The Safest Place

by Suzanne Bugler

  He’d barely had to use any force.

  I am not so innocent that I have not encountered sex with a teenage boy before. Of course I have; when I was a teenager. The drunken fumble at a party; the way they get you in a room, the way it’s done before you know it. So quick, with teenage boys. You can almost forget it ever happened.

  But that he could do that to me, a grown woman. I had let him into my home, let him into my family. That is the grossest betrayal of trust. I clawed my fingers, digging them into my stomach. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Inside my chest there was a solid, seething mass.

  Max didn’t think he’d raped me. And David wasn’t entirely convinced either. David clearly thought there was room for doubt.

  And now I questioned myself. I should have fought him off; I should have screamed. I should have seen it coming; my antennae should have been aware: watch out, there’s a jumped-up kid with designs on you. I should have sensed the badness in that boy the minute I met him; I should have seen it in his mother even before I met him. I should have steered well clear, and kept myself alone here, in this new and friendless place. I should have been content on my own in my isolated house, baking cakes, and I should have carried on just baking those cakes after my husband had left me. I should have been a super-woman, immune to any weakness. Immune to loneliness. My children and I should have lived in splendid, virtuous isolation, never slipping up at all.

  Max raped me.

  There were no excuses, no other words.

  THIRTY

  In the morning, David was in the kitchen, waiting for me.

  ‘Does Sam know?’ he said straight away, in an almost farcical stage-whisper, glancing over his shoulder lest anyone should hear.

  ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I told him Max tried it on, that’s all.’

  He closed his eyes in relief. ‘Thank God for that,’ he said. Then, as if that really was all that mattered, ‘Poor Sam.’

  Oh yes. Poor Sam.

  Me, I was just flotsam and jetsam in all this, a little castaway rubbish, tangling underneath. It was I who had muddied the waters around here.

  David made a little thing about putting the kettle on, and hunting to see if there was any bread going spare for toast. He adopted an air of not exactly ease – that would be going too far – but of camaraderie in this time of crisis.

  ‘I did not encourage Max,’ I said. ‘I do not know how you could even think such a thing.’

  David stopped what he was doing. Carefully he placed the knife he was holding down on top of his half-buttered toast, and turned to face me.

  ‘I’m sorry if I seemed . . . unsympathetic last night,’ he said. ‘I do not blame you. What happened . . . it must have been awful.’

  ‘Yes,’ I thought, ‘it was,’ though I said nothing.

  ‘Look, I know you didn’t want it to happen,’ he said, his eyebrows peaking so that they met in the middle, a triangle of concern. He was a teenage boy once, my handsome, upright, estranged and unfaithful husband. ‘I know that. Things haven’t been easy lately, for you especially. I do know that, believe me.’ He paused. ‘But to use the term rape, Jane. Are you sure?’

  Did he think I would take it back? Did he really think I would say ‘Oh well actually, now you come to mention it . . .’

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I snapped.

  David blinked a couple of times, shuttering the solidness of me from his vision. He folded his arms across his chest; I could see that he was trembling, just slightly, inside his shirt. ‘Jane, he’s fifteen,’ he said. ‘He’s a minor.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He was here in your house, in your care.’

  ‘Yes, he was here in my house,’ I said, spitting the words back at him.

  I stared at him and our eyes locked. I knew exactly what he was thinking. It was written all over his face.

  ‘It would be your word against his,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, the tears burning in my eyes now. ‘And who’s going to believe me when you so clearly don’t?’

  Sam’s bag stayed packed beside the front door. He’d put it there as soon as he got up, making it clear he still intended to leave. He was in his room now, arguing with David. I could hear them, from my room; David’s voice so appeasing, calling for calm, Sam’s just so utterly wretched, veering from rage to tearful despair.

  ‘You have to go to school,’ David was saying. ‘It’s the law. You know that.’

  ‘I’ll go to school in London,’ Sam pleaded. ‘I’ll go to a school near you.’

  ‘I don’t have any room,’ David said. ‘It’s not my flat.’

  ‘That’s just excuses. You don’t want me. You don’t care.’

  ‘I do care.’

  ‘No you don’t. You just care about yourself. You don’t care what happens to me.’

  And on, and on.

  I stood in front of the mirror above my dressing table, and listened to them. And I stared at my reflection. I looked every one of my 44 years right then. My hair was a neglected, badly bleached mess; I was too thin. Stress and lack of sleep had taken all the colour from my face except for around my eyes; there it was painted purple. You could never say I dressed to please; you could never say I courted attention. I didn’t primp and groom and flirt; by nature, I am the opposite of that. But so what if I wasn’t. So what if I wore a faceful of make-up and the shortest skirts ever; had we not moved beyond that?

  It was her fault m’lud, she was asking for it.

  It was her fault m’lud, she gave me a beer; she made me feel too at home.

  She was a lonely old woman; I was doing her a favour.

  I’m just a kid, m’lud. I’m not yet sixteen.

  I closed my eyes. I saw myself at that campsite in Dorset, so desperate to be free. I saw myself drunk, and stoned, and laughing; the shame of throwing up. And here in this house, again and again; come on in boys, let me bring you a beer. What did I do but try too hard?

  David made Sam show him those pictures on Facebook. I heard him go downstairs, to fetch his Blackberry, then come back. I knew what he was doing, and I came out of my room, and followed him back in to Sam’s. I did not want David looking at those pictures; more than that, I did not want to be hidden away in my room when he did look at them, as though in shame.

  Could Sam be any more cornered? He was sitting on his bed, shaking, his eyes swollen from crying. He looked up at me when I walked in, his face raw with pain.

  Yet miraculously the pictures had gone. All of them: removed.

  Those boys were not stupid. They knew not to leave them there for long. Besides there was no need; the damage had already been done.

  David could not take the next day off work too. He had an important meeting with clients, a pitch he felt his job depended on.

  ‘I’ll get up early and drive in,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow evening – as soon as I can.’ He paused. ‘If that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ I said.

  It was late and we were in the kitchen. David was sitting at the table, his shoulders hunched. I found a half-empty bottle of wine in the fridge and poured him a glass; he certainly looked like he needed it. For hours he had been up there with Sam, though Sam wouldn’t talk to him at all now. Nor would he come out of his room. He would not forgive David for not taking him back to London.

  ‘Jane, I feel bad about having to leave you at all,’ he said.

  Those words: on what level did he mean them? Wasn’t it a little too late now for regret?

  Coolly, I said, ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine.’

  He put his head in his hands, spreading his fingers into his hair. ‘This is just such a mess,’ he said.

  I heard him leave the house at just gone four. It was pitch dark; night-time still, and raining, a steady pitter-patter hitting the roof and the trees. I heard David moving around downstairs; the running of water through the pipes. The click of his shoes on the tiled floor of the hall; the careful opening and c
losing of doors.

  No sound escaped me any more.

  The front door clicked shut behind him. I listened to his feet crunch across the gravel, and the slow, depressing start of the car. I listened as he drove away down our lane, the tyres swishing on the wet ground, and faded into the world beyond.

  I buried my head into my pillow, wrapping it around my head, pressing it against my ears.

  Sam would not go to school.

  ‘I’m never going there again,’ he said. ‘Never. I don’t care what you try and do.’

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ I said, so tired, so weary from all this. ‘You have to go to school. It’s the law. You know what your father said.’

  Sam glared at me in disgust. ‘You think I care what he says?’ he shouted at me. ‘What has he got to do with anything? He doesn’t even live here any more.’ He jabbed his finger at me, my sad little boy. ‘He is just a liar. You both are. And if you try and make me go to that school I will run away and I will never come back. I mean it.’

  Ella started crying. ‘I don’t want to go either,’ she wailed. ‘I hate it there now too.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I said to her. ‘This has got nothing to do with you.’

  ‘Yes it has!’ she cried. ‘I hate school and I hate it here. All anyone ever does is argue. If Sam’s running away so am I.’

  ‘Sam’s not running away,’ I said.

  Still in my nightdress, I went outside to start the car. It was pouring with rain and the morning was pitch black, yet those few seconds alone in my car were blissful. For those few seconds, I could cry. I turned the ignition over; it spluttered, and failed. I waited the count of ten seconds and tried again; our daily damp-weather ritual. A good ten minutes it took to get the car started, a good ten minutes in which to consider the unrelenting meanness of the morning darkness. Nothing was on my side here, nothing at all.

  After the car finally rumbled into life I stomped back to the house; in that short distance my nightdress was soaked. I grabbed Ella by the arm.

  ‘We’re going to school,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she yelled, letting her legs give out from under her.

  I yanked her arm hard before I let it go, and then she sat there on the cold floor, rubbing at it, as if I’d hurt her. And she cried. No one cries like an 11-year-old girl; the pitch of it split through my head.

  I slammed my hands into my hair. ‘What do you want from me?’ I screamed at her, at Sam too. ‘If you don’t go to school you’ll be taken in to care. Is that what you want? Is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ella sobbed. ‘If it means we don’t have to live here any more.’

  At three o’clock I was still in my nightdress, locked in my house by the hammering rain, having my kids’ misery rammed down my throat. I felt like I would explode. Already it was getting dark. There was no escape. Ella had not stopped crying all day, as if she was crying on behalf of all of us.

  What now? I could see no end.

  This was Max’s fault, all of it. I wanted that boy to pay.

  They’d be coming out of school in half an hour. I grabbed an old jacket off the pegs by the door and flung it on over my nightie; I stuck my bare feet into wellington boots. And I went out to my car, swearing to God I would commit murder if it didn’t start first time. It did, for the first time ever, and I drove along those lanes like I have never driven before. I didn’t even care about the rain bucketing on to the windscreen, nor the slackness of the brakes on those wet, dark roads. Oh yes, I courted fate, right then; what else had I got to lose? I covered a twenty-minute journey in ten, only slowing when I hit the traffic into town.

  I pulled up outside the school gates at 3.25. Right outside, bumping my tyres up onto the pavement.

  I was looking for Lydia.

  I’d only met her a couple of times; really, I couldn’t even be sure if I would recognize her now. How would I pick her out from all these other girls that looked so much the same with their long hair and their princess faces?

  The rain flooded across the windscreen and I kept the engine running and the wipers going full pelt; still the glass kept on steaming up and I had to rub it and rub it again with the sleeve of my jacket.

  The kids started streaming out, some huddled under umbrellas, most of them just running, heads down into the rain. How would I see her? How would I stop her in time? I wound down the window and leaned out, and the rain came beating in. That could be her, or that girl, there.

  ‘Lydia!’ I called out. Faces turned, looked at me in curiosity, looked at me as though I was mad.

  ‘Lydia!’

  A couple of girls slowed down and sniggered. No matter, at least she’d hear me when she did appear. I saw several faces from Sam’s year; kids who’d been in my house. I hoped to God I saw Lydia before Max came along – and then there she was.

  ‘Lydia!’

  She turned and looked towards the car, squinting into the rain. She frowned and carried on walking but I called her again; I started rolling the car along the pavement after her, still leaning out the window.

  ‘Lydia! I’m Jane Berry – Sam’s mum,’ I called, in case she didn’t remember me.

  ‘What do you want?’ she hissed at me, still walking, hugging her bag to her chest.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ I shouted after her, the rain catching in my mouth. There was an audience gathering now; they had to jump to get out the way of my car.

  ‘Why?’ She stopped and turned to me, her face scarlet.

  ‘Get in,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t.’ So I turned off the engine, started getting out the car. And they laughed at me, those kids gathered around; laughed at me in my nightdress and wellies. How I hated them. How I hated Lydia, too, for breaking my Sam’s heart.

  ‘OK,’ she said, and she scurried round to the passenger door, opened it and threw herself into the seat, hunching down low to try and hide herself from her friends. She held her bag on her lap and she looked at me, and I could see her fear.

  I realized I was breathing noisily and I tried to quieten myself. I wiped my hand across my wet face, pushing back my hair. The windows had steamed up totally, locking us into a cave.

  ‘I want to know what happened at that party,’ I said.

  Poor Lydia. She looked terrified.

  ‘With Max,’ I said.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said. And she turned as if to get back out of the car. I leant across her, holding her down.

  She stared at me in alarm.

  ‘Did he rape you?’

  ‘No.’ Her eyes were as frightened as a rabbit’s. ‘Please, just let me go.’

  But I wouldn’t. I held my arm across her. And then I realized what I was doing; I loosened that arm, I softened my hand. I patted the bag on her lap; a friendly gesture, I hoped.

  ‘Did he, Lydia? Did he force you to have sex with him? You must tell me.’

  Her eyes filled with tears. ‘No,’ she said again. ‘I was drunk,’ she said. ‘I don’t want my parents to know. They’d kill me.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘I’m not! Please don’t tell my parents. Please. I just want to forget it.’

  She was crying. I had to let her go. She scrambled out of the car, banging the door behind her. For a while I sat there in my steamed-up car, my heart pounding, my breath coming hard and fast.

  She had to be lying.

  I whacked the fan on full speed to try to clear the windscreen, wiping it at the same time with my arm. Most of the kids had dispersed now. Max would have come out the gates at some point; he’d probably seen my car. And now he’d be sauntering along on his smug way home. I couldn’t let him get away with it.

  My car was facing the wrong way; I had to bump my way off the pavement into the incoming traffic and do a U-turn. Several cars blasted their horns at me; I nearly hit a couple of boys dashing across the road in the rain.

  Max was almost at his house when I spotted him. I slammed the car to a halt in the middle of the road alongsi
de him and opened the door. ‘Max!’ I yelled, leaning right out, but he ignored me, and carried on walking. A car came up behind and beeped me to move. So I drove on, winding my window down. ‘Max!’ I yelled again, and he started walking faster, breaking into a run as he got near to his house. He scuttled up to his front door, closing it quickly behind him.

  Rage burned inside me.

  I had to find somewhere to park but there was nowhere. I ended up leaving the car right down past the petrol station and then had to run all the way back to Melanie’s house; I was drenched when I got there, my bare legs raw from the cold. I hammered on Melanie’s front door, pounding it with my fist.

  Abbie answered. She opened it just a crack, peering round with wide eyes.

  ‘I want to see Max,’ I said.

  She opened the door a little wider, and from somewhere inside Melanie called, ‘Who is it, Abs?’

  ‘It’s Jane,’ Abbie shouted back, and she smiled at me, a familiar habit of a response.

  I pushed my way inside and stood dripping on their carpet. Melanie came out of the downstairs bathroom, wiping her hands on her jeans.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Hello.’

  ‘I want to see Max,’ I said.

  She looked me up and down and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I don’t know if he’s in,’ she said.

  ‘He is in,’ I said, and I turned my head to the stairs and yelled, ‘Max!’ at the top of my voice.

  Abbie ran to her mum, startled.

  ‘Now just you hang on a minute—’ Melanie said but I yelled again.

  ‘Max!’

  ‘Jane!’ Melanie said. ‘What’s this about?’

  ‘I want to speak to Max,’ I said.

  And she said, ‘You’ll speak to me first.’

  I stared at her. ‘OK,’ I said, but then we heard Max’s footsteps, creeping down the stairs. Into the room he came, as if everything in the world was normal, an easy smile upon his face.

  ‘Hi, Jane,’ he said, and I wanted to slap him.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ I said.

  ‘What’s this about?’ Melanie said.