The Safest Place

by Suzanne Bugler

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, and she nodded, and smiled a little wider. Her front teeth were incredibly even and straight, apart from her eye teeth which were larger than the rest and protruded somewhat, giving her a slightly canine look. Yet she was strikingly good-looking, in a natural, rather unkempt kind of way; tall, with long, thick dark hair that fell in heavy layers around her shoulders. ‘I just can’t get to grips with the school run,’ I said. ‘That’s why we’re late again. My son has just started at Renfree Park, and getting from one school to the other on time is a nightmare. Lots of people must have children at both schools. How do they all do it?’

  Melanie laughed. ‘We help each other out,’ she said pointedly, as if this was a concept we might not have heard of in London. ‘You know, pick up each others’ kids. Lift share.’ And then she said, ‘I’ve got a boy at Renfree Park, in Year 9. But it’s easy for us because our house is near the school.’

  ‘My Sam’s in Year 9,’ I said, perhaps too eagerly.

  She gave me that intent look again. ‘Mm,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if Max has said anything about a new boy from London.’

  ‘Oh. Well. Sam’s quite shy. I’m not sure if he really knows anyone yet,’ I said, and straight away I wanted to kick myself. I’d said it almost as an apology, as if I was apologizing for Sam. And I’d labelled him, again.

  We stood there, awkward, for a moment. At least, I felt awkward. Melanie, quite clearly, was weighing me up. Then she said, ‘I’m organizing a football tournament at Renfree. You can help if you want. Get your boy involved.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Thanks. That’d be great.’ I was so pathetically grateful. I’d never helped organize anything in my life before – I’m just not that sort. But that could all change. And Sam wasn’t particularly interested in football, but that too could change.

  ‘It’s the first Sunday in December,’ she said. ‘We make a day of it. You could help with the food.’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I lied, and Melanie’s eyes narrowed just slightly.

  ‘Good,’ she said.

  Quickly, before I lost my nerve, I said, ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got time for a coffee?’ and immediately realized my foolishness because there was nowhere to go for a coffee. The village contained a handful of streets lined with beautiful old cottages, the church, a miniature council estate (which was absolutely nothing like the council estates I was used to in London), a post-office-cum-general-store, the primary school and that regrettable second-hand car dealer.

  Melanie’s eyes narrowed a little more and I knew exactly what she was thinking. You can forget your Starbucks on every corner, here.

  ‘Or a walk,’ I said. ‘If you like.’

  She carried on looking at me. Under her stare, I felt utterly exposed.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you get in your car and follow me back to mine?’

  She drove fast, as people who are used to country roads often tend to, and I struggled to keep up with her. Her little red car kept disappearing and it was down to me to speed up, much more than I was happy with. She didn’t slow down. She’d told me she lived near Sam’s school so I knew we were headed for the town, but it wasn’t until we hit the queue for the main traffic lights that I could relax. Then, when we’d slowed right down, she wound down her window, stuck out her hand and jabbed her finger over the roof of her car to the left a couple of times, and gave me the thumbs up.

  She lived in the centre of the town, in the same street as the butcher’s. Her house was tall and narrow, the second one in a terrace of four, with a small living room downstairs onto which a kitchen and a bathroom had been added at some point, and just one room on each of the three floors above. I’d never been in a house quite like it before. The front door opened straight into the living room, and stored in there among the usual furniture of the sofa and TV were various outdoor things such as bicycles and skateboards and, on that particular day, the broken-up parts of her oldest son Jake’s motorbike.

  ‘Oh excuse this,’ she said, as we climbed over the various pieces of metal. ‘It’s my boy Jake’s. He’s got a problem with the fuel pump. He’s waiting for a part. Told him he could keep it in here out the rain.’

  When Jake was there, and his girlfriend was staying too, they slept on a mattress on the living room floor, squeezed in between the bikes and the sofa. ‘Jake used to share with Max,’ Melanie told me. ‘But I don’t want Kelly up there too. That wouldn’t be right.’

  That day, the mattress was propped against the wall behind the TV, out of the way, but sometimes it was left out. Later I’d go round to Melanie’s house and quite often I would step right onto it when I came in through the front door, and have to walk across the heaped-up duvet, abandoned clothes, Kelly’s hairdryer, and, on more than one occasion, the sleeping couple themselves.

  If I make this sound like a ramshackle way to live, it wasn’t. It was just different. Different things mattered, to Melanie.

  Where most people might have a picture or two painted by their children stuck on a wall or a door perhaps, Melanie’s children had painted directly onto the walls. All through the living room and the kitchen, little drawings and paintings, mostly by Abbie, each one named and dated, many of them going back years. Smiley round faces with an arrow pointing at them saying Mummy. Little black cats with long whiskers and long, long tails that stretched out across the wall. Here and there some words too, mostly Max’s contribution: Smelly McWelly had a big jelly belly and Maths is for morons.

  On the kitchen windowsill, lined up in a row of old takeaway dishes, was Abbie’s mould collection. Some items I could recognize; the green-spotted bread, the furry cheese. Others were unidentifiable, lost under a kaleidoscopic growth of green and orange and blue. The smell up close was indescribable, but Melanie simply leaned over and opened the window. Then she pushed the remains of the breakfast things out of the way and put on the kettle for coffee. Someone had started to make pastry, or maybe it was bread, on the counter next to the sink. The dough sat there in a cracked, drying-out lump, with the imprint of a fist knuckled into the middle of it.

  ‘Max loves baking,’ Melanie said. ‘It’s good for them, isn’t it, all that kneading? Gets rid of the aggression.’

  We sat on the sofa in the living room to drink our coffee and Melanie quizzed me systematically and thoroughly about where we’d come from, and why we’d come. She was measuring me, like one of those cats scrawled upon her walls. Naturally I played along. I said how awful life was in London, how crowded and expensive and rushed. So much better to live out here, I agreed. So much better in every way.

  Whatever she learnt about me that day, I found out a lot about her, too. That her house had belonged to her grandmother. That she’d had Jake, who was twenty, when she’d just finished school. Colin, the father of Max and Abbie, was still around though she didn’t live with him. ‘I wouldn’t want to live with any man,’ she said. ‘Sooner or later you’d end up hating their guts and rowing all the time, and I’m not doing that to my kids. I’m not sharing them with some man wanting his dinner on the table and his ego pandered to all the time. No, it’s much better this way.’

  She worked part-time at the primary school, as a dinner lady. ‘Not much of a job,’ she said. ‘But you do get to see what’s going on, and it fits in with the family. That’s how I knew about your daughter and you, coming from London. And what Abbie told me, of course.’

  Melanie loved her kids. We all love our kids, but she loved hers with a fierce, almost animal aggression. You could see it on her face, her complete approval of everything they did. In her eyes they were perfect; no one would dare tell her otherwise.

  It’s funny, even then I sensed that Melanie wasn’t someone to cross. She had such a sublime innate confidence, a complete lack of apology about herself or her life. She didn’t care what people thought of her, and I envied her that. Melanie assumed popularity; she didn’t need to court it. And she seemed to know everyone; she’d walk down the stree
t saying hello to this person and hello to that person, and whoever she spoke to seemed almost grateful for the acknowledgement.

  And here’s the thing. When you move away to somewhere new where no one knows you it gives you the chance to reinvent yourself. You can start anew, be who you want to be. And if I suspected that Melanie was the sort of person that it is better to be on the right side of than not, I didn’t let it worry me. The truth is I found it quite thrilling to be befriended by a person like that.

  FIVE

  ‘Guess what?’ I said to the children over supper that night. ‘I made a new friend today.’

  Neither of them paid me any attention, but I didn’t expect them to. Why would they be interested in their mother’s friends when they were both so preoccupied with the painful lack of their own? They carried on eating, methodically, morosely, eyes downcast on the table.

  ‘Abbie’s mum,’ I said, to Ella. ‘You know, Abbie in your class?’

  ‘Oh,’ Ella said.

  ‘You like Abbie, don’t you? You’d like her to be your friend? We could invite her round for tea sometime.’

  ‘OK,’ Ella said, a little uncertainly.

  And to Sam I said, ‘And Abbie has a brother in your year. Max Wilkins. Do you know him?’ Predictably, Sam shook his head. ‘He’s a tall boy apparently, with dark hair. He’s into football.’ Again, he shook his head. ‘Well his mum said she’d get Max to look out for you. That’s good, isn’t it? And won’t it be nice if we’re all friends with the same family?’

  How cosy I made it sound. How easy. They both looked at me for a moment, then, their faces a mixture of apprehension and wistfulness. I smiled back at them indulgently, feeling so pleased with myself. Now, I look back and I want to grab my old self by the shoulders and shake, hard. I want to slap the smug smile off my face. I wasn’t just complacent; I was blind.

  Ella became friends with Abbie readily enough; girls do at that age. A connection was all that was needed, and now, connected as they were through Melanie and me, they ran out of school together at 3.15 each day, the best of friends. For Ella, things changed pretty much overnight. She forgot all about Rosie and her old friends in London, and talked about Abbie all the time instead, and Hannah and Izzy and the other girls in her class.

  But for Sam and Max it was never such an easy alliance. The fact was they couldn’t be more different. Max was big for his age, dark-haired and dark-eyed like his mother, and confident like her, too. He was exactly the sort of boy that Sam would normally take care to avoid, not out of fear exactly, but through the automatic deference of the weak. I do not say this to be cruel. Sam has always been someone to whom life happens. In the jungle hierarchy of the school playground he was a natural victim; for Sam it was a good day if nobody noticed him. He expected his bag to be kicked; he expected to be left out of games. This aspect of his character filled me with despair and frustration in equal measure. I wanted to protect him; I wanted also to push him out there, to force him to stand up for himself and be seen. In truth, the thought of him skulking around the corridors of his new school, being known, if he was known for anything at all, as the new boy from London with no friends, filled me with a sense of deep shame.

  And so, as far as I was concerned, Max was a gift. Melanie assured me she’d have Max look out for Sam, and how much better to have a boy like Max on your side than not? I didn’t care that Sam was less than keen – in fact his reticence exasperated me. He didn’t want to make the effort to be friends with anyone; he’d be on his own forever if it wasn’t for me. I thought Sam should be pleased that I’d engineered this opportunity for him; I was pleased, certainly. And as far as I was concerned Sam’s forced association with Max was a good thing. Through Max, Sam would get to know the other boys at school. He would be included; more importantly, he would be protected, too. And maybe, with a bit of luck, some of Max’s confidence might rub off on him too.

  Having Melanie for a friend made all the difference to me. The loneliness that had been creeping around me like a mist since we’d moved here dissipated. We came to an arrangement whereby Sam would walk back to Melanie’s house with Max after school, and I would pick him up from there after I’d collected Ella. Sometimes I’d collect Abbie too, but quite often Melanie and I would both go to the primary school. We’d meet there, and chat, not just with each other but with the other mums too. I got to know a few of them a little better, now that I knew Melanie; with her, I had no qualms about walking up to and joining their little groups. Being with Melanie gave me confidence. And I noticed the way she automatically steered the conversation, without any apparent resistance from anyone. She dominated things, but she also infected them with fun.

  After school we would all meet back at Melanie’s house. Usually, the boys arrived first, but a couple of times I managed to get back with the girls just before them, in time to see them coming up the road, Sam with his shoulders slumped, eyes on the pavement, dragging his feet two clear paces behind Max. I saw this, and found myself prickling with anxious dread, and, if I am honest, more than a little embarrassment that I covered up by slapping on a smile, and greeting them with a bright ‘Hi Max, hi Sam’. Yes that’s right, ‘Hi Max’ first as an acknowledgement of the favour Max was doing us, and as an apology for Sam’s shyness, and apparent lack of grace.

  And when we went into Melanie’s house, which usually we did, for tea and squash and biscuits, I would be grateful for the general chaos into which Sam’s shortage of social skills could be absorbed or overlooked, depending on your viewpoint. Melanie didn’t care how quiet Sam was, I’m sure, and nor, I realize now, did Max. Sam posed no competition for him; there was no vying for centre-stage. Out would come the skateboard or the guitar, and Max would show off his skills. Or he’d get out the PlayStation controllers and thrash Sam at some game or other. He taught Sam how to balance on the up-ended skateboard. They went out into Melanie’s small backyard, where he showed Sam how to dribble a football less clumsily, and how to strike a shot with the side of his foot instead of kicking at the ball with his toes. Sam was a biddable audience, and over time he became less shy. I watched this progress with relief. I took it for friendship.

  David put up a goal net in our garden. It was my suggestion, though David was happy enough to oblige. He rigged it up between the apple tree and the side fence, carefully positioning it to make the most of the space. Now, Sam could practise for the tournament.

  Between us, David and I leapt upon Sam’s inclusion in the football tournament. I say inclusion, because I don’t think it ever really stretched to proper enthusiasm for Sam. It never got quite that far. Sam enjoys kicking a ball around just as much as the next boy, but he isn’t competitive, not in the least. He really hates pressure. He just played along with us because he knew it was what we wanted, and we charged at it, all guns blazing; me, because I was just so desperate for Sam to be popular, to fit in with the other boys, to be what I considered normal, and David because Sam’s lack of any particular talent at sport had always been a slight disappointment to him. David of course is a fine all-rounder. We have, in our sideboard, umpteen photos of the schoolboy David with his football team, his rugby team, and the inter-school athletics relay team, along with countless rusting medals. Before Sam was even born David had visions of cheering him on from the touchline, fantasies of teaching him all that he knew, of reliving his own life through his son. Wrong, I know, but are we not all wrong, one way or another, in the dreams that we have for our children?

  I look back and I see Sam dutifully kicking his ball into that net on Sunday mornings and my heart aches. I see him trying so hard to please his dad, to please us both; the puppy-dog light of gratitude in his eyes every time David called out, ‘Yes, Sam, good shot, Sam, well done!’

  Melanie and I altered our usual arrangement so that on Fridays after school we’d all come back here, me bringing the girls and she coming along soon after with the boys. Friday being Friday, we swapped the tea-drinking for wine, cracking open a bottle a
s soon as she arrived so she’d have time to sober up again before the drive back home. They’d stay quite late, which suited me just fine as I found Friday night waiting for David to come home the hardest night of all; that sense of the weekend being both delayed and diminished, the knowledge that when he did get home he would be tired and grumpy from the week’s commuting. I was grateful to Melanie and her children for being there. They took away the quiet; they took away our isolation. I’d stick fish fingers and chips in the oven for the children; lazy food, that I would never have stooped to in London. In London, I would never have drunk wine at four o’clock. But it was fun; Melanie herself was fun. She had a wicked sense of humour; so wicked in fact that I often thought myself lucky not to be on the end of it. While the boys kicked their ball around in the garden, making the most of our new net, and the girls collected sticks and leaves from outside and cushions from inside to make their little dens, Melanie and I, we sat on the sofa together, we laughed, and we drank our wine.

  The friendships I’d had before had taken years to evolve; they’d formed gradually, subtly, over time. In London there were so many people all around me, people I knew on varying levels of intimacy. In London, you really can pick and choose, even if you are on the shy side, like me. But I took it all for granted, and then I moved here, and I threw it all away. I went from knowing so many people, to knowing none. I cannot tell you the starkness of being faced with just yourself every day; the fear of being always alone. In my newly narrowed existence my friendship with Melanie mattered more to me than any friendship ever had before. I was so glad to have met her. If it had not been Melanie but someone else who had approached me that day outside Ella’s school I would have been the same with them. Had it been a dog-walking woman, I’d have been into dogs. Had it been a worthy, dedicated mother-type I would probably have become more worthy myself. That Melanie was Melanie; that she was so relaxed, that she liked a drink and a laugh, and had those two children the same age as mine, seemed like an enormous stroke of luck.