The Safest Place (12 page)

I packed up the children’s weekend things too, and their sleeping bags, and put them in the car. And in the afternoon I drove to Ella’s school to collect her and Abbie, and went
straight on to Melanie’s. The girls chattered in the back of the car all the way there, and as soon as we arrived they ran straight upstairs to Abbie’s room to carry on.

‘All ready to go?’ Melanie asked. ‘Have you got time for a cup of tea?’

‘No, not really.’ I said. ‘I’ll just wait to see Sam. Thank you so much for having them.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ Melanie said. ‘You know that.’

Suddenly I was nervous, my stomach massing up with prickles. It was silly; the kids had stayed at Melanie’s before, though not for two nights. They’d be OK; I knew that. What
difference was an extra night?

‘Relax,’ Melanie said, astute as ever. ‘The kids will be fine. They’ll have a great time. And so will you.’

When Sam and Max got back I looked too intently at Sam’s face, as I always did, searching for some new ease of being in his features that would tell me that he was OK, and that I could
leave him freely for these two nights at Melanie’s, without any need for guilt. But I didn’t see it there; I never did. Guilt, it seemed to me, had always been at the centre of my
relationship with Sam; the guilt of a mother for the anxieties of her son. Guilt over his struggles to fit in at school and with his peers; over the fact that he was too small, too shy, too
sensitive. I worried, he worried, and thus came the guilt. And what a vicious circle that can become.

He never voiced his concerns, my Sam; nor his doubts, or his fears, about anything. He just hoarded them up in those wide blue eyes for the rest of the world to see, and that made it worse. At
times it frustrated me, at other times it simply broke my heart.

‘Hi, darling,’ I said brightly when he walked in, hot and tired under the weight of his school bag. ‘How was school?’

He mumbled a typical, nothing reply. And he wouldn’t meet my eye. He never did when Max was there.

Melanie asked Max much the same, and Max replied with long, drawn-out detail; the two of them instantly launched into conversation, leaving the silence between Sam and me so much more intense,
and painful. How I longed to have him to myself. How I longed to have him 4 years old again, when he was so blissfully free of his awareness of the world.

‘You’ll be all right, won’t you, Sam?’ I said, and Sam scowled, hating me for asking.

Melanie answered for him, disturbingly able as she was to listen in on us as well as talk to Max. ‘Of course he will,’ she said. ‘Max will look after him.’

Sam’s cheeks flushed, agonizingly red. Still he wouldn’t look at me. And I could say nothing else. But how torn I felt between my desire to protect him, and my desire to have him not
be like this at all. Surely he would be OK. He liked Max, or liked him well enough. If it wasn’t for Max Sam wouldn’t know anyone. His life here would be hell; he had to be as aware of
that as I was. Yet there would be no break, staying here for two nights and two days. He would be in Max’s charge, full on.

I fussed about, knowing that I shouldn’t. I made too much of passing over their things, their sleeping bags, and of telling Melanie to call me if she needed me while all the time she
watched me with somewhat amused, tolerant eyes. And finally, I had to leave.

‘You could have had that cup of tea after all,’ Melanie said.

I called upstairs to Ella. ‘Bye, sweetie, I’m going now.’

Vaguely, over their general giggling, Ella called back ‘Bye’ in reply. Suddenly, stupidly, Melanie’s lack of a smoke detector and the sheer steepness of her stairs leapt into
my head to taunt me. But this was how I punished myself. This guilt at letting go.

I could feel Melanie watching me, reading my every thought. She made no secret about her opinion that I came from that middle-class place that is somewhere in London, where we agonized over our
children’s chances of reaching grade eight on the piano, but wouldn’t so much as let them walk to the shop round the corner on their own. Where we fretted if the juice in their lunch
boxes wasn’t organic, but wouldn’t let them loose in the kitchen to cook whatever they wanted, however they wanted, with all those sharp knives around. She made such observations with a
laugh, of course, saying, ‘I know you’re not like that, but . . .’ and so I made desperately sure that I wasn’t like that, at least not when I was with her. The details that
bothered me were superfluous to Melanie; they distracted from the real purpose of actually loving your kids, and simply letting them be. Yet if I was uptight, she really was quite lax, though I
would never have dared to judge her as such. She loved her children, I’ve no doubt about that, just as I loved mine. But the leash by which she reined them in was elastic beyond belief.

‘Bye, darling,’ I said to Sam. ‘See you Sunday.’ And I went to kiss him – he was taller than me now, by a good couple of inches, though still the shortest among his
peers.

He tipped his head away, but not quickly enough, and beside us Max coughed on a laugh.

I drove back to my empty house, to shower, wash my hair and get dressed. I wanted to be ready for the evening when I met David, to save time. But my anxieties about leaving my
children were combining now with my anxieties about David getting back in time. It was just after half-past five; hopefully he would be on that train. Yet when I called his mobile he failed to
answer. I called his office number, but he didn’t answer that. Either he was on his way home, or he was still stuck in that presentation. And I swear, from the leaden sinking of my stomach, I
knew which it was. I left him messages. ‘Where are you? Just checking you’re on your way home.’ And I got myself ready, taking my time as I had planned to. In the week I’d
had my hair done, at the only place in town; a much-needed trim, and I’d had proper hi-lights put in, for the first time ever. David hadn’t seen it yet; he hadn’t seen me, awake,
all week. I carefully blow-dried my hair; I polished and I preened. And intermittently I phoned him, and still he wasn’t there.

In my heart of hearts I knew this would happen; that was the worst part of it. I called him and called him again, my stomach churning with apprehension. I was ready to go by six-thirty. I had
more than half an hour to spare before I had to leave to meet him off the train, if he was on it at all. So I made a cup of tea, and watched the clock as I drank it. And then he rang me.

‘Jane,’ he said, his voice weary and defensive and distant against the background noise from the train, ‘I couldn’t get away. And there was a delay on the bloody
underground – I nearly missed this train too. I had to run all the way to the platform and now there’s nowhere to sit.’

‘You said you’d catch the 5.20,’ I said.

‘I tried,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t get away in time. I had to rush to get
this
train.’

‘But you’ll be an hour late,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you phone me?’

‘Because I was hurrying for the train.’

‘But earlier; you could have phoned earlier.’

‘I was in the middle of a presentation,’ he said. ‘I left as soon as I could.’ He sighed in my ear, his breath crackling down the phone. In the background I could hear
some other man, talking into his phone, presumably to his wife. ‘See you in an hour or so,’ I heard him saying. ‘OK, darling. Sounds good. See you then.’

Tears stung my eyes.

‘Look,’ David said, ‘just call them and put back the table. Please, don’t make this any worse than it is.’

He didn’t know that I was going to meet him at the station. That was part of the grand surprise.

I’d had it all planned. I was wearing a dress – just a simple dark blue thing, straight up and down with thin straps on the shoulders, but a dress nevertheless. I’d be standing
there on the platform with our suitcase beside me when David got off the train. In my dreams of course I’d spun us back a few decades, half a century at least. My dress would have been
tighter, my heels higher, my lips painted a bright vermillion red. He’d step off the train to the sound of the whistle, banging the door behind him, and as the steam from the engine cleared
he’d see me. He’d take the trilby off his head, drop the leather briefcase from his hand, and wrap me in his tender arms.

Earlier in the day it had been quite warm for the time of year but as the evening settled the temperature was dropping rapidly. I’d put a cardigan on over my dress but my skin still
puckered up with goosebumps in the chill air. There were a couple of cars waiting with their engines running by the station exit, and literally only one other person on the platform. I stood just
inside the gate, with my suitcase down beside me. David would see me as soon as he got off the train. He couldn’t possibly miss me.

And yet he almost did. He almost walked straight past me.

It was as if he simply didn’t notice me there, positioned as I was outside of my usual domain. He got off that train along with just a couple of other passengers and walked towards the
platform gate, carrying his overnight bag in one hand and his laptop in the other, and looking right at me at the same time as he looked straight through me. His eyes simply didn’t register.
Not for one, two, three . . . a good ten seconds at least. And then when he did see me it wasn’t pleasure that spread across his face so much as a look of shock.

‘I didn’t expect to see you here,’ he said.

I smiled, but my face was tight from the chill of the air and from the tension of waiting. ‘I thought I’d come and meet you.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right.’ Then, ‘But I’ve got my car. I was going to quickly get changed.’

‘You don’t need to,’ I said. He was about to start walking on to the car park, but I stayed where I was, and so he stopped and looked at me again.

‘You’ve changed your hair,’ he said after a moment.

And I said, ‘Do you like it?’, one hand automatically reaching up to touch it, to feel, even after all this time, the absence of its length.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘It’s very nice.’ We both stood there, looking at each other, me with that suitcase still unnoticed down by my side, and how awkward it suddenly
felt, how unlike I’d hoped it would be.

‘Well aren’t you going to kiss me hello?’ I said, and I tipped up my face to him. Thus prompted, he kissed me on the cheek. He smelled of the train and of the heat of
travelling; the fumes of the city clinging to his suit, and on his skin the faint remains of that morning’s cologne.

‘We better get going,’ he said, and then, at last, he saw the suitcase. Strangely, he glanced around the platform, as if expecting it to belong to someone else.

‘We’re going away for the weekend,’ I said.

He laughed; a confused, doubtful laugh.

‘What?
Now
?’ he said.

‘Yes, now.’

‘Where?’

‘To The Lamb,’ I said. ‘Just us. For two whole nights.’

I watched my words sink in.

‘The Lamb?’ he repeated. ‘We’re staying there?’

‘Yes.’

‘But – how come?’

‘Because I booked it,’ I said. ‘As a surprise.’

He looked around the platform again, bewildered, so hesitant to believe me. ‘But what about the children?’ he said, as if expecting them to pop up suddenly from wherever they might
be hiding.

‘They are staying at Melanie’s.’

‘At
Melanie’s
?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are they OK with that?’

‘Of course they are.’

He handed me his laptop to carry, and picked up the suitcase. And we started walking towards the car park.

‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ I said.

‘I am,’ he said. ‘I’m just . . . shocked. Surprised, I mean. Two nights at The Lamb. Wow.’ And then he said, ‘Do you think we can afford that?’

I stopped short, my feet grating on the gravel. ‘David,’ I said, ‘we haven’t done anything nice together for ages. I want it to be special, different, a treat for us. We
have to afford it.’

‘OK,’ he said. ‘OK.’

I’d parked my car almost next to his. There was plenty of space; the car park was never very full, least of all at this time on a Friday night.

‘We’ll have to take both cars,’ he said, putting the suitcase and his overnight bag in the boot of his.

‘We can leave mine here,’ I said, ‘and pick it up Sunday.’

‘Do you think that’s a good idea?’

‘Of course it is. It’ll be fine.’

He looked around, not convinced.

‘You leave yours here in the week, David. What’s the difference?’

‘I suppose we could drop one off at home, first,’ he said.

And I said, ‘We can’t. It’ll take too long.’

In such detail I remember all of this. Small, random things such as the raspberry-streaked yellow of the light starting to dip behind the trees; and the white, dimpled skin of my knees as I got
in the car beside David and my dress hiked itself up, tight across my thighs. The knuckles of his hand clenched on the gear stick, and the faint line of red biro spread like the trail of an
aeroplane across the cuff of his shirt. The shuffling of his body in the seat next to me as he twisted to get comfortable; the creak and catch of his seat belt as he pulled it too hard. And my
awareness of his tiredness, and of our conversation, so struggling, so wrong.

It was nearly nine when we eventually pulled up into the tiny car park at the back of The Lamb Hotel, a whole hour later than I had wanted it to be. I cannot tell you how much
I had dreamed about staying there again. Since moving here, we had had lunch a couple of times in the bar, and on each occasion I had looked about me so longingly and taken in every little change;
the rearrangement of pots above the fireplace, the new wallpaper in the ladies’ loo, the addition of a blackboard marked up with the daily specials propped up against the bar. And I had noted
all the familiar things too, the comfy, slightly worn old furniture probably in need of a little re-upholstery; the enormous settle by the fire that David and I had sat together on countless times
over the years; the ancient, uneven dark red tiles of the floor. Noted them and loved them. This small old hotel had played such a part in our lives. All those times we had stayed here, David and
I; all those dreams that we had shared.