The Safest Place (10 page)

Yet how dowdy I suddenly felt, as so many people from so many countries dressed in so very many different styles rushed past me on my way back down to the tube. How dowdy, and how invisible.
I’d worn comfy, flat shoes, so sensible for walking around town; women half my age and twice my height charged past me in heels the likes of which I have never worn. And I didn’t
actually want to wear them – I just didn’t want to feel so . . . insignificant. The tube was crowded but I managed to get a seat. I tried not to stare at the people sitting opposite me
so I looked past them at the window instead; at the blackness of the glass streaked with blue and white and orange as the lights in the tunnel whizzed by. And then I saw myself. At first, I
didn’t realize it was me; I didn’t properly focus. There was just this ghostly haze, but then it took form; the pale face, dark-eyed, distorted like in a mirage; the shock of shortish,
untamed, bleached-out hair. I had been absently staring for quite some time before I realized that I was seeing myself.

Most of all it was the hair that shocked me.

The last time I sat on a tube train – before Ella was born, before she took those scissors and so innocently lined them up within the length of my hair, and cut – my hair would have
been the first thing that I saw reflected in any tube train window; in any window at all. Oh yes, I would have recognized myself then. Anyone would have known me back then, by my hair.

After the disaster I tried to grow it back. Believe me, I tried. I missed it as much as if I’d had my face removed; my features all rubbed out. To me, my hair was my one defining
feature.

But it wouldn’t grow. It got as far as my shoulders, no more, then the ends split and broke off in a mass of rats’ tails. Eventually I gave up, and had it cut into a short,
manageable bob, so much more practical, so much more sensible with the children my priority now. So much easier to look after; so very wash-and-go.

I’d taken to bleaching my hair at home. Just some kit from the chemist, a little lightener, to brighten up the mouse; so much more convenient than trying to get to a hairdressers out where
we lived. I’d thought it looked OK.

And then I saw myself. Who was I trying to kid? And how did I ever think there was any merit in a hair cut that was wash-and-go?

Sitting on that train I felt cheated.

It was the discrepancy that shocked me most. You think you are one thing. You go about, falsely secure in the confines of your own making, blind. And then, so unexpectedly, you are tipped out of
your comfort zone and forced to see. And what I saw, right at that moment, was a woman just over forty who was starting to let herself go.

If I hadn’t been on a crowded train I would have cried. I wanted to cry. I wanted to grab back all those years that I’d so casually let filter by and be what I used to be; I wanted
to be young, confident, oblivious. Failing that, I’d rather be walking across fields with the wind and the rain in my face, with no need to think about such things, no
point
in
thinking about such things. I didn’t want to be here, in London, reminded.

The magazine offices are in a large building just off Old Compton Street, a five-minute walk from Leicester Square tube. I remembered the way, easily enough. Just ten minutes, cutting through
the side streets, and you could be in Covent Garden, at lunchtime, or for drinks after work. For me, that was the best bit about working here.

I am actually three years older than David, and I started on the magazine before he did. I remember him, the new boy fresh out of university, squeaky clean in his brand new suit. I remember when
we first got together, in a pub on Neal Street one Friday night after work; I remember the crush at the bar and the noise of all those people, and having to reach up to him on tiptoe to hear him
speak. I remember his hand gently moving my hair away from my neck as he bent down to me; and his breath against my ear, sending goosebumps breaking out across my skin. And I remember the drunken
kiss, outside, on the way back home.

The office had been practically rebuilt since I last saw it. It now had a huge glass frontage, with revolving doors, through which an endless stream of trendy, young, creative types slipped
seamlessly in and out. I watched them a while, from just across the street, and I seriously regretted my choice of clothing, particularly my sensible shoes. It had been hot on the underground, and
I felt grubby from my day. I hoped my face wasn’t too shiny, but I’d no mirror in my bag with which to check.

How silly that I should feel like this. David loved me for myself; that’s what I’d always believed. He’d love me if I was dressed in a sack. We were married, after all.
He’d seen me giving birth; what difference would a bit of lipstick and mascara make after that?

But as I stood before the unfamiliar office I found myself taunted by the memory of my younger self. I didn’t mind being small back then; I was cute, and I knew it. I flounced around with
my long hair flowing behind me, letting the bangles on my wrists jangle like bells, forever announcing my approach. I had David wrapped around my little finger. Most of our courtship – for
want of a better word – went on here, at work.

I crossed over and pushed myself through those doors. The reception had been completely transformed since I worked here; I’d thought it plush back then but that was nothing to the way it
looked now, all minimalist chic, a bank of steel-doored lifts ahead, a line of framed front pages of the various magazines on the wall to the left, and to the right the sweeping desk behind which
sat an off-putting security guard and an even more intimidating, extremely pretty receptionist.

But I was not to be deterred; I used to work here, after all.

‘Hi,’ I said to the receptionist. ‘I was hoping to see David Berry.’

I smiled my brightest smile, and she smiled back, but not before I saw her eyes give me a quick, almost imperceptible once-over.

‘Is he expecting you?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d surprise him. I’m his wife.’

I saw her double-take, the surprise on her face. Was it really that shocking that I could be David Berry’s wife? Or was I just being paranoid, my own self-consciousness getting the better
of me? I thought of David, waltzing into this building every morning in his smart suit with his hair all short and neat; I thought of what his colleagues saw of him and knew of him. He was a
good-looking man, my husband; that woman behind the reception desk, every woman in the building for that matter, would no doubt have noticed that.

I felt a needle of jealousy right under my ribs, sharp, unexpected. Still, he was married to me.

The receptionist pressed some buttons, spoke into her headset, and then ignored me. I stood there, trying not to feel in the way, while people hurried past me on their way from the lifts to the
door and vice versa, all of them looking straight out of the pages of the very magazines that they worked on.

After a moment I said, ‘Shall I go up?’

She looked at me as if she had forgotten I was there. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘He’s coming down.’

And that annoyed me a little; as if I couldn’t be trusted to find my way up to the fourth floor where the marketing department was. I felt excluded, waiting down there, when I’d
hoped to breeze into David’s office with a big smile, receive his warm, pleased-to-see-me kiss and perch myself jauntily on the edge of his desk. Just like I used to, all those years ago.

The lift doors opened, and there he was.

‘Jane,’ he said straight away. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I’ve come to see you,’ I said, pointing out the obvious.

He looked confused. ‘Is it one of the children? Is something wrong?’

‘No, no they’re fine.’ I laughed a bright quick laugh, more for the benefit of the receptionist than him; she was watching us, clearly entertained. ‘I was in London for
the day and I thought I’d surprise you.’

‘Oh,’ he said. Just that.

‘I met my mother,’ I said. And I lied, ‘I thought I told you.’

‘No,’ he said, frowning. ‘No, you didn’t.’

That receptionist was quite openly staring at us. I swear I heard her snigger.

‘I thought you might show me your office,’ I said coyly, tilting my head slightly to one side, much the way that I used to do.

But he said, ‘There’s a meeting going on up there at the moment. I came out when they said you were here. I thought something must have happened.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘If you’d let me know you were coming I’d have – I don’t know – ’ He was anxious to get back to his
meeting. He glanced at his watch, and mirroring his actions, I looked at mine. It was twenty past four.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘It was a bit spur of the moment.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t ask you up for a coffee or anything.’

‘No. Well. Never mind. I’d better get back for the children anyway.’

He smiled. ‘It was nice to see you,’ he said, so terribly polite.

‘It was nice to see you too.’

‘I don’t know how long this meeting will go on for but I’ll try and get back on the 7.20 train,’ he said, as if that was consolation, as if I thought for a moment
he’d actually make it. These meetings, they go on and on. ‘I’ll see you later,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you later.’

Back outside, I took a deep breath. I watched all those London people dashing about in their busy, London lives.

What had I hoped for? That he’d just abandon his work and whisk me off somewhere in the middle of the afternoon?

This was the real world.

I thought about David on the train home. I couldn’t think about anything else.

It was a long time since I had seen him in his work environment, and it had made me realize that I knew so little about his daily life these days, away from us. All I knew about life in that
office in London was what I remembered from when I had worked there, nearly eleven years ago. In my head, the other people who worked alongside and around David were the same old people who had
been there back then, but of course that wouldn’t be the case. Most of those people would have moved on by now, and still more would have joined and since left too, in their place. The
chances are I wouldn’t have known anyone. I never kept in touch with anyone from work after I left; I was too busy with my children. And I knew that, certainly in my department, people came
and went all the time. My memory was stuck in a time warp. The truth was I knew nothing about David’s working life. I didn’t even know the name of the colleague whose flat he sometimes
stayed at.

And yet I could have known. I really should have known. I should have asked him. But I realized then that I had stopped talking to David a long time ago.

I stared out of that train window at the monotony of houses, trees, and fields flashing by, and I was struck by a wave of remorse. And worse than that: of uncertainty.

Visiting him there at his office, it was I who was the misfit, and yet that was how I had come to view him these days at home. Inwardly, I had felt some perverse satisfaction at the sight of him
getting things wrong with the children; getting the names of their new friends muddled; not knowing that Ella had been on a school trip to Bath; that Sam had moved up a set in maths. I had come to
see it as his fault that he did not know all the little details of our daily lives – after all, he had chosen to remove himself even more from us by frequently staying in London. It
wasn’t down to me to have to tell him everything, to fill in the gaps caused by his absence.

I felt smug too when I watched him trying to horse around in the garden with Ella, insisting on giving her piggybacks when she was far too old now to want to play, or when he had to badger Sam
to kick a ball with him, pleading, ‘Come on, Sam, I’ll be in goal.’ And Sam, whose football skills had improved no end under the tutelage of Max, would say, ‘Aw, Dad,’
and smack a ball straight past him, and laugh.

Once, just recently, I caught him staring out the kitchen window at Sam and Ella as they played on the swing, Ella standing on the seat and Sam half-hanging by his hands from the top with his
feet propped on the cross bar of the side frame. They were mucking around, taking it in turns to sing some daft rhyme, using words from a teenage language unknown to us.

‘They grow so fast,’ David said to me and there was a note of bewilderment in his voice, and of melancholy, as if it had happened overnight, as if he really hadn’t noticed
before. ‘They’re my children,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think I don’t even know them.’

What I should have done was wrapped my arms around him. I should have cuddled him and laughed it off, or given some reassurance. But instead I moved away from him in the kitchen. I slammed on a
pan to start cooking supper.

‘Wonder whose fault that is?’ I said.

I got back to Melanie’s at about a quarter to eight. I did think about going home first for a while to make it seem as if I’d stayed in London longer and had gone
out with David after all. But what was the point of that, really? I have never been any good at lying, and Melanie was too sharp, too quick for me. She’d soon have it worked out, and then
I’d have her contempt to contend with as well as her pity, and I couldn’t face that.

Besides, I was tired. I wanted to gather up my children and go home.

She opened the door to me and said, ‘I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.’

‘It was a long day,’ I said.

The kids were still eating, munching on slices of pizza while they watched some American sitcom on TV. Sam, Ella and Abbie were squeezed onto the sofa. Max had got Jake’s mattress down
even though Jake wasn’t there, and he was sprawled out on it, propped up on one elbow, legs stretched full-length and crossed at the ankles. I climbed over him and followed Melanie into the
kitchen.

As if knowing it was what I needed, she grabbed a glass off the draining board, opened the fridge and poured me some wine from the box she’d got wedged inside the door next to the
milk.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and she poured another glass for herself. Then she opened the back door and we went out into her tiny yard, and sat down on the upturned metal buckets that she
used for seats out there.