The Safest Place (19 page)

It’s not that I didn’t love them. I did love them, with all my heart, as always. But for the last however many years my life had been all about them, and David, and the servicing and
facilitating of the family unit. I was housekeeper, cook, chauffeur, planner and PR, and how diligently I had tended to it all. I was the cement holding the family together and the donkey dragging
it on. But did any of us really want that any more? I didn’t want it, certainly; I didn’t want the shabby remains. As for my kids, what good would it do them having me pretend that we
were carrying on as normal, a family still, with all its ridiculous, unnecessary rules? Rules not imposed by David especially, any more than by me, but by our combined expectation of how family
life should be for nice, middle-class people like us. You think you have no rules, but you do. What you eat, the way that you eat; where you shop. The language you use when you speak and the tone
of your voice; even the way that you argue. The programmes you admit to watching on TV and the other programmes that you watch in secret. The programmes that you let your kids watch; the token
division of chores, times spent on homework, the careful rationing of screen time. The way you line up your shoes in the hall and the colour of your toilet paper. The way you arrange fruit in that
ceramic bowl on the kitchen table, and stick your flowers in that earthenware jug. They’re all rules. And they no longer applied.

I was more grateful for Melanie’s friendship than ever. Everyone seemed to know that all was not well between David and me, from old Mr Arnold up the lane with his wry
nod of the head and his, ‘Ah, well, ah well,’ to all those women at the school gates. You can’t keep secrets in a place like this. Once one knew, they all knew. I hated the looks
and the comments, and the thought of them all talking behind my back.

‘How are you managing?’ was a question I heard too often, however kindly meant. ‘Will you be staying here?’ was another.

‘Take no notice,’ Melanie said. ‘It gives them something to talk about, that’s all.’

She took me under her wing, like a broken chick. She took charge. I didn’t need to vent my hurt or anger about David in her presence because she understood how I felt, and boxed my
feelings into manageable chunks. Whereas left to my own devices I would have swung from weeping on my bed with a clutch of David’s left-behind clothes in my arms one minute to ripping up
those same clothes with my bare hands the next, she simply gathered up a pile of his socks and T-shirts and oddments that had slipped through with the rest of the laundry and now languished like a
bad reminder on the stairs, and stuffed them in the outside bin.

‘Don’t need that lot cluttering up the place,’ she said.

And if she phoned on a Sunday evening after David had gone and could tell by my voice that I had been both drinking and crying, she’d get in her car and drive straight over. She
wouldn’t take my glass away, she’d pour me another. She’d tell my miserable children to give me a break and sort themselves out for the evening, close the living-room door on them
and settle herself on the sofa with me and that bottle, and a film maybe; something funny or uplifting about women breaking away – you know the sort of thing.

On one such evening when she was round, Sam walked into the living room complaining that he’d got no clean PE kit and no clean uniform for school on Monday. Ordinarily, this would have
lead to some sort of exchange of blame and guilt between Sam and me, but when I opened my mouth to speak Melanie beat me to it.

‘Go and wash them then,’ she said.

We were watching some corny road movie on DVD. The remote control was on the arm of the sofa by Melanie but she didn’t pause the film, nor did she turn down the volume. She didn’t
even look at Sam as she spoke, but I did, and through my drunken blur I saw him hesitating there in the doorway with the colour creeping into his face, not sure what to do.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘They won’t be dry by the morning.’

‘Then you’ll have to wear them dirty,’ Melanie said brightly, still watching the TV.

Poor Sam. He stood there, so horribly uncomfortable. He looked at me – for what? A different answer? A solution to the crisis of the unwashed clothes? If it had been just me and him I
might at least have tried to do something, but it wasn’t just me and him, and so I sat there.

‘Oh, Sam,’ Melanie said, ‘if you’re going to the kitchen be a love and fetch us some more wine, would you?’

And when he left the room she looked at me, simultaneously laughing and rolling her eyes. ‘How sweet is he?’ she said. ‘Worrying about his washing!’

I admired her blasé decisiveness. I let her prop me up.

It was Sam’s birthday on 8 July, and in the general meltdown of family life there was a good chance that it might have been more or less overlooked apart from the false
jollity of a few presents and cards and the agony of a telephone call from his father in London, but here, again, Melanie intervened.

We were round her house after school; it was the Tuesday, just three days before his birthday.

‘So what are you doing for your birthday, Sam?’ she asked over the background cacophony of shrieking girls and TV and Max’s ambitious guitaring. ‘Got to do something
special for your fifteenth.’

Sam, as ever, blushed under her singular attention, and muttered an indecipherable reply.

‘You want to have a party, Sam,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t he, Max?’ She raised her voice over the noise. ‘Max! Sam wants to have a party for his fifteenth
birthday!’

‘Cool,’ said Max. He rammed his fingers ear-jarringly over the guitar strings then flung the guitar to one side. Then he sat himself down on the arm of Melanie’s sofa, right up
close to her, and beamed at us with his wide, cat-like smile.

One of us – Sam, or me, I do not remember which – started mumbling stuff such as, ‘I’m not sure’ and, ‘it’s a bit short notice
,
’ but our
excuses were feeble, and hopelessly without effect.

‘Go on,’ Melanie insisted, steamrollering over any objections. ‘It’s just what Sam needs. Cheer him up a bit.’

Sam, who is not, never has been, and I am sure never will be remotely the party animal, squirmed like a mouse in a trap. I felt for him. Inwardly, I was squirming too.

‘Oh you two,’ Melanie said, picking up on our unease. ‘Don’t you worry. We’ll help you. Won’t we, Max? Max will know who to invite.’

And Max grinned at us, 100 per cent his mother’s son.

So that Friday, whether he wanted it or not, Sam had a party at our house. Max did the inviting; really, it was his party, with Sam as a sort of mascot for the night. I’d
hoped they’d be outside but that night it was pouring with rain, and so there were probably fifty kids, boys and girls, squeezed into our den, spilling over into the living room, and some of
them, as the night wore on, disappearing upstairs.

Ella was staying over with Abbie. I could, perhaps, have sat it out in my bedroom with a book, but I didn’t want to be hidden away. I wanted a chance to see the kids, to put names to
faces. Also, I thought my presence would ensure some order. So I loitered in the kitchen, in a state of tension. I remembered all too well the parties I’d been to as a teenager, and for that
reason alone I never thought I would be hosting a party in my house, for my own teenager. But then I never thought I would be alone, either, while their father lived elsewhere with somebody
else.

The kids brought their own alcohol and took it into the den with them, some quite openly, some half-heartedly hiding it under their jackets. Not too much, I hoped, but I didn’t see how I
could stop them. Sam was young in his year, and many of the others were closer to sixteen. Some of them wandered into the kitchen from time to time, but they didn’t stay long, not with me
sitting there. A few even helped themselves to the soft drinks that I’d naively stacked on the counter. Midway through, Sam walked in, his face white with, I presumed, the effort of it all. I
sent him back impatiently. ‘Go on,’ I said, ‘just enjoy yourself.’

Steadily, I drank my way through one bottle of wine and the best part of another, and thus I loosened up a little. I made myself relax. They’d got the music cranked up frighteningly loud
in the den but not loud enough to kill the screeching laughter of one girl from somewhere upstairs in my house, and the equally piercing weeping of another, nor the dreaded death-groan of vomiting
from the bathroom. I told myself it was to be expected; it was no big deal. And I thought how uptight David would have been if he’d been there.

Gradually, they started pouring into the kitchen en masse in search of more drink, some of them in search of food. Somewhere around midnight I had the toaster on, popping up one round after
another, while these kids I’d never even met before sat around my table tucking into toast and butter, toast and jam. They filled my house with their chatter and their laughter. Some were
drunk; some quite hideously so. I made them drink water, I saw that they were OK. It is a horrible truth that it easier to be kinder to other people’s kids than it is to your own. And
besides, who was I to judge them when I was probably quite drunk myself?

Sam lurked in the background. I knew he was there but I don’t actually remember seeing him. I was busy with his friends, or rather, Max’s friends. Max moved around the kitchen beside
me, totally at home. He passed me bread from the freezer, he passed me plates. He said, ‘Oh thanks, Jane, you’re too good to us,’ as I turned on the oven for chips. He was more
comfortable in my house that night than my own son. And, it would seem, more comfortable around me.

Many of them stayed over. They had no choice out there where there was no transport, no way home at all but for a willing parent, dragged out too late on those dark, forbidding roads. They slept
on the floor of the den, mostly; some in the living room. Some migrated upstairs to the comfort of Sam’s and Ella’s beds; Sam himself was relegated to his bedroom floor. For a time,
there were two boys and a girl fast asleep on my own bed. I told myself I didn’t mind, that I was fine with this, as I moved them off good-naturedly, seeing them settled elsewhere. And then I
lay down for a while with my heart pounding, exhausted. It seemed the party would go on all night. The music boomed out from downstairs, it stopped, it boomed out again.

I remember, vaguely, walking about my house in the early hours, checking that everyone was OK. I turned semi-unconscious boys onto their sides; I found blankets to tuck over girls. I
didn’t sleep; not at all. Too soon the sun rose in the sky. The wine that I’d drunk had shrunk my brain into a hard, dry nut, rattling inside my skull, yet I was still on a strange,
fragile high. Slowly, they began to rouse, some more readily than others. Doors banged, toilets flushed. Again, they found their way to my kitchen, but oh so subdued now. Among the empty bottles
and sticky spills and last night’s toast plates I made tea, filling the cups on rotation. There was no more bread. Some ferreted in the cupboards in search of cereal and biscuits; they ate
whatever they could find. Many didn’t want to eat at all. Soon they started drifting off in threes and fours, squeezing themselves into the cars that pulled up outside to collect them, and
then there were just Sam and me, the mess and the slight bewilderment that this had gone on in my house at all.

I thought the party would make Sam happy. I thought he would be grateful that I had done this for him. I especially thought so as I cleaned up the disgusting mess in both my
bathrooms and struggled to remove dry vomit from the carpet in the den. What other mother would be so relaxed, so tolerant? Wasn’t he lucky, that he had me?

Wasn’t he?

‘Your father would never have put up with this,’ I said, feeling the need to ram it home.

He was tired, miserably so. He’s never been good with late nights, my Sam. He staggered through the day like a zombie, no help at all with anything. In his tiredness he seemed angry with
me; petulant, like a small child. And I felt irritated with him now that his friends had all gone.

Later, Melanie turned up, bringing Ella home. She had Abbie with her, and also Max, who’d got a lift back home earlier with somebody else. They arrived at just that point in the afternoon
when I thought I might literally collapse with exhaustion, yet their presence tripped me over into a new lease of life. I was so wired I was shaking.

‘Look at you,’ Melanie said. ‘I think you could do with a drink.’

She picked up a half-empty bottle in the kitchen, sniffed it, and poured us both a glass.

‘I had no sleep,’ I said emphatically.

She said, ‘Max said it was a good party.’

Abbie had gone upstairs with Ella. I assumed that Max had gone off too, in search of Sam, but then there he was, joining us in the kitchen.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Excellent party.’

Unlike Sam, he seemed remarkably together. He slouched against the counter by the sink, still in last night’s clothes. I remember that; and I remember thinking how strange it was that I
should notice. Max’s hair is thick and straight; it fell across his forehead heavy and unwashed. His skin had a slight sheen to it, and above his top lip was the dark hint of the need for a
shave.

‘Was it OK?’ I said, fussing now, unable to be still. I shoved all those empty cans into a bin bag, to stick out for recycling. The metal clamoured against my ears. The dishwasher
was open. I squeezed in a couple more plates, a cup, the knives left lying around covered in jam, then stuck in a tablet and slammed the door. The machine cranked and groaned into life. Then I
stood still and sipped my wine, suddenly light-headed.

‘Excellent,’ Max said again, so calm, so easy.

‘I’m surprised you’re not at home sleeping,’ I said to him. ‘My Sam’s completely shattered.’

‘No stamina,’ he said with a smile.

‘This is a good house for a party,’ Melanie said.

‘It is,’ I agreed. ‘They were in the den most of the time. It’s perfect for them. That’s what we thought when we bought this house – that the den would be
perfect for teenagers.’ I twittered on, hyper now, unable to stop. ‘You should make use of it,’ I said to Max. ‘You and the others. Come here at weekends. Come and use our
den.’