Copycat by Gillian White

when she went on like this. Didn’t she understand? Until I was twenty-three years old I lived with her in Walthamstow, and after we married Graham and I spent those difficult months with Ruth and Howard. I never had much opportunity to bring friends home. As a child I would play round at my friends’ because Stella was so unwelcoming when I tried to bring them home, except on special occasions such as birthdays, when she went over the top. Other people had parties with hot dogs and beans, chips and mayonnaise. I had hundreds and thousands, balloons and games, and Stella worked very hard, of course, what with all the extra mess and expense to cope with.
    The bullying went on for around two years but I hadn’t dared to bunk off like Poppy. It was partly for my mother’s sake that I set my face and went on going to school, half blind with misery, sitting alone in the playground or at the front of the class, pretending to be happy to read and have lunch on my own in the noisy canteen.
    Those varicose veins. What else was wrong? Packed lunches instead of school dinners. White socks instead of black tights. Oily hair in a childish style. Bad at catching. Bad at batting. Hairy legs. Unable to swim. Nylon shirts instead of cotton, and I had been seen in church on a Sunday.
    It was the worst phase of my life until now.
    I yearned to make things right for my mum and for me.
    I wept distraughtly every night.
    I learned to make myself small, to live on the outskirts of life, observing. To walk close to walls with my head down but still able to see around me, alert for the next crisis. I hated myself more than they hated me and oh how I longed to gain favour. I used to dream I would do something brave, rescue someone, go blind or be chosen as Child of the Year. Or my father would suddenly turn up and turn out to be Richard Branson.
    But best of all – Stella would die. I saw it all so clearly. The secretary would call me out and take me off to her office where the lilac-scented headmistress, waiting with a box of tissues, would gently break the sombre news.
    I would be escorted home while the class was informed. Some of the girls would sob for my sadness and when I returned three weeks or so later they’d be falling over themselves to get near me, to comfort me, to be my best friend.
    But Stella refused to die for me, and I, brokenhearted with sorrow for her and for my wicked fantasies, knew how much she would suffer if she knew how badly I was being treated. And all this in spite of her hard work, her efforts, her daily trials and tribulations. I had failed her by not making friends. If I caught sight of her anxious face while walking home from school, I would edge towards the nearest group and pretend to be one of them for her sake. And when Judith Mort stole my purse and removed my scratchy photo of Stella, when she ripped it in half and trod on it, it was as if she had torn out my heart.
    So I could relate to my bullied daughter and was so relieved that Poppy, now her suffering was out in the open, felt she could talk to me about her unhappiness. To me this meant she did not feel responsible, not in the way I had felt about Stella. At least we’d got that the right way round; she hadn’t failed me and she didn’t need to protect me. And I went to see Mrs Forest because my daughter’s torment did not stop. Poppy protested that taking it further would make things worse, so I went to the school during lesson time when I knew she would not see me. This bullying had to be stopped at all costs. I had to have words with her teacher.
    My chat with Martha proved fruitless. And it was hard to catch her these days, insistent as she was on working full time, even though the Frazers were not short of money.
    ‘Poppy’s looking ill,’ I told Mrs Forest, who looked too young to be a sixth-former, let alone a class teacher. I wasn’t there to have a discussion: I was there to tell her just how it was. ‘And she eats like a bird. There