The Safest Place (32 page)

David could not take the next day off work too. He had an important meeting with clients, a pitch he felt his job depended on.

‘I’ll get up early and drive in,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow evening – as soon as I can.’ He paused. ‘If that’s all right with
you.’

‘Do what you like,’ I said.

It was late and we were in the kitchen. David was sitting at the table, his shoulders hunched. I found a half-empty bottle of wine in the fridge and poured him a glass; he certainly looked like
he needed it. For hours he had been up there with Sam, though Sam wouldn’t talk to him at all now. Nor would he come out of his room. He would not forgive David for not taking him back to
London.

‘Jane, I feel bad about having to leave you at all,’ he said.

Those words: on what level did he mean them? Wasn’t it a little too late now for regret?

Coolly, I said, ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

He put his head in his hands, spreading his fingers into his hair. ‘This is just such a mess,’ he said.

I heard him leave the house at just gone four. It was pitch dark; night-time still, and raining, a steady pitter-patter hitting the roof and the trees. I heard David moving
around downstairs; the running of water through the pipes. The click of his shoes on the tiled floor of the hall; the careful opening and closing of doors.

No sound escaped me any more.

The front door clicked shut behind him. I listened to his feet crunch across the gravel, and the slow, depressing start of the car. I listened as he drove away down our lane, the tyres swishing
on the wet ground, and faded into the world beyond.

I buried my head into my pillow, wrapping it around my head, pressing it against my ears.

Sam would not go to school.

‘I’m never going there again,’ he said. ‘Never. I don’t care what you try and do.’

‘Come on, Sam,’ I said, so tired, so weary from all this. ‘You have to go to school. It’s the law. You know what your father said.’

Sam glared at me in disgust. ‘You think I care what he says?’ he shouted at me. ‘What has he got to do with anything? He doesn’t even live here any more.’ He jabbed
his finger at me, my sad little boy. ‘He is just a liar. You both are. And if you try and make me go to that school I will run away and I will never come back. I mean it.’

Ella started crying. ‘I don’t want to go either,’ she wailed. ‘I hate it there now too.’

‘For God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘This has got nothing to do with you.’

‘Yes it has!’ she cried. ‘I hate school and I hate it here. All anyone ever does is argue. If Sam’s running away so am I.’

‘Sam’s not running away,’ I said.

Still in my nightdress, I went outside to start the car. It was pouring with rain and the morning was pitch black, yet those few seconds alone in my car were blissful. For those few seconds, I
could cry. I turned the ignition over; it spluttered, and failed. I waited the count of ten seconds and tried again; our daily damp-weather ritual. A good ten minutes it took to get the car
started, a good ten minutes in which to consider the unrelenting meanness of the morning darkness. Nothing was on my side here, nothing at all.

After the car finally rumbled into life I stomped back to the house; in that short distance my nightdress was soaked. I grabbed Ella by the arm.

‘We’re going to school,’ I said.

‘No,’ she yelled, letting her legs give out from under her.

I yanked her arm hard before I let it go, and then she sat there on the cold floor, rubbing at it, as if I’d hurt her. And she cried. No one cries like an 11-year-old girl; the pitch of it
split through my head.

I slammed my hands into my hair. ‘What do you want from me?’ I screamed at her, at Sam too. ‘If you don’t go to school you’ll be taken in to care. Is that what you
want? Is it?’

‘Yes,’ Ella sobbed. ‘If it means we don’t have to live here any more.’

At three o’clock I was still in my nightdress, locked in my house by the hammering rain, having my kids’ misery rammed down my throat. I felt like I would explode.
Already it was getting dark. There was no escape. Ella had not stopped crying all day, as if she was crying on behalf of all of us.

What now? I could see no end.

This was Max’s fault, all of it. I wanted that boy to pay.

They’d be coming out of school in half an hour. I grabbed an old jacket off the pegs by the door and flung it on over my nightie; I stuck my bare feet into wellington boots. And I went out
to my car, swearing to God I would commit murder if it didn’t start first time. It did, for the first time ever, and I drove along those lanes like I have never driven before. I didn’t
even care about the rain bucketing on to the windscreen, nor the slackness of the brakes on those wet, dark roads. Oh yes, I courted fate, right then; what else had I got to lose? I covered a
twenty-minute journey in ten, only slowing when I hit the traffic into town.

I pulled up outside the school gates at 3.25. Right outside, bumping my tyres up onto the pavement.

I was looking for Lydia.

I’d only met her a couple of times; really, I couldn’t even be sure if I would recognize her now. How would I pick her out from all these other girls that looked so much the same
with their long hair and their princess faces?

The rain flooded across the windscreen and I kept the engine running and the wipers going full pelt; still the glass kept on steaming up and I had to rub it and rub it again with the sleeve of
my jacket.

The kids started streaming out, some huddled under umbrellas, most of them just running, heads down into the rain. How would I see her? How would I stop her in time? I wound down the window and
leaned out, and the rain came beating in. That could be her, or that girl, there.

‘Lydia!’ I called out. Faces turned, looked at me in curiosity, looked at me as though I was mad.

‘Lydia!’

A couple of girls slowed down and sniggered. No matter, at least she’d hear me when she did appear. I saw several faces from Sam’s year; kids who’d been in my house. I hoped to
God I saw Lydia before Max came along – and then there she was.

‘Lydia!’

She turned and looked towards the car, squinting into the rain. She frowned and carried on walking but I called her again; I started rolling the car along the pavement after her, still leaning
out the window.

‘Lydia! I’m Jane Berry – Sam’s mum,’ I called, in case she didn’t remember me.

‘What do you want?’ she hissed at me, still walking, hugging her bag to her chest.

‘I want to talk to you,’ I shouted after her, the rain catching in my mouth. There was an audience gathering now; they had to jump to get out the way of my car.

‘Why?’ She stopped and turned to me, her face scarlet.

‘Get in,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t.’ So I turned off the engine, started getting out the car. And they laughed at me, those kids gathered around; laughed at me in my
nightdress and wellies. How I hated them. How I hated Lydia, too, for breaking my Sam’s heart.

‘OK,’ she said, and she scurried round to the passenger door, opened it and threw herself into the seat, hunching down low to try and hide herself from her friends. She held her bag
on her lap and she looked at me, and I could see her fear.

I realized I was breathing noisily and I tried to quieten myself. I wiped my hand across my wet face, pushing back my hair. The windows had steamed up totally, locking us into a cave.

‘I want to know what happened at that party,’ I said.

Poor Lydia. She looked terrified.

‘With Max,’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ she said. And she turned as if to get back out of the car. I leant across her, holding her down.

She stared at me in alarm.

‘Did he rape you?’

‘No.’ Her eyes were as frightened as a rabbit’s. ‘Please, just let me go.’

But I wouldn’t. I held my arm across her. And then I realized what I was doing; I loosened that arm, I softened my hand. I patted the bag on her lap; a friendly gesture, I hoped.

‘Did he, Lydia? Did he force you to have sex with him? You must tell me.’

Her eyes filled with tears. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘I was drunk,’ she said. ‘I don’t want my parents to know. They’d kill me.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I’m not! Please don’t tell my parents. Please. I just want to forget it.’

She was crying. I had to let her go. She scrambled out of the car, banging the door behind her. For a while I sat there in my steamed-up car, my heart pounding, my breath coming hard and
fast.

She had to be lying.

I whacked the fan on full speed to try to clear the windscreen, wiping it at the same time with my arm. Most of the kids had dispersed now. Max would have come out the gates at some point;
he’d probably seen my car. And now he’d be sauntering along on his smug way home. I couldn’t let him get away with it.

My car was facing the wrong way; I had to bump my way off the pavement into the incoming traffic and do a U-turn. Several cars blasted their horns at me; I nearly hit a couple of boys dashing
across the road in the rain.

Max was almost at his house when I spotted him. I slammed the car to a halt in the middle of the road alongside him and opened the door. ‘Max!’ I yelled, leaning right out, but he
ignored me, and carried on walking. A car came up behind and beeped me to move. So I drove on, winding my window down. ‘Max!’ I yelled again, and he started walking faster, breaking
into a run as he got near to his house. He scuttled up to his front door, closing it quickly behind him.

Rage burned inside me.

I had to find somewhere to park but there was nowhere. I ended up leaving the car right down past the petrol station and then had to run all the way back to Melanie’s house; I was drenched
when I got there, my bare legs raw from the cold. I hammered on Melanie’s front door, pounding it with my fist.

Abbie answered. She opened it just a crack, peering round with wide eyes.

‘I want to see Max,’ I said.

She opened the door a little wider, and from somewhere inside Melanie called, ‘Who is it, Abs?’

‘It’s Jane,’ Abbie shouted back, and she smiled at me, a familiar habit of a response.

I pushed my way inside and stood dripping on their carpet. Melanie came out of the downstairs bathroom, wiping her hands on her jeans.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hello.’

‘I want to see Max,’ I said.

She looked me up and down and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I don’t know if he’s in,’ she said.

‘He is in,’ I said, and I turned my head to the stairs and yelled, ‘Max!’ at the top of my voice.

Abbie ran to her mum, startled.

‘Now just you hang on a minute—’ Melanie said but I yelled again.

‘Max!’

‘Jane!’ Melanie said. ‘What’s this about?’

‘I want to speak to Max,’ I said.

And she said, ‘You’ll speak to me first.’

I stared at her. ‘OK,’ I said, but then we heard Max’s footsteps, creeping down the stairs. Into the room he came, as if everything in the world was normal, an easy smile upon
his face.

‘Hi, Jane,’ he said, and I wanted to slap him.

‘I want to talk to you,’ I said.

‘What’s this about?’ Melanie said.

I stared at Max. ‘Do you want to tell her or shall I?’

‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just some stupid misunderstanding.’

‘I don’t agree with you, Max,’ I said.

‘Max,’ Melanie said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Maybe I should speak to Jane on her own,’ Max said, the ease flickering from his eyes now.

‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Melanie said. She turned from Max to me. ‘You don’t just come barging into my house talking to my son like this.’

‘Please, Mum, just leave it,’ Max pleaded.

‘I think Abbie might like to go upstairs,’ I said.

Melanie narrowed her eyes at me then she gave Abbie a quick shove. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘upstairs.’

Abbie complained for just a second; of course I didn’t think at the time that she would hear it all anyway, listening from the stairs. Hear it all, and then tell it all to my Ella, at
school. Oh no, I didn’t think of that, right then.

‘Well?’ Melanie demanded, hands on hips. ‘What the hell is going on?’

I looked at Max. My heart was slamming inside my chest. ‘Shall we tell her what you’ve done?’ I said.

He was really squirming now, like a rat in oil.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘This has all got out of hand.’

‘Indeed it has,’ I said.

‘I’ll apologize if that’s what you want,’ Max said. ‘I’m sorry, OK?’

But I wanted more than a surly apology. I wanted an admission. I wanted Max to acknowledge what he had done.

I jabbed my finger at the air in front of his face. ‘Sorry for what, though, Max? For what you did to me? For what you did to Lydia? For what you said to Sam?’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Melanie pushed herself between us, slapping my hand away from Max’s face. Automatically, Max slunk behind her. How close they were, this
family; how tight.

I leaned around Melanie so that I could still see Max. ‘There is a word for what you did to me. You know what that word is, don’t you, Max? That word is rape.’

The colour drained from Max’s face. ‘I never raped anyone,’ he said.

Melanie stared at me, as stunned as if I’d slapped her. ‘How dare you?’ she said. And then, as she realized the greater implication of my words. ‘You? You and my son
– that’s absolutely disgusting.’

‘Yes it is,’ I said. ‘He came up to my room when he was staying in my house and he forced himself on me.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ Max said, half sobbing now.

‘Oh yes it was,’ I said. ‘You completely abused my trust.’

‘He’s only fifteen for God’s sake!’ Melanie yelled. ‘You come round here crying rape – you want to be locked up!

‘You know what you did to me!’ I said to Max. ‘You know and I know.’

‘Get out of my house,’ Melanie spat. She slammed her hands square into my chest, shoving me back towards the door. ‘You fucking . . .
pervert
. I’ll have the
police on you. I’ll have them do you for child abuse.’

‘Just try it,’ I said. ‘And I’ll do him for rape.’