The Safest Place

by Suzanne Bugler

  He walked towards me in slow, careful steps. I was aware then, of the size of him, of how of very much bigger than me he was. Much, much bigger than my Sam, in both height and in width.

  ‘What is it, Max?’ I said.

  He stood right in front of me, filling the room. My heart started beating a little harder then and I folded my arms across my chest, covering myself.

  ‘You OK now Jane?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘I’m fine now. Thanks.’

  And still I waited for him to tell me why he was there. He put his hands on my arms, one each side. Suddenly I felt very uncomfortable about that closed door, and my children on the other side of it. Yet how silly; this was only Max.

  ‘You sure you’re OK?’ he said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said again. And then it struck me: ‘Is that why you’re here?’

  ‘You were upset earlier,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘But I’m all right now, thanks.’

  I expected him to let me go and for that to be that. How sweet, I would say to myself when he’d gone back downstairs. How kind of him to worry about me.

  But he didn’t let me go. He was staring at me intently; much too intently. Uneasy now, I laughed and tried to pull away. But his hands were strong. I was not sure if it was a caress or restraint with which he held me, but to think the latter seemed absurd; this was Max. He pulled me closer to him and I resisted, taut within his grip; his chest buffeted against mine.

  ‘I think David’s mad to let you go,’ he said. ‘I think he’s a fucking idiot.’

  And all I could think of was Sam and Ella sleeping in their beds, and of how awful it would be should they hear this.

  ‘Max,’ I whispered, ‘let me go,’ but he slammed me to him, sticking his mouth on mine. Revulsion heaved inside me. His mouth was wet, suffocating. I tried to push him away but he caught me harder – I could barely breathe, but when I did I could smell him, the close-up boy-smell of his body. He groaned into my mouth and I twisted against him, still thinking we could recover this; still thinking we could laugh it off as if it had never happened and be done.

  He pushed me onto the bed. With nothing to grab onto – and I wasn’t going to grab onto him – I fell straight backwards. I could have screamed then, I should have screamed, but who would have heard me? Sam? Ella? The scream stayed in my throat, silenced. He came down on top of me, forcing one leg between mine, his hands all over my chest. I was pinned there, trapped. His eyes were blank, fogged out; he can’t have even known what he was doing. He had one hand on my chest holding me down and the other hand ripping open his jeans. I froze like a rabbit and he rammed himself into me; it was done in seconds. The shock of it left me reeling; I could not believe it had happened at all.

  Moments later he moved himself away from me, resting on one elbow. He actually smiled down at me, and drew one finger around the side of my face, pushing back my hair. And then he pulled down my night shirt, zipped up his jeans, crept out of my room, and was gone.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I lay there for a very long time.

  I lay on my back as he’d left me, squashed into the mattress, my legs dangling over the end of the bed. To move was to acknowledge what had happened, and I could not do that. I could not move. My heart was banging against my ribs. I counted the beats, trying to slow them. Counted, to try to stop me thinking about anything else, to stop me acknowledging what had happened.

  Then I heard a door open just along the landing. Ella’s door; I knew by the creak, and my heartbeat raced up again, thundering in my ears. I heard the squeak of the floorboards and the click of the bathroom light; I turned my head and saw the momentary glow of light through the gap under my door before she closed the bathroom door behind her. She would see the glow of my light through that same gap, if she looked. She might have seen it already; she might come in, saying, ‘Mummy, why are you still up?’

  I forced myself to move. My body felt flattened, all my joints stiffened up. My chest hurt where he had leant on me, holding me down. Quickly, I sat up and the blood roared in my head. I stuck out an arm to turn off my lamp, and I knocked it right off the bedside table and had to scramble for it on the floor. I hoped to God Ella did not hear. Then I lay down on my bed, pulling the duvet over me, as if I was asleep. I lay still as a corpse in the dark, my heartbeat pounding, listening to Ella flushing the toilet, then running the taps. I heard the bathroom door open, and again the click of the light. I dared not breathe. Go back to bed, I willed in my head. Please, go back to bed. She was out there, hesitating; I could sense it. Then I heard her feet on the floorboards, the creaking of her own bedroom door.

  I had not heard Max, creeping up the stairs. I did not hear the boards creak under his weight. But then I had not been listening out for him; I had been lost in my own thoughts, thinking I was safe, thinking we all were. I had actually felt reassured by his presence downstairs – another man in the house and all that. Sam might have heard him, though, or Ella. They could very well have heard him making his way up the stairs; they might even have heard us talking. The thought chilled me; it absolutely appalled me. Never mind what he had done to me, but that he had done it in my house with my children there; with 11-year-old Ella lying in her bed just across the landing – it was unthinkable, incomprehensible, barbaric. I lay there, rigid with fury, staring at the dark. I could feel his . . . stuff . . . running out of me so foul, so entirely repulsive and disgusting. I could smell him still, in my room, on my face. His saliva had dried on the skin around my mouth, powdery and tight.

  I waited till the house was silent again, truly silent. I listened so hard I could almost hear my children sleeping behind their closed doors. There was the odd creaking of the beams and the wind outside, nothing more. And then I ripped off my nightshirt, put on my dressing gown, and went to the bathroom to wash myself. I squatted in the bath and scrubbed at myself, using the hand shower, scrubbed and scrubbed till my skin was raw, till I hurt. But I could not feel clean. The pipes hissed and clanked and I crouched low in the bath; I turned the taps down to try to lessen the noise but it was no good, I could not wash under just a trickle. I was crying too, a sort of groaning in the back of my throat; I didn’t realize till someone knocked on the door and then I froze.

  It was Ella, come back again.

  ‘Mum?’ she said through the door.

  I turned off the taps. I squatted there, my heart pounding.

  ‘What do you want?’ I hissed.

  ‘The toilet,’ she said sleepily.

  ‘But you’ve just been,’ I snapped.

  ‘No I haven’t,’ she said, injured. ‘That was hours ago.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ I said. The room was thick with steam. Quickly I climbed out of the bath and dried myself. I wiped the towel over the mirror to clear it, put on my bathrobe and willed myself to look normal.

  ‘Mum,’ Ella whined.

  I opened the door and she padded in straight past me, eyes squinting in the light. I closed the door for her on my way out and whispered, ‘Go straight back to bed, won’t you?’

  She didn’t reply.

  I went back to my room and turned off the light. And I stood by my door, waiting till I heard Ella finish in the bathroom and go back to bed. It seemed she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary in her half-asleep state, thank God. But she could have done. So easily, she could have done.

  I got back into bed, but I would not sleep. I could not sleep, with Max downstairs. I lay rigid, every cell in my body alert. What if he came back up? What would I do then? I stared through the dark at my door. I strained my ears, listening.

  And then the recriminations and the doubts came storming through my head. What had I done to make Max think I would want him to come to my room? Because I must have done something – a 15-year-old kid does not act without some kind of go-ahead, surely. Did I lead him on in some way? I couldn’t have done. I certainly never meant to. Yet I thought of how I tucked my toes under his
legs on the sofa earlier, of how I let him comfort me in the kitchen, and of how grateful I had been for that comfort. But surely he did not take that as encouragement? We were easy together, that’s how it seemed to me. He was my son’s friend and my friend’s son. Part of the family, you could say. And a child. Is it really true that you cannot be at ease with a child without them thinking they can do such a thing?

  Repulsion rose inside me, acid in my throat. I clenched my fists under the duvet, driving my nails into my palms.

  Should I have read the signs somehow? Were there any signs? I thought of him, always listening in on conversations between Melanie and me. I thought of his advice so maturely given: ‘You’ll be all right, Jane.’ Again I thought of him holding me in his arms downstairs, earlier, in the kitchen. Being, I thought, so very kind to me.

  It never occurred to me that he might think it more than that.

  But he’d come upstairs to see how I was, and he had thought he would be welcome. He’d thought there was a chance at least; in his arrogance he had thought it worth a shot. And backing down does not come naturally to people like Max – oh no, people like Max and Melanie are always right, they always see things through.

  Max was still there in the morning, and would be till Jake came to fetch him on his way back from Kelly’s. Melanie wasn’t coming for him, thank God; at least I didn’t have to face her.

  He was down in the kitchen with Sam. They were talking; I listened through the open crack of my bedroom door, trying to catch what they were saying.

  ‘You’ve got to line them up first then you take all three,’ Max was saying in his usual, know-it-all manner.

  ‘Yes, but you can do one at a time,’ said Sam.

  ‘No, no, mate. That’s where you’re wrong. You’ve got to have all three . . .’

  He wouldn’t tell Sam what he had done, surely. He wouldn’t tell anyone, would he?

  They were making breakfast. I could smell toast and I could hear both boys, opening and closing cupboard doors. I pictured Max’s hands on my plates and my cutlery, I saw him opening the fridge and helping himself to butter and jam. His filthy fingers, touching everything. I didn’t want him sitting at my table, eating my food. I didn’t want him in my house, now or ever again.

  ‘Mum?’ Ella called, bounding up the stairs. She’d gone down early to watch TV. Now she came into my room, still in her Pink Pig pyjamas, her hair all messy, her bright blue eyes so shiny and keen. ‘Can I go to the stables later?’ she said. ‘Can I, as Daddy’s not coming today?’

  I could not bear that she had been downstairs unprotected from him.

  ‘I don’t know Ella. I’ve got a headache. I can’t think now.’

  ‘Oh please,’ she said. ‘I hardly ever get to go on Sundays.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I wanted to hear what Max and Sam were saying, and I couldn’t with Ella bleating in my ear. But I looked at her crestfallen face and I felt even more wretched. ‘Look, I’ll see,’ I said. ‘But please, just go and get dressed now.’

  I watched him leave from my window. I swear, I had counted every second till Jake finally arrived, screeching Melanie’s car to a stop outside our house, and slamming the door as he got out. He swaggered to our front door, and Max, when Jake had knocked for him, swaggered out. I watched them with loathing, and I felt the wool brutally ripped from my eyes. How did I ever think there was anything to be admired in that family? How did I ever mistake their arrogance for confidence; their indifference for laid-back charm?

  I never wanted to see Max, or Melanie, or any of them again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  On Monday afternoon I sat parked up in my car just past the school in the rain, waiting for Sam and Ella. I’d got there early but still the only space was on the road facing towards Melanie’s. I sat there with the engine running to try to stop the windows steaming up, and with the front and back wipers going full pelt. And I watched for my kids in the rear-view mirror. I wanted them to be quick. I wanted to get them in the car and be gone.

  Then Max came strolling through the gates in a crowd, five or six of them, all boys; his little pack with their ties undone, shoving at each other, taking up space so that other kids instinctively got out of their way. Will was among the group, and Tommy, and coming up behind them a clutch of girls; I recognized some of them, too, including Lydia, the girl Sam liked. But there was no sign of my Sam. I watched Max; I could not help myself. I felt the strange pull of loathing. I watched him getting closer to my car. I watched his face with its constant, semi-mocking sneer, and the way he interacted with his peers; those leadership qualities I had so admired. Oh yes, he was a leader all right. He was the boss.

  I knew he’d seen me; he’d have recognized my car, and I was right there in his path. I slunk down in my seat when he got nearer; until he’d gone past. But then he turned round, and he smiled at me. A complete smile; that’s the only way I can describe it. No shame, no regret, just satisfaction at the way things were. Oh yes, everything was fine in Max’s world.

  What did he think, that I’d be OK with what had happened? That if I hadn’t wanted it then, I would, in retrospect, want it now? What’s a little force when a little force is all that’s needed?

  He took his time with that smile; for a moment, to my horror, he separated from the crowd. I can only think that he could not properly see me; that he could see, perhaps, the outline of me, the positioning of my face, but not the expression on it. Not my eyes.

  Again and again I asked myself how I did not see it coming, somehow; and, worse still, how did I not stop him? I went over and over it, tormenting myself. There was no escape, especially at night. I could not shut it out of my head. I could not sleep, had not slept since it happened. I lay in my bed at night, tense, alert to every sound; so many threats in the silence. The clunk of a radiator cooling; the creaking of settling wood. Outside the far cry of some night animal; closer, the scratching below my window of . . . what? A squirrel; a rat? A fox perhaps, prowling.

  How did I not hear Max’s tread on the stairs that night when I could hear it now, again and again? When every single noise now sounded like him; even the wind in the trees was a warning.

  We were so alone out here, Sam, Ella and me.

  Melanie called me on my mobile but I didn’t answer. I didn’t answer the home phone either when it rang, in case it was her. I hid myself away at home with no one but myself for company, and nothing to do but go over and over in my head what had happened. I replayed it constantly; Max’s hand on my chest, holding me down; the smell of his body. The utter violation of it sickened me. I could not squash the memory; I could not dampen it down.

  I made endless excuses to my children about why we could not see Melanie and her kids; we had viewers coming round to see the house, I had a headache, Ella was going down with a sore throat. Feeble excuses; they would not work forever.

  Of course Sam and Ella still saw Max and Abbie every day at school. It killed me to think of them being around Max, of having anything to do with him. But what could I do about it? I could not keep them away from him. If I did so I would have to tell them why.

  On Thursday evening when she was eating her pasta Ella said, ‘I’m going round Abbie’s after school tomorrow. I haven’t been round there at all, all week. She said I could stay over.’

  ‘You can’t stay over,’ I said, too quickly.

  And she said, ‘Why not?’

  I looked at her, at her eyes so determined and, it seemed to me, so suspicious too. ‘You’ve got riding on Saturday morning,’ I said.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you need to be here.’

  ‘No I don’t. You could pick me up on Saturday morning and take me to the stables from there.’

  ‘Ella,’ I said, ‘I am not your chauffeur.’

  ‘You’ve done it before,’ she said.

  ‘And I don’t want to do it again.’

  She glared at me, the colour hot in her cheeks. ‘Abbie’s right,’ she said, throwing dow
n her fork. ‘Abbie said her mum said you’ve gone all stuck up and don’t want to know her now we’re moving back to London.’

  And she slammed back her chair and flounced out of the room.

  Sam, who was still eating, looked up now. ‘Are we moving back to London?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Then why did she say that?’

  ‘I don’t know. And I don’t know where we’re moving to.’

  He carried on slowly eating, and frowning, and I sat there, feeling myself trapped in this web of my own stupid making.

  ‘Is Max coming round here on Friday?’ he said after a while, because remember it was always up to me to arrange these things, to invite Sam’s friends round. It was always me that invited Max.

  ‘Probably not,’ I said, the words so bitter in my mouth.

  Reluctantly, I suggested that he go round Max’s after school with Ella, just for a few hours. I suggested it, only so that Ella wouldn’t be there on her own. I could not bear the thought of her being near Max, yet nor could I think of a believable reason to stop her going round there. How could I keep her away from Abbie?

  ‘I’ll pick you both up later,’ I said, though God knew how I would. God knew how I would walk in to Melanie’s house, and chat, and act as if everything was normal.

  On Friday evening, when my children were both round at Melanie’s, I sat out here in my house miles from anywhere, unable to think properly, unable to do anything but stare out of the window at the dark. I could not even have a drink because I had to drive later to pick up Sam and Ella. I counted the hours, literally; I sat at the kitchen table and watched the clock and counted the hours.

  I hated the thought of Sam and Ella being in that house with Max, and I hated myself for letting them go there. It was wrong of me, stupid of me, but what else could I do?

  And God help me, but I deserve an Oscar, I deserve every award going for the performance I put on collecting my kids from Melanie’s. I drove over there in the dark steeling myself.

  Melanie answered the door to me, so cool towards me, so clearly pissed off with my remoteness this last week.