The Safest Place (25 page)

‘There is nothing between us now,’ he said, as if he thought I had not understood. ‘Diana’s been very good letting me stay so long, but I need to find a place of my
own.’

‘You mean you broke up our marriage for nothing?’ I should have been pleased. I should have been delighted that things hadn’t worked out with Diana; I should have been sitting
there gloating. But emotion is a funny thing. Instead of all the things I would have thought that I would feel I was struck by an icy outrage. It started in my heart and spread outwards, tingling
into my fingertips. I felt cheated, and then cheated again. ‘You put me, and our children, through all this for nothing?’ I said.

Part of me wanted him to plead to come back to me now, so that I could have the pleasure of refusing him, if nothing else. But he didn’t. ‘Diana was the result,’ he said.
‘Not the cause.’ And oh how that hurt. ‘This whole thing’ – he threw his hands out expansively – ‘has been a disaster.’

‘So you want to sell up and be done.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’ I threw myself back into the sofa, as if pinning myself to the house.

‘Jane, I cannot afford two homes,’ he said, keeping his voice down, though I was not so careful.

‘Then stay where you are. Stay with Diana.’

‘I can’t do that.’ He was struggling now, to stay so calm. ‘We have no choice. I cannot keep paying the mortgage.’

‘You’re blackmailing me.’

He flushed, two dark streaks on his otherwise pale face. ‘I’m not,’ he said.

‘Yes you are. You’re forcing me and our children out of our home.’

‘For God’s sake, Jane. I have to live somewhere too. This isn’t sustainable.’

I remember sobbing then; this weird choking sound catching in my throat. It was the absolute finality of it; the dismantling of all my dreams. Clear as a picture I could see the day we first
moved here; the exact moment when we pulled up outside in the sunshine, and the children ran, whooping, from the car. ‘We can’t just move,’ I said. ‘What about the children?
This is our home.’

‘I’m sorry, Jane,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you’ll find somewhere nearby, if that’s what you want. I’ll help you all I can.’

‘I don’t want your help!’

‘I’ll help you tell the children, I mean; we’ll tell them together.’

‘I don’t want to tell them. I don’t want to move!’

‘Jane,’ he said, spreading his hands out to me, hands full of nothing but air. ‘What else can we do?’

We have no choice, he said.
No choice
. That was the way things were, in his eyes. He had gone, and moved on from us, with or without his Diana.

He did not want to come back. Not to me, not to this place.

We didn’t need to tell the children. They’d heard most of it through the door. That night, when David had gone, they skulked around me, loitering as I made
supper.

‘Are we moving?’ Sam asked, doing his best to make his voice sound bored.

‘Not at the moment,’ I said briskly, tipping spaghetti into a pan.

‘Will we go back to London?’ Ella asked, adding quickly, ‘If we move.’ And then, as if she’d realized what it would mean, ‘But I’m friends with Abbie
now.’

‘We’re not moving though are we, Mum?’ Sam said. ‘You just said so.’

Then Ella said, ‘But what about Dad? Could we live with him again if we moved?’

‘God,’ Sam said. ‘You are so stupid.’

Now that Ella was at secondary school, there was no more meeting up with other women at the school gates. I drove Ella and Sam to school, sat in the traffic through town, and
literally let them out of the car wherever I could find a spot near the school to pull over for a second. And then I drove on. And of course it was unthinkable that I should approach the gates in
person at home-time; oh no, I had to loiter in the car with the engine running, parked up on the kerb somewhere nearby, along with umpteen other useful but never-to-be-acknowledged mothers. Unless
I met them both back at Melanie’s. She was the only adult I spoke to most days. Who would believe that friends were once a commodity I had seen fit to fritter and waste, so plentiful was the
supply? Now I had but one friend, and lacked the sociability to make any others. I had become unappealing even to myself, and it was easier to hide away.

For a long time I’d thought about phoning Karen, my friend from back in London. We had known each other since Sam was a baby; we’d met at a post-natal coffee morning and been friends
ever since. Her son Joseph and my Sam had grown up together, gone through school together. I felt regret now that I had so easily let her go, but I’d been too full of my move here, and my
belief that a new school and a whole new environment was the right thing for my Sam, for all of us. The loss of a few old friends had seemed a price worth paying when I was flushed with the thrill
of our new country life. Friends were two a penny back then, and I was naive enough to believe that those we left behind would somehow still be with us; that they’d be as thrilled with our
move as we were, that they would never tire of slapping up the motorway through the Friday night traffic to visit us and admire our so-much-better life.

I had not spoken to Karen for well over a year. We’d exchanged Christmas cards, that was all. But I’d thought about phoning her often, and one wet morning in a moment of excruciating
loneliness, I did.

Ridiculously, my heart was pounding as I dialled her number. I thought she might be out and half hoped that she would be; then I could leave her a message and give her the option of calling me.
But how cowardly, how silly that was. Surely, old friends can always pick up the reins. Old friends will always be there.

She answered on the third ring. ‘Hello?’ she said.

‘Karen,’ I said. ‘Hi. It’s Jane.’

‘Jane,’ she said in surprise.

‘Hi,’ I said again. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine,’ I said, and quickly, ‘We haven’t spoken for ages.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Well, we’re all busy, I suppose . . .’

And so we carried on. Superficial, stilted chit-chat. The awkwardness was palpable. I held the phone in one hand and slipped my other hand inside my sweatshirt and pinched at the soft skin of my
stomach with my fingernails. Finally I braced myself to say, ‘Actually, things haven’t been that good lately. Between David and me.’

She said nothing.

I forced myself to continue. ‘He was seeing someone else. Can you believe it? I found out after we’d been away for the weekend. Some colleague from work. Karen, it’s been
awful.’

Still she said nothing, but I could hear her breathing.

‘He’s staying in London now,’ I said.

And she said, ‘I know.’

‘
You know
?’

‘Yes, he – he told Ed. I think they met up for a drink a couple of times.’

‘Oh,’ I said.

After a moment she said, ‘I was really sorry to hear about it.’ Though not, apparently, sorry enough to have phoned me. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I was just on my way out.
I can’t really talk now. I’ll call you back, soon.’

She wouldn’t though; we both knew that. I cannot tell you how betrayed I felt. David and Ed had only ever met because of us; she and I were the real friends. That’s what I’d
thought. The hurt of it stuck in my throat.

The happiness had gone from our house, snuffed out like the flame of a candle. I drove Sam and Ella to school on damp, gloomy mornings and killed the hours in between until it
was time to collect them again. I wandered around the town, making the most of any errands. So far, I’d avoided actually going into the one and only estate agents in town, though David had of
course; David had driven up one Saturday and arranged the valuation. I had signed the agreement, numb, thinking still this wasn’t real. Still there was time for us to stop, and go back to
before. But one morning I looked in the estate agent’s window, and there it was: our house, photographed with the autumn sunlight glinting off the windows. There was my car in the drive, and
the front wheel of Sam’s bicycle peeping out from around the side. Ella’s riding boots were propped beside the front door. I stared at that picture of my home, feeling as if the strings
of my heart had been cut.

‘You want to get yourself a lawyer,’ Melanie said when I talked to her about it, and no doubt she was right. But that way lay the end, and for me that end might well be a tiny
ex-council place in one of the less desirable villages around here, the kind of place that people like David and I always bypassed in our search for the country proper. A place where dogs barked
all day and kids roared around in uninsured cars for kicks. Our house was so heavily mortgaged that with my small portion such a place would be all I could afford. The prospect was unthinkable, a
hideous, flipside nightmare to my whole country dream. Yet neither could I go back to London. I could not uproot the children and make them change schools again. And besides, what would I ever
afford in London? I pictured David and me in identical, soulless flats in matching tower blocks – perhaps even the
same
block, high, high above the ground with the traffic roaring
below. Oh sure, I painted a pretty bleak picture for myself, and maybe things wouldn’t be quite that bad, but I had moved here for a better life; for me, for my family. How could I admit it
had failed?

My volunteering at the primary school had come to an end now that Ella had left and I needed to get a proper job, and one that paid well, but what? And where? Opportunities around here were few,
and whatever I did it had to be local; the children needed me as a means of transport if nothing else. Of the other women I knew those who worked did so either seasonally or part-time, and got paid
a pittance.

‘Come and work at the school canteen with me,’ Melanie said, and then, just in case I hadn’t got her point, ‘It was never in my career plan to be a dinner lady
either.’

I scanned the paper, hoping something would come up.

At home, I listened to my children’s endless complaints about school, and homework, and our inadequately stocked fridge, if I listened to them at all. They bickered so much more than they
used to, now that they were at the same school. Sam was sweet on a girl called Lydia; I knew this because Ella teased him mercilessly. She and her friends spied on him at break-time, following him
about, giggling if he caught them.

‘She’s so annoying,’ Sam complained to me. ‘Tell her to stop.’

‘Oh, Sam, she’s just being a girl,’ I said. ‘Just ignore her.’

‘Lydia, Lydia,’ Ella sang under her breath and Sam flushed scarlet.

‘Mum, tell her!’

‘Ella, stop it,’ I said.

‘Lydia’s got lovely long blonde hair,’ Ella said, drawing an imaginary mane down her shoulders with her fingers. ‘Abbie said Max said Sam can’t take his big blue
eyes off her.’ She batted her own eyelashes, tauntingly. And every time Sam went out, she asked, ‘Will Lydia be there?’

Still, at least Sam had something to distract from the misery of home. Lucky him.

I watched the leaves falling from the trees; so many leaves, forever drifting on the breeze. Once, I looked out of my living-room window at the hideous For Sale sign that had been slapped up
outside our house just as a gust of wind snatched those leaves up again and whirled them around, a mesmerizing tornado of red and gold and brown. I always loved the autumn here, on bright days; the
colours, the freshness of the air and the lovely prospect of the planning for Christmas. Not so now. Winter loomed ahead; I could not bear even to think about it.

One Saturday in early October David drove up early so that he could fix the trellis that had come loose at the front, and sort out the garden; we had to keep the place tidy
now, we had to keep it presentable. Who knew when some prospective buyer might come wandering by, some other family wanting to escape the city for the good life, perhaps? While he was here he drove
into town to visit the estate agent’s. To check on progress, he said, to try and get things moving.

He tried to make out he was helping me and came back with a handful of details of other random and no doubt totally inappropriate properties around here. That he had so quickly selected a number
of places he deemed suitable for me and his children to live in, and that he had therefore already stuck a price limit on those places, infuriated me. It made me feel as if he thought anything
would do. He placed the details down on the kitchen table and there they lay, fit for composting, nothing more. I would not touch them. I would not play along.

‘At least look at them, won’t you?’ he said. ‘We have to start somewhere.’

I ignored him, and he sighed.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘the guy fixed up a viewing while I was there. They’re coming round on Monday at about four. I told him you’d let him know if that time’s not
convenient.’

‘Of course it’s not convenient,’ I said. ‘I’ll be picking the kids up from school.’

David flushed, ashamed at himself for being so stupid, I presume, as well as with irritation at me. ‘Phone them and change it to a time that is convenient,’ he said. ‘Or
we’ll have to let the agent have a key.’

‘No time is convenient,’ I said. ‘And they’re not having a key.’

‘Do you have to be so stubborn?’ he said. ‘This really isn’t fair on me.’

‘On
you
?’ Heat rushed into my head, roaring in my ears. ‘It isn’t fair on you?’

‘I need a place to live too,’ he said.

‘I don’t care if you live on a fucking park bench after what you have done to me,’ I yelled at him. ‘You are not fair!’

Max came round that night, after David had gone back to London. Jake dropped him off in Melanie’s car. Abbie was supposed to be coming too but she’d gone down with
a throat infection, ruining Melanie’s plan for the evening. Actually I was quite glad; I had to make more of an effort when both the girls were there. I had to be more attentive and more fun,
and provide nice things to eat. And no way could I be fun tonight.

I could not stop crying.

Max had brought a couple of films round on DVD; the boys would be closeted in the den all evening, Ella too. I sat in my kitchen and I looked out at the black, black sky beyond my window. The
darkness was infinite; you could be in a hole looking out there, you could be buried alive. No stars tonight, no streetlights ever.