The Safest Place

by Suzanne Bugler

  ‘The kids should be out here, doing this,’ he complained when he’d swept those leaves into one enormous pile.

  To which I said, ‘Yes, but the kids aren’t the ones who want to move.’ Because it seemed to me that that was all it was about: keeping the place nice, keeping it tidy. Earlier in the week someone had put an offer on the house; too low, but an offer nevertheless. We were ‘sitting on it’ for now, hoping something better would come along. Though suddenly the idea of moving did not seem so bad; the idea of moving, of running far, far away.

  Later, when David was soon to go, he came upstairs where I was hiding out of his way. I was lying down, half reading a magazine. He tapped on my door and then stood there awkwardly in that devil’s space between door and bed. It was a long, long time since David had entered this room.

  ‘What’s wrong with Sam?’ he said.

  I kept hold of my magazine, and tried not to look at him. ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘Ella tells me he slept in the shed last night,’ he said. ‘Is that true?’

  Damn Ella and her love of a show. I could so picture her, letting the secret out of the bag, clamping her hand over her mouth too late.

  ‘He didn’t sleep there,’ I said. ‘He came home early from where he had been sleeping.’ Which wasn’t so far from the truth.

  David stood there. I could almost hear his mind working. And I could feel his sense of loss; that scary, weightless fear of not knowing where your children are when you are far away from them. Not knowing where they are, or how they are, or who they are with. The reins had slipped from his hands, and what did he have now to hold onto?

  ‘Oh,’ he said. And, after a moment, ‘Do you think that’s OK?’

  ‘Well he’s home, isn’t he?’ I said, trying to keep my voice casual, and my eyes fixed firmly on that magazine.

  But on Monday morning Sam would not get out of bed.

  ‘Sam!’ I called from the chaos of downstairs. ‘Sam, get up!’

  Eventually I went up to his room and tapped on the door. His room was in darkness, and he lay on his bed with his face to the wall.

  ‘Sam, come on,’ I said and when still he did not move I went over to him and shook him. ‘You’ll be late for school.’

  He kept his eyes squeezed shut. ‘I’m not going.’

  ‘Come on, you have to,’ I said. I tugged at his duvet and he yanked it back, pushing me away at the same time.

  ‘I’m not going,’ he shouted.

  I drove Ella to school on her own, my heart racing anxiously the whole way there and the whole way back again. I needed to know what had happened at the party, and why Sam hadn’t stayed at Max’s. I could not believe that Max would have told him about me – certainly not everything. But if he had told him even something I had to know.

  Sam was still in bed when I got back, lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.

  Bracing myself, I said, ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  I sat down on the end of his bed, accidently brushing against his foot. Instantly that foot shot away from me. It was not so long ago that if Sam was sad or anxious about something he would curl up on my lap, burying his head into me. And how easy it was to comfort him then, how easy to just stroke and soothe him. Now his whole body tensed up, recoiling away from my nearness.

  ‘What happened, Sam?’ I said gently. ‘Talk to me.’

  He lay there with his mouth clamped shut.

  ‘Please, Sam,’ I said, and, as if to convince myself, ‘It can’t be that bad, surely.’

  But he would not speak.

  I swallowed, my throat dry.

  ‘Look,’ I said at last, in desperation, ‘if you’ve fallen out with Max why don’t you have some of your other friends round next weekend? How about Tommy and Will? Max doesn’t have to come. You could call them later if you like, fix it up—’

  ‘Oh you’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ he said and he leapt from the bed, in one sudden movement, so fast I had to duck. And then he stumbled past me and out into the bathroom, slamming the door.

  ‘Sam and Max had a fight,’ Ella told me from the back of the car on the way back from school.

  ‘Yes, Ella, I think I’d worked that out,’ I said.

  ‘No, a proper fight, over a girl. Over Lydia.’

  ‘How do you know?’ I said.

  ‘Abbie told me. I told her Sam slept in the shed, and she told Max and Max said Sam was a geek and that he threw a strop because Lydia liked him instead!’

  I tried to follow this. ‘Who threw a strop?’ I said.

  ‘Sam did of course. Because Lydia liked Max.’

  Right then I felt this tremendous weight start to lift from me. I was almost light-headed with relief, with the unexpected hope that this was true. ‘That’s what this is about?’ I said. ‘It’s about Lydia?’

  I looked at her in the rear-view mirror, and she nodded, her eyes wide, teeth digging into her bottom lip. And for a brief, delirious moment I thought things might be OK.

  Sam wasn’t in his room when Ella and I got home; he wasn’t in the house at all. We spotted him, eventually, sitting at the top of the hill, his small solitary shape silhouetted against the colourless sky. If this really was all about Lydia, Sam just needed some time alone, time to heal. That’s what I told myself; that’s what I let myself hope. He’s just upset about Lydia. Please, please let it be true. My poor Sam; how sweet of him to hurt like this over a girl, and how typical for him to lose out to Max. Sam was a billion times the better person than Max, yet it had taken a cruel lesson for me to see it.

  He was still up there when it was starting to get dark.

  ‘I’ll go and get him,’ Ella said and I watched from the back garden as she first ran then crawled her way up the hill. At the top she stood with her hands on her hips, catching her breath. She crouched down to Sam, and put her hand on his arm, then she stood up again. I wished I could hear what they were saying. And I wished they would hurry up and come down; it would be properly dark soon.

  I walked through the gate at the end of the garden and stood at the bottom of the hill. ‘Come down,’ I called, but the wind blew my words straight back at me. ‘Come down,’ I yelled louder. And I gestured with my hands.

  Ella could see me; surely she could hear me too. She stuck out her arms in an exaggerated shrug, then started scrambling back down the hill towards me.

  Sam stayed up there. I was getting really annoyed now, and anxious too. ‘Sam!’ I called. ‘Come on!’

  I started climbing up the hill, meeting Ella on the way.

  ‘He won’t come,’ she said. ‘I tried, I really did.’

  ‘OK. Just go inside now.’

  The hill was steep. I had only ever climbed it once before, just after we first moved here; we’d all climbed up then, the whole family, to see the amazing view. Now I puffed my way to the top, intermittently stopping, and calling, yet again, to Sam.

  ‘For God’s sake, Sam, I’ve been calling you. Why didn’t you answer me?’ I said when finally I reached him. He was sitting facing away from the house, with just more hills and more fields spread out before him, so grey, so bleak now, merging with the dark. It was cold up there with no shelter from the wind and I shivered, hugging my arms across my chest. Sam was wearing just his jeans and a shirt. ‘Come on, Sam, this is silly,’ I said. ‘I’m freezing.’

  ‘Then you go back down,’ he said.

  ‘Look, I know you’re upset,’ I said, ‘but staying up here isn’t going to help.’ I crouched down beside him; I didn’t want to sit because the ground was too cold and damp. And I tried to put my arm around him to warm him a little, to comfort him.

  He slapped my arm away. ‘Get off me,’ he said.

  ‘I’m trying to understand!’ I said. ‘I’m trying to be nice to you.’

  ‘Well don’t bother.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘if it’s any consolation I can’t think why Lydia would choose Max over you.’

  He looked at me. ‘What?’
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  Of course I wasn’t supposed to know, so quickly I said, ‘I’m just guessing, Sam. Call it mother’s instinct.’

  He stared at me in disbelief. Then, ‘You don’t know anything at all!’ he yelled, right into my face. And he stood up and stomped away from me, heading back down the hill, because, let’s face it, he had nowhere else to go.

  ‘Sam!’ I called. ‘Sam!’ I ran after him, tripping and sliding my way down, struggling to keep up. ‘Sam, wait for me. And don’t talk to me like that!’

  But when we were back down on level ground, instead of going into the house, he headed for the shed. ‘What are you doing?’ I said, running along behind him.

  He sat himself down, just as we’d found him on Saturday morning.

  ‘Stop this, please,’ I said. ‘Just come inside.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need to eat. You need to get warm.’

  ‘I’m not going in the house,’ he said. ‘I’m staying here.’ And he made a circle with his arms on his knees, and hid his face.

  ‘But this is stupid,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t care,’ he wailed, his voice muffled against his knees. ‘I’m not going in to the house. Just leave me alone!’

  I took him out blankets, and a sleeping bag. I cooked pasta in a tuna and tomato sauce; his favourite. I indulged him; I did not know what else I could do.

  To Ella I said, ‘He wants to sleep in the shed. Just let him.’ I rolled my eyes and she rolled hers back, the words Aren’t boys strange? unspoken between us.

  And I loaded up a tray: pasta, drink, biscuits, and carried it to the shed. There I laid it down, and there he ignored it.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ I said in desperation. ‘I know you’re upset about Lydia, but life’s tough, Sam. I should know. And you can’t react like this every time you get upset over a girl!’

  But of course this wasn’t just about Lydia. I was horribly aware of that.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I watched the shed all night. I didn’t sleep a wink. I dragged the bedroom chair over and put it by the window, and looked down. I couldn’t believe he would stay out there the whole night; he would be so cold, even with all those blankets, and so uncomfortable, down there on the dirty, hard floor. My Sam loves the comfort of his own bed; he was punishing himself as much as he was punishing me.

  I tried to form a plan; some way of rescuing things. In my head, I ran through a multitude of possible explanations and reasons and lies, of course; I hoped I could get through all this with the help of lies.

  Daylight dawned too slowly and it was still dark when I went out there the next morning. Sam was asleep, curled up in the most awkward position, the points of his elbows and knees jutting out from the tangled blankets like sticks. I crept into the shed, closing the door behind me, and sat down facing him in that very tight space.

  He opened his eyes immediately.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ I said.

  He turned away from me, dragging a blanket up over his face.

  ‘Go away!’ he said, his voice muffled.

  And I said, ‘I’m not going anywhere till you talk to me.’

  He pulled that blanket tighter over his head.

  ‘I mean it, Sam!’

  Still nothing.

  ‘Damn it, Sam,’ I said, ‘if you won’t tell me I’ll have to ask Max.’

  He threw that blanket off his face and sat up. ‘What do you want to know?’ he shouted at me. ‘Max and I had a fight, OK?’

  ‘About Lydia?’

  He looked at me with the strangest expression on his face. ‘Yes. About Lydia,’ he said.

  ‘Because Lydia preferred Max to you,’ I said, still hoping, praying for it to be true.

  ‘Yes.’

  I knew he was lying.

  ‘What really happened, Sam?’

  He was sitting with his legs still tangled in a combination of sleeping bag and blankets. In a sudden, frustrated movement he tried and failed to free himself. He was breathing hard; I could almost hear him thinking. My poor boy; I’d got him trapped. He slumped his shoulders, defeated.

  ‘Please, Sam,’ I said, my heart thumping now, jacked up with fear. ‘You have to tell me.’

  He stared down at his hands. ‘Lydia was drunk,’ he said in a robotic monotone. ‘Lydia went up to the bathroom. Max went up to the bathroom. Half an hour later Max comes down, then Lydia comes down crying.’

  ‘What – do you think Max did something to Lydia?’ I asked.

  ‘Do I need to spell it out?’ Sam said.

  ‘You think he took advantage of her?’ All over my skin goosebumps broke out, sharp as needles.

  He said nothing. He’d clawed his hands and was now driving the nail of each finger into the soft skin behind the nails of his thumbs, stabbing at himself.

  ‘So you and Max had a fight because you were upset at what he’d done to Lydia,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’

  He made this awful choking sound then, half laugh, half cry. And he looked at me, and I will never, ever forget the expression in his eyes.

  ‘No, Mum,’ he said, ‘that’s not it.’ He was trying so hard to stay in control but his bottom lip was wobbling away like anything, and his eyes were brimming with tears. ‘I’ll tell you why Max and I had a fight, shall I?’ he said, his voice breaking up now. ‘Max and I had a fight because he said . . . he said . . .’ He swallowed hard, then slapped a sneer on his face, mimicking Max. ‘He said, “What’s the matter with you, Sam, are you upset because I fucked your girlfriend or your mother?” ’

  The blood in my veins stilled, and froze.

  ‘There,’ Sam said. ‘Is that what you wanted to know?’

  I felt like I’d been slapped. I forced myself to speak. ‘It wasn’t like that, Sam,’ I said.

  And he wailed, ‘Oh my God, you’re supposed to deny it.’

  And so came the lies, kicking into place. ‘Max . . . made a pass at me,’ I said and oh how old-fashioned that phrase; how old-fashioned and safe and tame. ‘One evening when he was here. He must have been drunk or something . . . I told him not to be so silly. I laughed it off.’ I tried to laugh now, as if for example. It came out the most hideous trill. ‘But Sam, some people, people like Max, don’t like to be rebuked.’

  Sam’s hands stilled in his lap. He was listening; he wanted to believe me, I could tell.

  ‘So . . . so what he said to you . . . that would be revenge, Sam. Sour grapes. I’m so sorry.’

  Two big tears plopped down onto Sam’s hands and he sniffed, hard. I shuffled round so that I was next to him, and this time when I went to put my arm around him he let me. I held him against me; I rocked him in my arms. ‘I’m sorry, Sam. I’m so sorry,’ I whispered into his hair. ‘It must have been awful for you. That boy’s so . . . cruel.’

  After a while Sam pulled away from me, embarrassed now at being cuddled by his mum. He wiped his arm across his eyes.

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ I said and he nodded. ‘Sam,’ I said, oh so very carefully, ‘you don’t think Max might have forced himself on Lydia?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She was drunk.’

  Ella was up now, loitering in the kitchen in her pyjamas. She should have been ready for school by now; we should have been on our way.

  ‘I didn’t know where you were,’ she wailed tearfully. ‘I thought there was no one here.’

  ‘Oh Ella,’ I said, too tired, too drained to deal with her now. ‘I was only outside.’

  ‘But I didn’t know that. And I’m late for school.’ She looked at Sam, who brushed his way past her and staggered zombielike up the stairs. ‘I’m not going to school,’ she said. ‘If Sam’s not going to school, why should I?’

  And I really didn’t care. I doubted I could have stayed awake to drive her there anyway.

  I slept all morning, the black, dreamless sleep of oblivion; a brief reprieve. Sam slept too, and when he eventually got up he went straight downstairs to the den and turned on the computer.

/>   I heard him screaming from the kitchen where I was making a coffee. Screaming: there is no other word for it.

  I slammed down my cup and ran to the den. Ella was watching TV in the living room, still in her pyjamas; she stared as I passed her, too frightened to move. I slammed into the den and there was Sam, crouched down on the floor with his hands holding his head, no longer screaming but crying now, loudly; a deep, guttural moan.

  I thought he was hurt.

  ‘What is it? What happened?’

  I bent down to him but he pushed me away, standing up now, still with his hands clutching his head.

  ‘They all know,’ he wailed in despair. ‘Every single one.’

  I looked at the computer, my heart pounding.

  He had his Facebook page up, and there on his wall was message after message. Someone had taken a photo of Sam and Max fighting and posted it, with the caption ‘Max and Samantha fighting!! Berry fights like a girl!!!’

  Someone else had posted a picture of a topless model and written ‘MILF Berry’ underneath it. It took me a moment to work this out and when I did I felt the blood literally drain from my head.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I said.

  Beside me Sam was sobbing uncontrollably.

  ‘It’s lies,’ I said. ‘It’s nasty, nasty lies.’

  But it made no difference now whether it was lies or not. It made no difference if Sam believed what I told him in the shed. It was out there; that was what mattered. The blood that had left my head flooded back suddenly in a prickling, fizzing rush. Spots flashed in front of my eyes.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I heard Ella asking from the door.

  ‘Nothing,’ I snapped at her. ‘Get out.’

  But she didn’t get out. She stood there, crying too. I yanked the computer plug from its socket, and lest she or Sam should ever see that poison again I took the scissors from the desk drawer and started hacking through the cable.