She was the girl

She was the girl who pinched me, a line of neat crescent-shaped indentations puckering on my pale forearm, fading red to white to pink. Perfect like her delicate mother-of-pearl nails. I flinched inwardly. Childish tears blurring the bright primary paint box table below, regulation in all the classrooms. A triumphant sidelong glance and a bubble of laughter over neon pencil-cases ringing in my head.

She was Annemarie. Sweet Annemarie, Clever Annemarie, so bright, so pretty, a real peach. Annemarie was predicted to go far. The teachers would solemnly nod and smile encouragingly as though sharing a private joke whenever her name was mentioned. She was talented, vivacious, with a circle of ferociously protective friends lacing around her at all times. Annemarie was cute, such a doll, everyone said indulgently. She was never wicked or naughty but full of mischief, which apparently indicated intelligence far beyond her years

She wore a silver clasp which I stared at every day for a whole term, whilst I sat behind her. Her caramel hair hanging groomed and heavy like a showpony’s tail. I was safe for a while here behind her darting calculating gaze, homing in on the shy children, the poor children, the runts of the litter. Her clear voice would glide over the clamour of classroom activities, her comments innocent and barbed, raising snickers of fawning laughter and shame in those targeted.

Annemarie was pretty. She possessed the bloom of a healthy, cosseted existence. A pronounced cupid bow curving into a trademark smile accentuated with adorable dimples. She played in wide-open green spaces and sent out pastel birthday invitations to parties with fondant cake and brightly wrapped presents. Party games were held in her ‘playroom’ decorated with expensive toys. I was inadvertently invited to one of her birthday parties once by virtue of a freak disposable friendship struck up between my Dad and hers. I sulked and fiddled with the velvet dress Mum deemed my best, I want you smart and clean, understand? Not pretty like her, was the insinuation, but at least clean and presentable. My hair was scraped back tightly into skinny plaits. I was an outsider, an untidy scrag of weed in a beautifully trimmed garden; I shouldn’t have been there. I skirted around Annemarie’s golden aura marvelling at her airy, thick carpeted home, adorned with glossy snaps of her shimmering at the camera sandwiched between adoring parents.

I used to see her mother waiting for her outside the school gates every night. Standing apart from the other mums swapping anecdotes about kids, errant husbands and grocery prices, conversation punctuated by trouser tugging and tantrums. Annemarie’s mother had a veneer of sophistication, of aloofness. Her camel-coloured suits marked her out as different from the functional garments worn by experienced mums. She would wait there awkwardly, expensively scented, adjusting her tailored outfit with manicured professionalism. Hesitant and nervous, her eyes would dart from the impressive sleek car waiting to envelop herself and Annemarie, to the school door spewing out hyperactive children and colourful gym bags.

Mum would ask me why I was not friends with that nice Annemarie. ‘She’s always polite and comes from a good family. Her dad’s a school governor didn’t you know…? Ve-erry successful in his business’ She would draw her words out with raised eyebrows at this point. ‘You should invite her round to tea one night. I’ll bake a cake, it’ll be fun’. I never had to wonder what Annemarie would make of our crowded, untidy semi-detached as one night, surprisingly, she turned up on the doorstep standing demurely next to her elegant mother.

The two of them stood in our living room with Mum fussing around them offering tea and biscuits. They were moving into our street. The big house at the end with high walls covered in climbing roses. A friend was needed for Annemarie, someone she knew nearby as her friends all lived further away now and may not be able to travel all the way over to her as frequently. Unlikely, I sneered inwardly. I was angry and afraid. Curled up on the old squashy sofa covered in tea-stains, I avoided their saintly gazes. They had trespassed onto my territory. Annemarie’s army would be gracing my neighbourhood with their patent shoes and artificial smiles and I had enough of them everyday at school. I cringed as my Mum brandished an old Jacobs Cracker tin full of cheap custard creams, which were politely declined. Couldn’t Annemarie’s mother see I wasn’t suitable for her daughter? I had stringy hair and NHS glasses. I bit my fingernails and wore hand-me-downs from my gaggle of sisters and brothers. But Mum was excited.
‘There you go darling, just down the road now. Maybe they’ll be kind enough to give you a lift to school in the mornings. No more waiting around for smelly buses eh?’

I was horrified at this prospect and my world was privately coming to an end. Annemarie’s presence was now indelible in my home. The next day Annemarie pinched me. A pinch accompanied by a hiss; ‘Your house smells’. A laugh from her cronies, their glittering hair slides and shining eyes taking on a menacing air. I told Mum on the way home from school. Her head full of organising tea and households chores, she told me not to be so silly.

I used to see Annemarie’s polished family car glide past me every morning as Mum and I waited for the bus to school, bedraggled and scowling in bad weather. I felt she was laughing at me, her encased in supple leather and tinted windows, and me terminally bored at the bus stop, my satchel strap leaving an angry red mark on my shoulder. I rarely saw her emerge from behind the climbing roses where no doubt a rolling lawn and mini-playground were available for her leisure. This suited me fine. I didn’t want her joining in the games I played with the other kids on the street, hide and seek or cricket on the quiet suburban road. I didn’t want her to be offered orange juice by the other mums or be able to run into the nearest house for sympathy over a skinned knee. I didn’t want her uptight mother to join the others as they sat in an elected garden, resting in the fresh air, drinking endless cups of tea, sucking an occasional cigarette, one eye on the kids playing in the street and chattering frivolously about nothing. I didn’t want her to ruin the gentle stability of my home life.

She never did, instead she saved her teasing for school. A well-timed nudge, a cat-call across the playground from an eager conscript of her gang, and on one terrifying occasion, surrounding me like a pack of animals at break time with Annemarie hidden in the centre from the playground monitor’s random gaze, her precise nails tearing my pallid flesh.

Relief came when we all changed schools. We were big kids now and were off to high school. Off to a domain of homework, scratchy uniforms and burgeoning sexuality. Annemarie went off to a private girl’s school far away from me while I was at the local comprehensive. I began to enjoy my studies and became a bookworm determined to win a place at University. I still saw her occasionally, hanging around town, in fashionable clothes, a huddle of pubescent boys following her swinging hair. She went to parties that I was never invited to and wore clothes that cost more than my mum’s weekly housekeeping bills. She won the hearts of other girls’ boyfriends and was seen out with older men who wore suits and drove big shiny cars.

I went off to University. My life became a whirlwind of lectures and Student Union bars. Late-night debates over budget red wine in cheap lodgings with a circle of close caring friends. I inhabited a different world from Annemarie and continued to do so apart from visits home to see Mum. There I would see her, with her fancy car and apartment bought by her parents. She would still sneer at me, her face creamed with artful make-up and her beautifully tailored clothes. My washed-out jeans and cheap shoes, compulsory on a student’s income contrived to make me look young and uncivilised next to her. She would still be in the town centre, sitting in the café’s with an identical looking friend, sipping outrageously expensive coffee, inspecting painted nails and pouring scorn on the young, smooth skinned teens around the town that had replaced her clique.

I graduated and took out a loan then blew it on travelling the world before entering the nine-to-five grind. On return I took Mum out to a new restaurant that had just opened. There was an influx of new businesses everywhere in town. Tapas bars, coffee-houses and cocktail bars had appeared whilst I was away. Glamorous youth from neighbouring cities were coming to spend their evenings out here. House prices had rocketed and the place was described as ‘cosmopolitan’.
‘I don’t recognise anyone any more’ Mum said idly as we were seated by an enthusiastic waiter. We giggled over the menu and I showed her my holiday snaps, me excited and gabbling inadequate descriptions of the places I had been, Mum looking at me proudly and making suitably interested responses. Then she interrupted my hyperbolic rantings,

‘I recognise her, didn’t she used to live near us’?

A relic from my introverted past, Annemarie. She was seated in the corner, a few tables away, opposite a well-groomed man, older than she was. She was playing idly with a salad and I suddenly felt ashamed by the glistening steak that had been set down in front of me. Annemarie, sweet Annemarie. She looked older. Her hair was different, gone were the lustrous locks, instead she had an exquisitely shaped bob with a glassy sheen. She was thinner, a fashionable type of thin. Angular bones jutting awkwardly out of a chic shift dress. As I watched she waved away the waiters offer of wine choosing to delicately sip mineral water instead. Her dining partner eagerly accepted a top up and he attacked his lobster with gusto. She looked bored and automatically I flinched, remembering this to be the motivation behind most of her bullying. Her face was heavily painted, her mouth a slash of perfectly applied lipstick. I looked away quickly shrugging my shoulders and continued my holiday anecdotes with less fervour. But Mum’s attention was still on Annemarie.

‘Poor girl, she used to live in that massive house didn’t she? Shipped around from nursery to day care to private boarding school constantly. I remember her mother at PTA meetings. Always looked permanently depressed. Can’t remember her name though, what was it? I s’pect that bloke she’s with is her husband, probably loaded like her dad was’

I turned my Mums attention back to the meal until we were half way through a pricey dessert. Fluffs of cream and lashings of Belgian chocolate, we grinned our way through it, relishing every sinful mouthful, then Annemarie and the man got up to leave. As they walked past I noticed he was older, an aroma of alcohol and heavy aftershave wrapped around his designer suit. As Annemarie came past I ducked my head and concentrated on the gossamer of her dress brushing past my chair. In low frustrated tones I heard the man tell her to hurry up and his large thick hand grabbed her slender wrist. I glimpsed through the window at her hurrying to keep up with his long strides, her arms cradling her wrap over her thin shoulders, feet turning in her fragile heels.

My Mum followed my eyes, ‘I bet he’s rich and she’s married him for his money. Not a lot else for the likes of her to do’, she said conspiratorially, sucking the remnants of dessert off her silver spoon. ‘What was her name again?’ She turned to look at me still gazing out of the window at the echo of stilettos.

‘She was the girl who pinched me…’ I replied quietly, the sweetness of the last mouthful bleeding into my gums.

Word count 2032  Emma Reeve 2003