
    On the few dry days her washing was out on the line by eight thirty. Although it never properly dried outside, she disapproved of stringing it, dripping, round the kitchen as I did.
    I was the only one allowed to peep behind this maternal serenity and this was because, with my Safeway bag full of Pampers nappies, my dribbled-on bibs and sticky dummies, I was no competition.
    For Jennie everything had to be right.
    When Poppy caught chickenpox, every individual spot was dabbed at with the calamine while I watched in mad exasperation.
    The towels in her bathroom matched her flannels.
    Her kitchen sink stayed clear of dishes and her windows sparkled.
    She needed to be reassured that she was a marvellous mother and she was, at some cost to herself as, like a superhuman, she liquidized all Poppy’s food, had her weighed weekly, boiled her snow-white terry nappies, disinfected rattles and crept round the house while her baby slept, with her voice in mellow mode. But she was draining her own vitality.
    Everything was done to rote, nothing was ever spontaneous.
    ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ she seemed to be asking. ‘Look – I am a safe and natural mother.’
    But she wasn’t safe. Not safe at all.
    I thought of her mother’s terrible veins and wondered how she got them because Jennie, programmed like this, was following some destructive pattern.
    If I encouraged her to try to relax she would twist and protest with all the strain showing. ‘Let Graham help more,’ I suggested. ‘He’s a genuine new man. You should make more of him. Now if you had Sam as a partner, I could understand the state of your nerves.’
    ‘What state of nerves?’ she’d ask sharply, biting a trembling lip.
    In the end, seeing she was close to collapse, I ordered her to sit down.
    ‘I’d better not drink,’ she sniffed when I offered her wine, head down like a sulking bird.
    ‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Get this down you and stick your feet up on this chair.’
    ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she groaned. ‘Mothering comes so naturally to you. It ought to be such a simple thing. But Scarlett’s such an easy baby, she’s never woken more than twice a night.’
    ‘I find her almost impossible to cope with,’ I told Jennie