Far happier in my own company

By Julie Myerson, FT.com site

Published: Oct 20, 2007 

When I was nine or 10 years old and we lived out in the country, I was a very introverted child - excitable and optimistic but afraid of almost everything.

I was afraid of deep water and the dark middle of the night and some kinds of birds (but not insects) and rats. I was afraid of dead people and ghosts and tight clothes that had to be pulled over my head. And I was especially afraid of anything that involved other children of my age - parties, tennis lessons, ballroom dancing, anything that involved nasty girls in patent shoes or boys (especially boys) or any kind of competition or standing up or speaking out or being looked at.

My mum was completely the opposite - young and beautiful and sociable and curious. She wanted me to be the kind of girl who'd come with her to someone's house and, while she had coffee with the mother, play with whoever that mother's child was. She wanted me to be the kind of girl who'd follow them up to their room, play with their toys, maybe stay for tea or even (terrifying thought) overnight. "Everybody's shy," she used to remind me. "You just need to ask people all about themselves, that's all."

I wasn't convinced. And anyway I didn't want to make any friends. I was perfectly happy sewing flowers out of felt or re-arranging the china ponies in my room. In despair, my mum decided she had to find friends for me. One of these friends was Lola.

Lola was the daughter of Abby, a friend of my mum's. She was the same age as me, though at a different school, and had blonde frizzy hair and was pretty, outgoing, a bit rude. Lola was everything that I was not. Lola lived about five miles away from us in another village in a house full of dark and creaking old furniture. The garden had a compost heap, which scared me because (Lola said) it had rats in it. Lola's garden went on for ever before sort of petering out and turning into wide mauve fields that Lola frequently escaped into, dragging me with her.

I was terrified of those fields because, the second time I met her, Lola had taken me up there and tried to force me to smoke a cigarette. When I said I'd rather not, she punched me hard in the stomach and left me there in the field with the rat-infested compost heap between me and the house.

"Did you have a good time?" my mum asked me when I got home.

"Yes," I lied, "only I don't think I'll go again."

"Oh but why?"

"Because I just don't want to."

"Well tough," said my mum, "because Lola really likes you and they want you to go round next Friday."

I went upstairs to dust my china ponies and hoped they'd all forget about it. But they didn't.

"Good news!" my mum would say, putting down the phone just as I was sneaking upstairs to make a charcoal drawing of a lovely leaf I'd found. "Abby just rang and you've been invited round to play with Lola. I said I'd drop you round there after lunch."

"Oh," I'd say, "but I thought I maybe ought to tidy my room after lunch."

"Don't be silly. You can do that any time. Lola's really looking forward to seeing you. Come on. You'll enjoy it when you get there."

Enjoy-it-when-you-get-there was the dreaded mantra. It contained a grain of truth in the sense that very often the terror of going to Lola's turned out to be even worse than the actual ordeal of being there. As my mum's car crunched up the drive, Lola would be waiting for me - at a window or even outside on the gravel.

"We're going to go and pick blackberries," she'd shout, or "Hey, come on up to my room, I've got something to show you."

How nice, my mum would think, because Lola's animated face and voice would make it look like there really was something like a friendship between us.

But, once upstairs, Lola would lock the door and say "right, watch this" and hold me in a painful head lock or tell me horrible things I didn't want to know about sex. Or we'd go up the fields with full blackberry-picking equipment and then she'd take out a pack of cigarettes and start all of that all over again.

I knew Lola until we were about 14 or even 15, when finally I developed the confidence to pull away. Lola was a bully; I know that now. And like many bullies who seem to have a pretty feisty, flame-proof teenage-hood, she somehow turned into a much less scary adult - meek and tired and slightly deflated looking.

Many years later, when we were both in our early 30s, I bumped into her at a party. I had three babies in tow and had recently published my first novel. She was single and between jobs.

She seemed very genuinely friendly and pleased to see me and, as I left, she pressed her phone number on me.

But I never rang it. And I'm both amused and ashamed that now, 15 or so years later, the only thing I really remember about that encounter was that she had really awful shoes on - flat and scuffed and old lady-ish - and also that I'd never noticed before what thick ankles she had.