Occasionally, they’d bring me along.
Sometimes, I’d arrive home from school feeling incredibly sad, and they’d be in their bedroom with the door locked and I’d have to wait till they came out hours later. If I was feeling particularly sad, I’d sit on the floor outside their room, press my ear to the door and listen to their sounds of love – the laughter, whispers, grunts and groans – and I’d feel less lonely, less sad. Once, or maybe it was twice or three times, they didn’t come out at all. I’d make myself some jam sandwiches for my tea, and watch TV with the volume turned way down so as not to disturb them.
My father didn’t like it if I did.
When he was home, Mother would wear her best jewellery and prettiest clothes. Her hair would be washed every morning, make-up carefully applied and reapplied at intervals during the day. She dazzled: her eyes sparkled, her laugh was more joyous, her voice sweeter and she danced… around the kitchen as she cooked, in the garden as she pegged out clothes, with my father, with me, without either of us. To see her was to make you smile and your heart feel full.
When he went away again, she’d be distraught for a full day. Every time. She’d mope around the house dragging heavy feet along the floor. She’d refuse to eat or to cook anything for me, so I’d scavenge from the fridge eating the leftovers of the glut of food she’d cooked for him, or I’d slather butter onto stale bread and spoon jam on top. If she spoke to me at all, it was in dull monosyllables.
The following morning, she’d have pulled herself together and she’d spend the next couple of days until my father returned making it up to me. She’d indulge my every request, gather me to her for long cuddles that smothered and were of more benefit to her than me. She’d talk to me then. Long conversations about how she was feeling. Often, her remarks were prefaced with, ‘You’re too young to understand but…’
She didn’t like to stay up late on her own, nor did she like to go to bed early. So those nights when my father was away, I’d stay up late to keep her company. If I fell asleep, she’d pinch my arm to wake me. The following day, or the days after, I would explain away the dark bruises that decorated my pale arms. ‘I fell against the door handle…’ Or the shelf, or the wall, whichever suited, depending on who asked. In school, seeing my marked arms, my tormentors added a new name… Pongo.
I wanted to correct them when I heard it, wanted to say it should have been Perdita, the mother of the 101 Dalmatians, not Pongo, the father. I didn’t of course, bizarrely relieved they’d chosen either of the heroic parents rather than the villainous Cruella.
Despite the bruises, and the days when I was so tired I struggled to keep my eyes open, those days with my mother were precious. They ended with my father’s return, when he and she would form an almost exclusionary bubble and I’d be on the outside looking in, grateful for any teeny tiny bit of attention. Then he’d be gone again and there’d be that one horrendously long day of neglect, before more days of me and Mother.
Endless cycles of neglect when I’d be confused, sad, often achingly lonely, and cycles of indulgence when I’d almost be convinced my parents loved me.
Almost…
3
The day I decided I needed to kill Jemma, my father was away, and I was in the indulgence phase of my mother’s care. After dinner we sat together on the sofa, my head resting against her shoulder, one of my hands clasped in hers.
In this phase of the cycle, my mother often listened to me, and I could voice my concerns without fear of them being dismissed. Only some of them: the bogeyman under the bed, the giant outside my bedroom window, the dragon in the wardrobe. I didn’t bring up ones that might upset her: the constant bullying, my fear of not only being unloved but of being unlovable.
I waited till Coronation Street finished before turning to her. ‘Am I ugly?’
She took her time, tilting her head while she looked at my face. It was the worry that my classmates were correct in their assessment of me that had forced the question. It was hanging between me and my mother, waiting to be dispelled by her as other fears had been in the past.
When her gaze lingered, the heat of her eyes boring through my meagre defences and turning my anxiety to horror, I wondered if my classmates were correct, and I was deserving of the awful names they called me. Perhaps I was the monster from under the bed, the bogeyman from the cupboard.
Finally, her expression softened, and she reached forward with one long slim finger to caress my cheek and tap my nose. ‘You get your features from your father. He’s a handsome man, you’ll be beautiful when you’re older.’
But in this, she was wrong. The large nose, appropriate to my father’s square face, wasn’t suitable for my thin heart-shaped one, and whereas the proportions improved as the years passed, my mouth remained unusually wide. Although ugly was possibly too strong a word, I was certainly closer to it than I was to its polar opposite.
Any reference to my big mouth… Jaws, Hippo, Crocodile… caused me to suck in my lower lip in a vain effort to make the aperture smaller. This too failed miserably when the lip became red and swollen. Nor did the application of ointment to cure this do me any favours.
They were careful, as bullies tended to be, and around teachers or anyone in authority their expressions were angelic butter-wouldn’t-melt. They were careful, but not very clever, whereas I eventually became both. I’d inherited my short stature and slight physique from my mother, my intelligence, my craftiness, from my father.
Just how crafty he was, I didn’t discover for years.
The expression delayed gratification was unknown to my ten-year-old self, but it perfectly encompassed my determination to wait till I was ready to put a carefully conceived plan into action. Putting up with their torment was easier when I knew a glorious end was in sight.
My plan was simple… I was going to cut off the head of the monster.
In the six months since Jemma’s arrival, nobody had challenged the new status quo. The five members of that elite gang at the top were convinced they were invincible. They never expected any of us to hit back, and with all the noise they made trumpeting their superiority, they didn’t hear the quiet mouse roaring from the cheap seats.
When I decided the time was right, it added to my satisfaction to adopt their means to get my end. Less than two weeks after I’d begun, I had Jemma isolated from her friends. My campaign was slow, quiet, and deliciously effective with a pointed word here, a nasty whisper there.
I sidled up to one. ‘I heard Jemma call you fat, that’s so unfair.’ To another, I said, ‘It’s mean of Jemma to call you stupid.’
To yet another, ‘Is it true you wet your bed sometimes?’
Her mouth fell open, then she looked around to see who was within hearing distance. ‘Who told you that?’
Stupid girl, didn’t she understand that by asking, she’d confirmed what I’d said? Not that I needed confirmation, I’d overheard her mother speaking to mine and had squirrelled the knowledge away for future use. ‘I heard Jemma laughing about it to someone. Poor you, that’s tough.’
And to the fourth member of the group, I went back to the insult that always worried girls of our age. ‘I heard Jemma refer to you as the tubby one. She can be so mean, can’t she?’