The Safest Place (21 page)

‘David’s fine,’ I’d say, because as far as I knew he was fine, physically at least. And as to everything being all right, I’d misunderstand her meaning,
deliberately. ‘Just busy,’ I’d say. ‘A bit tired, you know. Rushing the kids around.’ That sort of thing.

But my parents are not fools, and their antennae were up. Sometimes, when my mum rang, one of the children would answer the phone. No doubt she quizzed them, though not directly of course. She
was far too sensitive to ask them anything outright, but she’d have gathered enough fuel to build her suspicions.

They’d have to know eventually, but the thought of telling them brought with it such an air of formality, and of finality too. It made it real, and it made it their business, when I
didn’t want it to be their business. Also, and this really is the truth now, I was ashamed. My husband had gone off with another woman: what did that say about me? I couldn’t bear the
thought of anyone, let alone my parents, speculating, or judging me, or, worse than that, pitying me.

So I dreaded seeing them, because I dreaded telling them, and therefore I was off with them from the minute they arrived. I was defensive; I couldn’t help myself. They pulled up in the car
mid-afternoon on a hot, humid Tuesday, worn and tired from the journey, expecting me to greet them with my usual show of flowers in the hall and chilled drinks waiting in the garden, and the smell
of a freshly baked cake. My lovely home all spic and span. Oh sure, I’d swept the floor and tidied up the kitchen, changed the sheets on my bed, where they would be sleeping, and thrown the
spare duvet down for myself, in the den. But my house was suffused with an air of defiant gloom; it lay over everything, thick as dust. They would have noticed it as soon as they walked in.

Looking back, I see how cowardly I was, and really how cruel, leaving them to work it out for themselves. They went up to my room to settle themselves in, and there they discovered the absence
of David’s things. My parents travel light but even so I would always clear a space for them in my wardrobe, and tidy the clutter away from the top of my chest of drawers. But all of
David’s things were gone; what he hadn’t taken with him, and what I couldn’t bring myself to chuck out, I’d stuffed into boxes and hidden in the cupboard in the hall. My
parents would have noticed the lack of
anything
of his hanging in the huge double wardrobe, or folded on the shelves above and below. I can picture them tentatively opening the drawers and
seeing some of them filled with my various clothes and others left empty; I had not yet reached the stage where I was ready to expand into the extra space. They were up there an awfully long time,
and they were very quiet. I can imagine them sitting on my bed, forced to think the unthinkable, shocked, as the penny must finally have dropped, and I am not proud. I am not proud at all.

Yet with my parents I will always be a child, and I behaved like one. Too well I remember the teenage embarrassment of them wanting to know each time I’d got a new boyfriend, or had just
broken up with one; of their over-concerned questions and over-personal intonations that they hoped I was being ‘sensible’; the mortification of them realizing I was actually having
sex. Well how much worse – how infinitely much worse – would it be to have to tell them that my marriage was over?

But was it over, totally, finally? I didn’t want to believe it myself: how could I possibly present it that way to them? I couldn’t. I didn’t want to talk about it all. I
wanted just to drift, and to be left to do so.

My father came down first, the advance patrol. It was always that way, in times of crises. He tracked me down in the kitchen, where I was waiting for him, as sulky and defensive as a 16-year-old
girl. My mother, I knew, would be sitting on my bed, anxiously waiting another five minutes till she too would come down. My father was the calm one, the practical one, the one who took charge.
He’d want answers, facts, and it was always deemed in our family that he would do better by tackling me alone. My mother brought too much emotion into it. Any drama, in our family, ended up
being hers.

I was washing a lettuce at the kitchen sink, a task that demanded my total attention as this lettuce was from the garden, and riddled with slugs. My father came and leaned against the counter
next to me. I kept my eyes focused on that lettuce.

‘Everything all right, pet?’ he said.

‘So many bloody slugs,’ I said, and turned the tap on harder.

My father stood there. He watched me. Ten, twenty, excruciating seconds passed. Where were the children when I wanted them, why weren’t they clamouring about their grandparents as they
used to, competing for attention, giving me my space? But Sam and Ella had slunk off to their own aloneness, wanting their space too now, making the effort for no one. That is how it was, these
days.

‘Your mother –’ my dad said, and it was the same as always: your mother wondered, your mother was thinking, your mother was a little bit concerned – ‘Your mother
couldn’t help noticing there are none of David’s things in the bedroom.’

I said nothing. I scrubbed at that lettuce as if it was a rag.

‘What’s going on, pet?’

I could hear the floorboards creaking upstairs, the gentle thud of my mother’s step on the stairs. She couldn’t keep away any longer. Ridiculously, infuriatingly, I felt the sharp
sting of tears. What is it with families? They strip you naked as the day you were born. They see everywhere; no secrets, no hiding away.

The lump in my throat swelled, hot and wet as a giant leech.

‘Come on, pet. You can tell us.’

My mother entered the kitchen with a quiver of indrawn breath. ‘What is it, Ray? What’s going on?’ she asked of my father, her voice feebly high, half sob, half plea.

‘All right, Lynne,’ he said. ‘Everything’s under control. Jane was about to tell me. Weren’t you, Jane?’

I stared at my lettuce, at the water running off its leaves, an eternal, ferocious fountain. I willed myself away. I willed myself anywhere; anywhere, anything, but this. The sound of my
mother’s shaking breath sent the tears chugging down my cheeks, beyond my control.

‘He’s left me,’ I said, staring down at my lettuce.

‘What do you mean, he’s left you?’ my mother demanded and oh how that phrase could resonate down the years with just a minor change, here or there. ‘What do you mean,
you’ve lost your bag/coat/key?’ Only this time, it was my husband I’d so carelessly mislaid.

‘For somebody else,’ I said, forcing out the words over a mouthful of stones.

My mother drew in her breath, then flung her arms around me, almost pulling me off balance. She cried into my neck, as if that made things any better, this outward pouring of distress.

‘Oh no,’ she wailed. ‘Oh no. My poor Jane.’

They sat me at the table, fetched tissues – for my mother’s benefit as much as mine – made me tea, and fussed, bombarding me with their questions and concern, and with their
own hurt that I’d kept it from them. I cried, the way I always cried when forced to cry in the presence of my parents: till my nose was blocked and my eyes two tight and swollen slits, my
head throbbing and my dignity utterly squashed. I hated being made to feel so vulnerable.

‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ my mum kept saying, over and over. ‘How could you keep it from us?’

‘You should have told us, pet. We have a right to know.’

And how chastised I felt, sitting there at my own table. ‘I didn’t want to talk about it,’ I said, though there was little chance of getting away with that now. ‘To
anyone.’

‘I’m not just anyone! I’m your mother. You can talk to me.’

‘I didn’t want to involve you,’ I said.

‘But we are involved! He’s our son-in-law!’ Her voice rose on a wail and the hairs on the back of my neck shot up like little pinpricks. ‘Oh my good grief, how could he
do this to you?’

‘Hush now, Lynne,’ my dad said. ‘We don’t know what went on.’

‘I want to know!’

‘Of course you do. We both do.’

‘Why would he go off with another woman when he’s got his lovely family? Why would he do that?’

‘I don’t know, Lynne,’ my father said. ‘I don’t know.’ But then, as if he did know, as if it was blindingly obvious and simply anyone would know it, ‘It
doesn’t do for a man to work such long hours, to be away from home so much, to be away from the family. It puts a strain on the marriage . . .’

They discussed me as if I wasn’t there. I felt like a bystander in my own life. And it got worse as the week went on; they had planned to stay until Saturday, and leave after lunch, thus
spending time with David, with all of us, as a family. But that had all changed now. Should they stay on until Sunday, and see David when he came? But could they trust themselves, given what he had
done?

‘He needs a piece of my mind,’ my mother said. ‘A jolly good talking-to.’

‘We need to sit down and discuss things properly,’ my father said. ‘Sensibly.’

I said, ‘I don’t want to discuss anything.’

‘And where’s that attitude going to get you?’ my mother demanded. ‘What about the children? What’s going to happen to them?’

‘Nothing’s going to happen to them,’ I said.

‘Children need stability,’ she said. ‘They need their father.’

‘Well there’s not much I can do about that,’ I said.

‘Of course there is! You and David need to talk about things. You need to sort things out.’

‘Oh, Mum, please.’

‘Your mother’s right,’ my dad said in the same tone that he’d have used to tell me my skirt was too short, or that I needed to be home by eleven, all those years ago.
‘You need to make plans.’

Plans, plans. Conversations with my parents generally involved plans of one type or another; plans about what I wanted and what I wanted to do. Ever since I’d left
college: my plans for my career, then my marriage, the arrival of my children. All my plans for Sam and Ella, and for David’s career, and eventually our move out here to our new country life:
always something, always onwards and upwards. My sunny existence; what pleasure it had brought them. It had all ground to a halt now. I’d no desire to make any more plans.

On previous visits they’d loved their little trips into the town, their walks to the village, just being here. I’d made it like a show piece: the chocolate-box country life. This
time, I had doubly cheated them. No chocolate-box life and no happy marriage. Now, of course, with the benefit of time and distance I can see how selfishly I behaved, and how dismissive I was of
their feelings and their sense of loss. But at the time I was too full of my own, and having my parents there and being forced to talk about it just made it worse. I didn’t want to talk about
it. Or think about it. Or make plans.

We struggled through to Saturday. The children bristled away from my parents, too aware of their sympathy. My father tidied up the garden, my mother fussed about the house. They wanted me to
talk it through but I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to go over it again and again, reliving it all for them. They wanted to support me, but I pushed them away. It felt too much to me like
they needed my support, and I couldn’t give it. I had no answers, no great visions of what I was going to do now. I couldn’t wait for them to just go, and leave me alone.

But I felt wretched then, watching them loading up their car on Saturday morning. They looked so defeated and sad. My mother hugged the children for far too long.

‘My poor girl,’ she said to Ella, who she clasped in her arms like a rag doll. ‘You can always talk to Granny, you know. I’m just a phone call away.’

And to Sam, who stood rigid as a skittle when it was his turn to be hugged, ‘Be a brave boy. Look after your mum.’

‘For God’s sake, Mum,’ I snapped. ‘No one’s died.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Right.’ She held back from embracing me, clearly hurt. But she did, bizarrely, say, ‘Does David’s father know?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I see David’s father once a year at most and we rarely speak in between. He and David are not exactly close; my mum knows this.

‘And his sister?’

‘I don’t know,’ I repeated. ‘I certainly haven’t told her. That’s up to David, surely.’

‘You can’t keep a thing like this secret,’ she said. ‘Other people are affected too.’

‘Then what would you have me do?’ I said. ‘Put out a general announcement?’

She clamped shut her mouth, a thin miserable line. Her eyes, which avoided mine, were glistening with tears.

‘Jane!’ my father said.

And I said, ‘I’m sorry, OK?’

Just past my mum, Sam was already creeping backwards to the house, step by miniature step, obviously hoping no one would notice. Ella, on the other hand, listened to every word, intrigued.

‘Well,’ my mother said stiffly. ‘Love to you all.’ And she got into the car, wiping at her eyes.

My dad quickly squeezed me, and kissed my cheek. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said. ‘And the kids.’

Feeling guilty now, I said, ‘Are you sure you won’t stay for lunch?’

‘Best to get back before the traffic,’ he said. He looked as if he was about to say something else then, but thought better of it. How old he looked, suddenly, my dad. Disappointment
and uncertainty do that to people. I’ve noticed that. They age you even more.

I watched them as they drove away, pulling the car so slowly into the lane.

Ella, watching also, said, ‘Granny was upset.’

‘We’re all upset,’ I said.

‘Yes but grandparents aren’t supposed to be upset. They’re supposed to be happy all the time.’

‘Oh, Ella,’ I said. ‘No one can be happy all the time.’

We started walking back into the house, and she said, ‘Is Daddy still coming tomorrow?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘As far as I know.’

And I thought that was that, the question answered. But once inside the house, and just before she disappeared upstairs, she said, ‘I wish Daddy still lived here. I do. And I know Granny
wishes it too. And Sam.’

And then she ran up to her room, slamming the door behind her.

I felt as if I was being suffocated. I walked through my house, hot, clammy, my chest an explosion of tears. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I could feel my
heartbeat, pounding in my head. My feet stuck to the tiles of the floor, I was so hot. I sat down at the kitchen table and cried like a kettle boiling over. There was no one to comfort me, no one
to care. The children, as ever, were in their rooms, doors shut, shutting me out. I’d wanted my parents to go but now that they had I felt so glaringly alone. I pictured them, slowly winding
their way through the country lanes in their beige Rover, their faces drawn and rejected. I could see them on the motorway, joining the crawl of the slow lane, discussing me for all the hours it
would take them to get home. I could feel the scale of their disappointment. I had torn the security of their expectations for me away from them. I had been horrible. And now they were gone.