The Safest Place (11 page)

‘Well then?’ she asked, pointedly. ‘How was your day?

‘Fine,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘It was nice to see my mother.’

‘Hmm,’ Melanie said. It was quite cold out there now, and I pulled my cardigan closer around me, so avoiding the intensity of her stare. ‘Did you go and see David?’ she
asked.

‘Yes I did,’ I said. ‘I felt a bit guilty because I dragged him out of a meeting.’

‘Did you go somewhere?’

‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘He didn’t know how long his meeting would go on.’ This was the truth; I wasn’t just making excuses for David, but it did feel that way
with Melanie’s calculating eyes fixed upon me.

‘Didn’t you want to wait for him till it had finished?’

‘I couldn’t really,’ I said. ‘I might have been hanging around for ages.’

‘Hmm,’ she said again, but she didn’t look convinced. ‘So is he staying in London tonight?’

‘No, no, he’s coming home. Sometime.’

‘Shame you couldn’t have come home together then.’

‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ To change the subject, I said, ‘Thanks for having Sam and Ella.’

‘That’s OK,’ she said. ‘That’s what friends are for.’ She sounded slightly hurt. She wanted me to talk more about David, but I couldn’t, not then. I
felt too vulnerable, too exposed under her stare. And I knew she judged him harshly; she made little effort to hide it. Now she said, ‘What does your David do on the nights he stays in
London?’

‘Oh you know,’ I said. ‘Meetings. Drinks with clients.’ I laughed, a little unsteadily. ‘It’s just the nature of the job.’

‘You want to watch him,’ she said. ‘You know what those city types are like.’ Then she laughed too, baring those teeth, sharp as a wolf’s. ‘Of course you
do,’ she said. ‘You’re married to one.’

I tried not to flinch when she said this. After all, wasn’t any man working long hours in London a ‘type’? Any man with a long commute home, doing his best to get on in his
career, doing his best for his family? And wasn’t any woman like me a type too, wanting to escape the city for a purer, simpler life in the country? We are all types, surely. Even Melanie,
living her casual life on an income of peanuts, and having her dig at me.

What happened to me could happen to anyone. Please bear that in mind, all you out there who would judge me.

I started thinking more and more about those precious weekends that David and I used to spend here at the hotel in the village, without the children. Away from the stresses and
chores of everyday life, I saw the best of him, and he of me. No wonder we both loved it here so much. When we moved here, I’d expected it to be the same. I’d thought that the romance
would come with us; that somehow we would escape the grind that any marriage must endure. It would be like living within a permanent romantic weekend; that’s what I believed, stupid, foolish
me.

We had not been away on a proper holiday, either with or without the children, since we moved here. Our holidays had all been taken up with other people coming to visit us or by going to visit
family, or just with time spent at home working on the house. Besides, there was no spare money for holidays, not after doing up the house as we wanted; and installing the AGA and the wood-burning
stove. And in some strange way, it felt almost disloyal to want to get away so soon, especially as the reality was that David spent so little of his time here anyway.

And I couldn’t ask my parents to look after the children. When they came to stay they came to see all of us. And after they’d had to travel such a distance to be with us, we
couldn’t then go off and leave them just with Sam and Ella; it would feel wrong. It would also give them reason to suspect that maybe all was not well, and I couldn’t bear to do
that.

They were so excited by our move to the country; my mother especially, even though it meant we were further away from them than we had been. In London, she had understood my need to get away now
and again only too well; she couldn’t see why I had ever wanted to live there in the first place. But what would she think about us wanting to get away on our own now, from here, when we had
not even been here for two years yet? She’d pry. She wouldn’t mean to, but she would. And she would worry.

Besides, I didn’t want to get away from our home. It wasn’t the place that I needed a break from; it was what it was doing to us. To David and me.

I had this idea. At the time it seemed a little crazy, but in a good way; in a wild, spontaneous, let’s-just-do-it kind of way. We needed not to go away as such, David and I, but to go
away together right here, to stay in the hotel in the village again, and retrace the very steps that had led us to wanting to live here in the first place. We’d see it all with those eyes
again, renewed.

How brilliant my idea seemed. It fizzed inside me like angel dust and I paced the solitude of my house, unable to be still. And oh how I plotted and schemed. I would arrange it all in secret; I
would book the hotel, pack the bags. And I wouldn’t tell David till the very last minute – it would be the perfect surprise. I clapped my hands together at the thought of how thrilled
he would be.

‘I’ve got something to ask you,’ I said to Melanie at the school gates the following morning. I’d made sure I was early dropping Ella off, in order to
catch her. ‘Oh?’ she said, curious.

‘Not here,’ I said. ‘You got time for a coffee?’ Melanie loved a mystery. ‘Meet me back at mine,’ she said straight away, as I knew she would. And I got back
into my car and she got into hers, and I followed her all the way to the town, just like I had on the first day that I met her.

Jake was lying on the floor on his mattress when we got back to her house, watching TV and eating Jaffa Cakes from the box. Melanie pushed open the front door and it hit the
mattress, blocking our way. ‘Hey!’ he called from the other side of the door. ‘Careful!’

She shoved the door harder and we squeezed in. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’ she said. ‘I thought you’d be gone by now.’

‘Don’t have to be in till ten,’ he said, not taking his eyes off the TV. He was watching some children’s puppet cartoon and clearly loving it.

‘It’s nearly ten now,’ Melanie said, ripping the duvet off him, and switching off the TV.

Jake was wearing just his boxer shorts. ‘Mum!’ he yelped, grabbing back the duvet, and going bright red.

Melanie laughed. ‘That’ll teach you to lie in bed when I’m bringing home guests!’ she said.

He slammed upstairs with the duvet wrapped around him, then slammed down again five minutes later fully dressed and headed for the door.

‘Bye, my lovely boy,’ Melanie said, grabbing him in a hug on his way past, and planting a kiss on his cheek that made him blush again. When he’d gone she said to me,
‘Right. Now we can talk in peace. What’s the big secret?’

But I waited until she’d made the coffee, shoving the breakfast bowls and cereal boxes out of the way to make room on the counter for the cups. I loitered in the doorway, thinking maybe we
should have gone back to mine. I wasn’t sure where to sit. Jake had left the mattress and his clothes from yesterday on the floor, and what looked like the week’s dirty washing was
piled up on the sofa. If it had been my house I’d be rushing around, embarrassed, doing a quick tidy-up. But not Melanie. You took Melanie as you found her.

‘Here,’ she said and she handed me the coffee cups. Then she grabbed that heap of clothes, dropped them on the mattress and settled herself into one corner of the sofa, legs curled
up cat-like underneath her. She took her coffee and looked at me expectantly. ‘Well?’ she said.

‘I need to ask you a favour,’ I said, sitting down next to her. But suddenly I was having doubts. Suddenly, sitting there in the chaos of Melanie’s living room it didn’t
seem like quite such a good idea. ‘I was wondering if you would look after Sam and Ella for the weekend.’

‘
This
weekend?’

‘No, no. Sometime soon. I haven’t booked it yet.’

‘Haven’t booked what?’ she asked impatiently. ‘You’re being very mysterious.’

‘I was thinking of booking a weekend away with David.’

‘Ah!’ she said, really interested now.

‘So I wondered if you wouldn’t mind having Sam and Ella. But it’s a lot to ask,’ I said, half-hoping she’d say no.

‘Of course I’ll have them,’ she said straight away. ‘You know that. Where are you going to go?’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘You know David and I used to come out here for weekends sometimes before we moved here? I want to do that again. I want us to stay in the same
hotel.’

She burst out laughing, spluttering coffee down her chin. ‘What would you want to do that for?’ she said. ‘Oh my God, I thought you were going to say Rome or Venice. New York
perhaps. Not the local hotel, ten minutes up the road!’

I looked at her looking at me, her dark eyes so incredulous. And at that moment I felt a million miles from everything familiar. A multitude of images clocked through my head like photos on a
reel: the nursery that Sam used to go to in London with the length of string draped across the window onto which the children’s finger paintings were pegged to dry; the café that David
and I used to walk to for brunch on Sundays, where we’d prop Sam up in the wooden high-chair and feed him croissants; those blissful nights when the kids were a little older and we could
leave them easily with a babysitter and go out to any one of so many restaurants nearby; and, bizarrely, the view from the A4 on our route back home after a weekend spent here, the cars and
buildings crowding in, the billboards, the concrete rise of the flyover.

What was I actually doing here?

I opened my mouth to speak but there was a rock in my throat, blocking the words. My whole head was swimming with tears.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Melanie said and she grabbed my arm. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Stay at that hotel if you want. I hear it’s very nice.’

I shook my head. I tried to smile but couldn’t.

Melanie looked around. She picked up a T-shirt from the pile of clothes on the mattress and gave it to me. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Use this.’

And I wiped my eyes on it, and again I tried, and failed, to smile.

She moved closer to me and stroked my arm, gently, as if I was one of her children. ‘Now then,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know,’ I managed to say. ‘It’s just since we moved here things aren’t the same – between me and David, I mean. It was fine at first. It was
really perfect at first; we were so happy . . . but lately . . . it’s probably just because of his work, but even at weekends . . .’

I rambled on.

And she listened, and she sympathized. And even though I knew full well what she thought of David with her view of city types, and that she and Colin probably had a laugh about him when they
were out together down the pub, she didn’t pass judgement. She just said, ‘It sounds a great idea, then. Dead romantic. It’ll be just what you both need. And of course I’ll
look after your kids. Don’t you worry about that.’

Our wedding anniversary is at the end of May, and that year it fell on the Friday of the bank-holiday weekend, before half term. I phoned the hotel and managed to get us a two
night booking for the Friday and the Saturday, and I cannot tell you how excited I felt, hanging up the phone. What could be more perfect? I had two weeks to keep it secret, to plan every detail,
to make sure David would come home early from work.

He was working so hard. Not a week went by when he didn’t have to stay in London at least once. Usually he’d stay there on a Tuesday, when they had their team meeting in the late
afternoon which would invariably overrun, but quite often he’d stay on Thursdays too, if there were projects to be finished, or drinks to be had with clients. I’d got used to it. I
really didn’t like it. I especially didn’t like the loneliness of sleeping in the quiet, dark house without him there, but what difference did it make when most nights I’d be
asleep before he got home anyway? At least he didn’t complain so much about the travelling any more.

The weekend before, I told him I’d booked the hotel just for dinner. ‘For our wedding anniversary,’ I said, in case he needed reminding.

‘I thought we might go out on Saturday,’ he said.

‘But our anniversary’s on Friday.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘I just thought Saturday would be less of a rush.’

‘But you could come home from work early,’ I said. ‘I thought we could make it really special.’

He hesitated. ‘I’ve got a presentation at two,’ he said.

‘But that won’t go on all afternoon, will it?’ I said. ‘You could leave straight after. You could come home a
bit
early, couldn’t you, just this
once?’

He looked at me, and I stared back, willing him to say, ‘Of course my darling, I’ll come racing home, for that, for you.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said after too long a moment.

The dread of him not coming home in time hovered over me all week.

‘You will be home, won’t you?’ I said to him again, and again, when I spoke to him. ‘I’ve booked the table for eight. We can’t be late.’

I could hear the threat in my voice; the fear of being let down. I heard it in his weary replies too.

‘I will do my best,’ he said. ‘I can’t do any better than that.’

It took the shine off a little. It became yet another pressure between us.

I wanted him to catch the 5.20 from Paddington. I’d planned to meet him at the station, with our bags packed, though he didn’t know that, of course. He thought he
would be rushing home to get showered and changed to go out for dinner. On the day, I had things organized like clockwork. I packed a case for us both, picking out the shirts for him to wear for
dinner, remembering to put in his pants and socks. The night before he had stayed in London, the better to finish things up at work so that he could leave earlier that day, and so he had with him
his overnight bag containing among other things his toothbrush and shaver. I packed shorts for us to wear walking, and dug out the old backpack he used to wear to carry our drinks in. For myself, I
took a long time planning what to wear. I did not exactly have a huge choice; I’d hardly bought anything new since we moved here.