The Safest Place (30 page)

The blood in my veins stilled, and froze.

‘There,’ Sam said. ‘Is that what you wanted to know?’

I felt like I’d been slapped. I forced myself to speak. ‘It wasn’t like that, Sam,’ I said.

And he wailed, ‘Oh my God, you’re supposed to deny it.’

And so came the lies, kicking into place. ‘Max . . . made a pass at me,’ I said and oh how old-fashioned that phrase; how old-fashioned and safe and tame. ‘One evening when he
was here. He must have been drunk or something . . . I told him not to be so silly. I laughed it off.’ I tried to laugh now, as if for example. It came out the most hideous trill. ‘But
Sam, some people, people like Max, don’t like to be rebuked.’

Sam’s hands stilled in his lap. He was listening; he wanted to believe me, I could tell.

‘So . . . so what he said to you . . . that would be revenge, Sam. Sour grapes. I’m so sorry.’

Two big tears plopped down onto Sam’s hands and he sniffed, hard. I shuffled round so that I was next to him, and this time when I went to put my arm around him he let me. I held him
against me; I rocked him in my arms. ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry,’ I whispered into his hair. ‘It must have been awful for you. That boy’s so . . .
cruel.’

After a while Sam pulled away from me, embarrassed now at being cuddled by his mum. He wiped his arm across his eyes.

‘Shall we go inside?’ I said and he nodded. ‘Sam,’ I said, oh so very carefully, ‘you don’t think Max might have forced himself on Lydia?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She was drunk.’

Ella was up now, loitering in the kitchen in her pyjamas. She should have been ready for school by now; we should have been on our way.

‘I didn’t know where you were,’ she wailed tearfully. ‘I thought there was no one here.’

‘Oh Ella,’ I said, too tired, too drained to deal with her now. ‘I was only outside.’

‘But I didn’t know that. And I’m late for school.’ She looked at Sam, who brushed his way past her and staggered zombielike up the stairs. ‘I’m not going to
school,’ she said. ‘If Sam’s not going to school, why should I?’

And I really didn’t care. I doubted I could have stayed awake to drive her there anyway.

I slept all morning, the black, dreamless sleep of oblivion; a brief reprieve. Sam slept too, and when he eventually got up he went straight downstairs to the den and turned on
the computer.

I heard him screaming from the kitchen where I was making a coffee. Screaming: there is no other word for it.

I slammed down my cup and ran to the den. Ella was watching TV in the living room, still in her pyjamas; she stared as I passed her, too frightened to move. I slammed into the den and there was
Sam, crouched down on the floor with his hands holding his head, no longer screaming but crying now, loudly; a deep, guttural moan.

I thought he was hurt.

‘What is it? What happened?’

I bent down to him but he pushed me away, standing up now, still with his hands clutching his head.

‘They all know,’ he wailed in despair. ‘Every single one.’

I looked at the computer, my heart pounding.

He had his Facebook page up, and there on his wall was message after message. Someone had taken a photo of Sam and Max fighting and posted it, with the caption ‘Max and Samantha fighting!!
Berry fights like a girl!!!’

Someone else had posted a picture of a topless model and written ‘MILF Berry’ underneath it. It took me a moment to work this out and when I did I felt the blood literally drain from
my head.

‘Oh my God,’ I said.

Beside me Sam was sobbing uncontrollably.

‘It’s lies,’ I said. ‘It’s nasty, nasty lies.’

But it made no difference now whether it was lies or not. It made no difference if Sam believed what I told him in the shed. It was out there; that was what mattered. The blood that had left my
head flooded back suddenly in a prickling, fizzing rush. Spots flashed in front of my eyes.

‘What’s happened?’ I heard Ella asking from the door.

‘Nothing,’ I snapped at her. ‘Get out.’

But she didn’t get out. She stood there, crying too. I yanked the computer plug from its socket, and lest she or Sam should ever see that poison again I took the scissors from the desk
drawer and started hacking through the cable.

‘Mum!’ Ella cried. ‘Stop!’ And she started wailing now, loud enough to compete with Sam.

‘Get out,’ I yelled at her again, so fiercely that she did. I heard her howling her way up the stairs.

‘Sam,’ I said. ‘He’s not going to get away with it. He’s not!’

‘What are you going to do?’ Sam shouted at me. ‘You’ve done enough, haven’t you, already? None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for you! My
life’s over.’

‘No it’s
not
. For God’s sake, Sam,’ I said in desperation, ‘you don’t give in to bullies. You stand up to them.’

‘You think that’s all this is? Don’t give in to bullies? You don’t know anything at all!’

He pushed past me, out of the den. As soon as I could get my legs to move I followed him, up the stairs. He was already in his room, stuffing clothes into his kit bag.

‘What are you doing?’ I said.

‘I’m leaving.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Sam, you can’t.’

He grabbed a handful of T-shirts from his drawers, and shoved them into the bag.

‘Sam, you can’t,’ I said again. ‘You’re only fifteen.’

‘I’ll go and stay with Dad.’

‘Sam, you can’t do that.’

‘Why? Doesn’t he want me either?’ He looked up at me then, his face an open pit of pain.

‘Sam, we both want you. You know that.’

‘I know my life here is finished,’ he said.

‘Sam, it’s late,’ I said. ‘It’ll be dark soon. How will you get to London?’

‘I’ll walk if I have to.’

‘Please . . . you’re being stupid.’

He pressed down on the contents of that bag, squeezing them in. ‘Well that’s me,’ he said. ‘Stupid, stupid Sam.’

‘Sam, you can’t go to London. Please, just stop this.’

He zipped up his bag. ‘No,’ he said.

I stood in the doorway, blocking his way.

‘Move,’ he said.

And I said, ‘No.’

‘Move,’ he said again, louder this time, but he didn’t touch me. He didn’t force me. My Sam is a kind and gentle boy, too good, far, far too good for this rotten world.
His eyes filled with tears. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be here any more.’

I put my hands on his arms. ‘Let me call your dad, first, please? Let me call him, and if you want to go there, we can make arrangements, safely, properly. Please. I can’t let you
just go off like this. Please, Sam, for me.’

‘OK,’ he said at last, and he sat on his bed with his bag beside me while I went downstairs to phone David.

It was twenty past five. I registered that in the part of my brain that will always register such things, that will always observe the practicalities; I am, after all, a
mother. David did not answer his direct line and I got put back to the receptionist.

‘I need to speak to David Berry,’ I said.

I waited while she tried the line that I had already tried myself. ‘He isn’t available,’ she said. ‘Can I take a message?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I need to speak to him. It’s important.’

Within seconds he was on the line. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said.

I said, ‘You need to come home.’

‘Why? What’s the matter?’

‘It’s Sam,’ I said and I started crying then, all those tears that had banked up inside me for so many miserable days.

‘What is it?’ he said, alarmed. ‘Is he ill, hurt?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘but something’s . . . happened. He’s . . . upset. He wants to go to London . . . now . . . says he’s going to stay with you . . .’

‘But he can’t,’ David said.

‘I
know
, but I can’t stop him. I said you’d come here . . . ’

‘But, Jane—’

‘
Please
,’ I said, my head, my throat too full of tears.

Seconds passed. At last he said, ‘OK. Give me ten minutes here. I’ll go back to the flat and get the car.’

Sam was still sitting on his bed when David arrived nearly four hours later, exhausted by the traffic and his own insular fears. Poor Sam, it was too long to wait for a lift;
he knew we had conspired against him. ‘I’m not staying here,’ he said to us both with all the helpless terror of someone caged. ‘I’ll go on my own if I have to.
I’ll go anywhere.’

‘OK, Sam,’ David said. ‘Let’s talk about it.’

‘I mean it,’ Sam said.

David sat on the bed beside him. ‘What happened?’

But Sam did not want to go through it all again. He did not want to talk about it at all. ‘Can’t we just
go
,’ he pleaded. ‘I’ve got my bag. I’m
ready.’

David looked at me, the frown deep between his brows, and I could see in his eyes the calculation, the realization, that he would not just be up and out at the crack of dawn tomorrow, back to
London and work. Oh no, he might need to stay a little longer than that; a few hours more at least. How very inconvenient, how very unplanned.

He’d called me on his mobile from his place in the predictable, endless traffic jam, crawling its way out of London, wanting to know what this was all about.

‘It’s something to do with a girl,’ I said evasively.

And he said, ‘A girl? I’m rushing home because Sam’s upset over a girl?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘You’re rushing home because you’re Sam’s father and he needs you.’

‘Look, Sam,’ he said now. ‘It’s a long drive back to London. And it’s dark. Let me sleep here tonight. Let’s all get some sleep. We’ll talk about it
tomorrow. We’ll sort something out. I promise.’

And Sam stared at his knees, disappointment and despair etched pitifully on his face.

‘Tell me,’ David said, so concise, so economical with his words. We’d left Sam in his room and Ella in hers, each of them miserable behind their closed doors.
It was late, and we were tired, too tired surely to talk tonight. I stood at the sink and filled a glass with water. I drank it down, and filled it again, playing for time. The darkness of the
night pressed against the window, solid, black as the coat of a bear.

‘I suppose you haven’t eaten,’ I said, though nor had we. ‘Do you want a sandwich or something?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said. He pulled a chair out from the table to sit down, scraping it noisily on the tiles and my nerves rattled. ‘Now tell me,’ he said again,
‘what’s going on.’

I turned to face him but I could not bring myself to sit down. How much would I have to tell him? How much would he find out anyway, from Sam, from Ella, from someone, somewhere along the line?
I thought of those pictures being bandied about on Facebook; I thought of Max hideously bragging. And oh how I wished this would all go away.

‘Sam and Max had a fight over a girl,’ I said.

‘Is that all?’

‘Pretty much.’

He sat there, frowning, considering me and my words.

‘I cannot believe you got me up here tonight just because Sam had a fight over a girl,’ David said.

‘I got you here because Sam was going to leave and try and find his way down to you in London if I didn’t,’ I said thickly. ‘I didn’t know what else I could do. I
do apologize if I have put you out.’

He winced, just slightly. ‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ he said. ‘You were right to call me. And I’ll always be here for Sam and Ella. You know that.’

I could feel the tears prickling at the back of my eyes. I was too tired for all this talking. I wanted to just hide myself away, and sleep.

But David wanted to know more. ‘Who’s the girl?’ he asked.

‘She’s called Lydia,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t know her.’

‘But you do.’

‘A bit. I’ve met her a couple of times.’ And I could picture her with her wavy blonde hair and light-brown eyes. She’d seemed like such a sweet girl; quiet and smiley;
certainly not the type that would just go upstairs with a boy like Max at a party. But perhaps I was wrong; you never can tell. And yet tiny fingertips of unease pressed their way up my spine.

‘So when was this fight?’ David asked.

‘Last Friday,’ I said. ‘At a party.’

‘Last Friday?’ I could see him, working this out now. And the realization that we kept things from him clouded his face, as if it actually hurt him, but what did he expect? ‘I
knew something was wrong,’ he said, more to himself than to me. Then, ‘It’s not like Sam to get into a fight, though.’

‘Yes, well,’ I said.

‘Yes, well, what?’

I looked at him, sitting there like a detective, sifting through whatever information he could glean from me. Time was that I would have trusted him with anything. Time was that he would have
been there for me, no matter what. But his betrayal had ruined all that. There was a barrier between us, impenetrable.

‘Just I expect he had good reason,’ I said. ‘That’s all.’

‘Do you have to be so cryptic?’ he said. And when I didn’t reply he sighed.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to Sam in the morning. I’m sure things will seem better then.’

And oh how I wished he might be right.

David went off to the den to pull out the sofa bed for the night, and I went upstairs to fetch him some bedding. When I came back down he was standing there, waiting for me. In
his hand he held the partially severed lead to the computer, with the plug dangling from its end.

‘What the hell happened here?’ he said.

I stopped short, duvet and pillow bunched in my arms. I had forgotten about the computer. Not about those pictures on it, not about those oh-so-witty captions no doubt circling now among all of
Sam’s peers, but about what I had done with the scissors. Did I really think that by hacking at the lead I could make the damage disappear?

‘There were pictures on Sam’s Facebook page,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want him to see them.’

He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Couldn’t you have just turned off the computer? Did you have to physically break it?’

‘I didn’t want anyone seeing them,’ I said, my mouth dry, my heart beating all over the place, erratic, too fast.

‘But why?’ he said. ‘What were these pictures?’

‘They were just . . . horrible,’ I said, my voice breaking on the word. I sat down on the sofa bed, still clasping that duvet, my legs too weak to hold me.