The Safest Place
Page 27
‘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.
THE SAFEST PLACE
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?
THE SAFEST PLACE
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
Acknowledgements
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
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ISBN 978-1-447-21982-8 EPUB
Copyright © Suzanne Bugler 2013
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