Copycat by Gillian White Page A

find themselves, deprived of outside diversions, you can lose or confuse your identity.
    Jennie’s son, Josh, had arrived in April, and thanks to the epidural his birth was a piece of cake. Mother and baby came home the next day, and we celebrated the day after, raising our glasses to the fact that this time she’d managed to avoid having her bossy mother to stay.
    This old swimming-pool thing. She refused to drop it. It was now time, Jennie decided, to press on with the project. A community effort sprang to my mind: if Jennie could be persuaded to make this a shared activity, maybe, just maybe, she would open up, make friends, and this infatuation might die a death in the process. What about time and labour in exchange for reasonable use? I’d read about something similar in a magazine – some village in Essex had tried it and it was working well. In the faint hope that she might agree, I dropped a couple of hints and couldn’t have been more astonished when she agreed without a mega-trauma.
    I see now that her reasons were devious. First, she was after approval from me. And secondly – and this seems incredible – she actually believed that worming her way into our neighbours’ affections would make me jealous.
    If it wasn’t for me, there’d have been no project. Jennie was not the most popular resident in the Close. On top of her shyness there were these mood swings and nobody wanted to share a pool in the snooty Gordons’ garden. I curse myself now for my misguided decision to influence the opposition – I certainly didn’t want it and Sam didn’t care. Wishful thinking underlay my response; I so hoped this major diversion might cool her ardour.
    ‘Your garden would be better,’ said the neighbours with one voice.
    I explained to the small meeting, on a day I knew Jennie was out, that because these were her plans and her original idea I honestly thought it would work.
    ‘I don’t see why,’ said Hilary Wainwright from number four. ‘I haven’t spoken a word to the woman since we first moved here. Lord knows why, but she seems to resent us. I’m lucky to get a terse nod. Otherwise, I’m ignored. With the best will in the world, why would she expect anyone to join in a scheme like this? It’s so vague – “reasonable use” – knowing her, we’d never get in.’ A silky, sensible woman who more often than not wore beige, Hilary had an enviable job in teaching.
    ‘What does Sam think about it?’ asked Angie, the builder’s wife from lodge number five, dressed from top to toe in pink denim. Presumably she believed that her Alex, being a builder, would do a better job.
    I had to be honest. ‘Sam doesn’t care one way or another. To start with he never believed the project would get off the ground, but that’s Sam, profoundly negative. But as Graham is the expert on water round here, and as this is his plan and he thinks it’s good, we ought to at least think about it.’ I pointed out the man-hours that Graham had calculated would need to be put in in exchange for free swimming. ‘You can see it’s all been well thought out. Graham must have worked very hard.’ Yes, driven by Jennie, I thought.
    After a struggle which lasted an hour, they all agreed to think it over and meet at the Gordons’ house to view the site on the following Saturday.
    ‘But Jennie’s so unstable,’ said Tina, to my surprise, after the rest had gone. Tina was easy to talk to; she was understanding and discreet.
    I had to admit, ‘She can be odd.’
    ‘She behaves very strangely round you.’
    So people had noticed? ‘What d’you mean?’
    ‘She’s so peculiar, you can’t have missed it,’ Tina said. ‘She craves your attention, she stares at you with doggie devotion, she can’t do enough to please you.’
    Hell. This was all I needed. I’d have to warn Jennie. This nonsense must stop. ‘Jennie has problems,’ I said defensively, ‘same as we all do round here.’
    I wasn’t half so guarded the next