The Safest Place (34 page)

Eagerly, he showed me pictures of the houses he had earmarked in his quick-sought, quick-found suburban idyll. Houses with yellow window-frames; houses with ivy creeping up the walls. Small
houses, in streets crammed with other small houses. In towns where no one knew us; where we could start again.

I tried to imagine myself living in those houses, walking along those streets. Putting out the bins, going to the supermarket; knowing people. I pictured my children making friends, going to the
park; and David marching briskly back from the station at the end of another ordinary day. It seemed like a different world.

Living any normal life, now, seemed like a different world.

‘We won’t get so much for our money, of course,’ he said, apologetically, as if I even cared about such things. ‘But these are nice areas. We’ll have shops nearby;
the schools. I’ll have the train.’

We had come full circle. Here was the parallel hoop. I felt myself slip out of my life and into it again.

‘If we take that offer on our house we can move straight away,’ he said. ‘We’ve got to do it, Jane. We’ve got to try. It can be a new beginning, for all of
us.’ He put his hand on mine, so keen to take care of me now. It had taken a terrible thing to bring David back to us, yet none of this would have happened at all if perhaps I had taken a
little more care of him.

Sam was at the top of the hill, a matchstick shadow of a boy. David was up there with him. Sam was sitting on the ground, hunched over his crossed knees. David stood in front
of him, one hand on his hip, the other moving about in the air as he emphasized whatever it was that he was saying. From this distance they looked like two little plastic toy soldiers, grey,
anonymous, achingly small.

A cold front had driven in from the west, drying the rain out of the air. How bleak things could look out here, unrelenting, like the end of the world.

In the comparative warmth of the kitchen Ella sidled around me. We were making spaghetti bolognese for supper. I chopped up an onion, clumsily.

‘Daddy will stay with us if we move, won’t he?’ she asked so hopefully, tears springing into her voice. ‘I don’t care where we live so long as we always live with
Daddy.’

I slammed the knife up and down, nearly hacking off my fingers. Did it matter where we lived? How I had cared about such things once; how I had dreamed. But what difference did a bit of scenery
make, the presence or absence of an aeroplane or two overhead? Wherever we went, we’d take ourselves with us. There was no escaping that. You paint yourself differently, that’s all.
You’re still the same inside.

Up on that hill, Sam slowly rose to his feet. David stuck out his hand and Sam took it, and kept hold of it. I cannot tell you how it struck my heart at that moment; that tender reaching out,
and taking, of the hand. I watched them walking down from that hill together, my husband, my son, my eyes smarting with tears.

‘Of course we’ll live with Daddy,’ I said, my voice thick in my throat.

And I drew down the blinds, shutting out the night.

Book club discussion points

1.   Do you agree with Jane’s decision to uproot her family and what do you think the primary driving forces behind this were?

2.   Discuss Jane and David’s relationship. What are the key factors in their marital breakdown?

3.   Compare Sam and Max’s friendship with Jane and Melanie’s friendship.

4.   How do Jane and Melanie’s approaches to parenting differ?

5.   How important is the notion of belonging in this book, particularly in relation to moving to a new community?

6.   Overall, which character in the book did you feel most sympathetic towards and why?

7.   Discuss the decisions made at the end of the book. How do you think these would impact upon the Berry family’s future?

8.   Discuss the author’s writing style. Which passage of the story stood out for you the most?

9.   If you could ask the author a question about the novel, what would it be?

10.  Have you read the author’s previous novels,
This Perfect World
and
The Child Inside
? If so, how do the themes of
The Safest Place
compare?

Suzanne Bugler lives in south-west London with her husband and two sons. She is the author of
This Perfect World
and
The Child Inside.
She has also written
two novels for young adults:
Staring Up at the Sun
and
Meet Me at the Boathouse.

By the same author

THIS PERFECT WORLD

THE CHILD INSIDE

With thanks to Jenny Geras and the staff at Macmillan, and to my agent Sara Menguc. Thanks to my family and friends for their support, and especially to Nick for his encouragement
and love.

First published in Great Britain 2013 by Pan Books

This electronic edition published 2013 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-447-21982-8 EPUB

Copyright © Suzanne Bugler 2013

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