The Safest Place (7 page)

At the end of January we signed Ella up for riding lessons at the local stables, just a few miles away across country lanes. It was her tenth birthday on the nineteenth and
we’d given her the hat, the boots and the jodhpurs for her presents. I will never forget the utter delight on her face when she put them on for the first time. How proud she looked, and how
proud we were of our fine little girl.

David and I both went with her for her first lesson. It was a cold, crisp Saturday, the sun slow to rise. The stables were part of a farm, accessible up a long, sloping track, a good mile away
from the road. David bumped the car over stones and pot holes, the engine grinding in second gear, and all around us we could see field upon field shrouded in a low, floating mist. In the weak
morning sunlight it was surreally, almost spookily, beautiful.

The farm was on quite high ground; we could see it as we approached, and the stables, too, across the courtyard. Beyond, they’d a huge field set up with jumps and flagpoles, as if for a
gymkhana.

‘Will I be doing that?’ Ella asked eagerly from the back of the car. ‘Will I be jumping?’

‘Perhaps not straight away, sweetie,’ I said, and beside me David laughed.

‘Better learn to sit on a horse first, don’t you think?’ he said.

We’d brought the camera, and a flask of tea. I remember jiggling from one foot to the other with my hands clasped around my plastic cup of stewed tea, trying to keep warm, while David took
photo after photo. I remember Ella’s face alternately petrified and euphoric as she first led her small horse from the stables, and was then helped up on to it, gripping the reins with all
her might, her breath fogging out in front of her face in short, fierce puffs. There were about eight girls there that morning, of various ages. The woman running the lesson was a caricature of
everything I’d ever imagined a riding mistress to be; tall, thin, with a large, prominent jaw, huge brown eyes and a deep whinny of a voice that I swear you could hear right across those
fields. I tried not to laugh. I looked at David, hiding behind his camera, and I knew that he was trying not to laugh too.

We watched as Ella was led away by one of the older girls to a nearby field – not, thankfully, the one set up with jumps. She tried to look back as she went, to smile at us, and nearly
slid off her horse.

‘Ella!’ I yelled, before I could stop myself.

‘Eyes on the road,’ called David. ‘Eyes on the road.’

Ella clutched at that horse, her little bottom sticking up behind her.

‘Jesus,’ I said as I watched her go. ‘How many broken bones do you think this will end with?’

‘None,’ David said. ‘She’ll be fine.’

Ella could only have been on that horse for fifteen minutes at the most. The rest of the time she was in the stables, learning the etiquette, the things to do, and not to do. Don’t enter
the stables if the horse has his tail to you, don’t run, hold your arm out straight when you lead him; that sort of thing. David and I stayed there the whole hour, though we saw little of
Ella. It didn’t matter; we were glad of the excuse just to be there. We wandered over to the far side of the courtyard, with that view stretched out around us. What a place to spend a
Saturday morning. This was what it was all about, moving here. David’s long commute, the hours we spent apart, it was worth it just for this.

It is a strange thing, when you finally achieve something that you have always wanted; when you are in the place you have always wanted to be. You are balanced on a peak. You
daren’t look down lest you fall. Is this it, you ask yourself, again and again. Are we really here?

Those Saturday nights during our first winter here, when our children were safe inside the house, and we, David and I, were curled up in front of the fire, were some of the
happiest of my life. Sometimes I would go to the kitchen to fetch us some wine or make us some tea, and open the back door for a moment and put my head out into the cold night air, just to feel the
contrast, the stark graveyard chill of the silent, black night outside, when we were so snug, so cosy within.

That first year, we had a whole stream of guests; at Christmas, at Easter and all through the long summer holidays.

‘Come up,’ I’d say on the phone to my friends back in London, and to family. ‘You must come and stay.’

I bought in extra food, and towels and linen in soft cotton checks of yellow and blue. I placed eggs from the farm in a ceramic dish on the side in the kitchen, and arranged apples from our tree
in another. At the front door I lined up our wellies, along with a couple of spare pairs for other people, and I stacked chopped wood in the living room beside the fire. At Christmas I decorated
the house with holly from the garden and twigs that I collected myself and painted red and silver and gold. I planned; I created the dream. It hurts me now, to think of it. I see myself, before
guests arrived, putting out a cake or fresh bread on the table, pouring milk from its supermarket carton into a white, old-fashioned jug. I wanted it all just so. It was imperative that people
should see what a great life we had here. I wanted to send them home again wistful, envious even; such reactions reassured us that we really had done the right thing in moving. David played his
part too. He took the men outside, showed them around. He said how great it was to be out of town every weekend, to wake up to just the sound of the birds, with no planes, no cars driving by. He
even made jokes about catching up on his sleep on the train.

I remember my friend Karen, on the one and only time that she and Ed came to stay with their children, saying, ‘Oh my God, you’re so lucky. It’s just so gorgeous
here.’

We were sitting in the living room with a glass of wine at the time, in front of the fire which I’d lit though we really didn’t need it. The children were still playing outside with
their fathers. We could hear them calling to each other from far out in the fields; the sweet carry of childish laughter.

‘I know,’ I said, and how pleased with myself I felt, back then. How content. ‘I could never go back to London. Not now.’

And when my parents came to stay, and I overheard my mum saying to Sam, ‘Oh aren’t you lucky having all these fields to play in? That’s where a boy should be: outside, running
around,’ it validated what we had done. It made it seem so right. The same when we walked through the woods with David’s sister Nicola and her husband Tom and their kids, with Sam and
Ella leading the way, showing off to their cousins the giant tree with the foxes’ lair burrowed under it, and the little stream gurgling out from under the stones in the bridleway. Then, too,
I felt that everything really was good with our world.

People drift off, though, over time. They find it harder to get away. Not family of course, but friends. People like Karen and Ed; they are now names inside a Christmas card.
We’d made the break: what more could I expect?

The thing about moving your life, as we had done, is that you must move it in its entirety. You cannot look back. You cannot do it in half measures, keeping an open door. It will never work if
you try to do that.

Yet there were times during that first year that I felt myself to be very much on trial. Perhaps it was my imagination, but I was aware of the eyes upon me when I walked
through town to do my shopping or approached the school gates, all those people looking at me, waiting to see me fail. I wonder if it is a peculiarly British thing, that desire to see others fall
flat on their face, but it is there all right; that ‘who do you think you are?’ attitude directed towards anyone who dares to attempt to do something different with their lives, the
hand-rubbing delight when it all goes wrong.

I’m sure no one meant me malice as such. I was more of an object of sport. ‘How are you finding it here?’ people would ask me in a perfectly friendly manner, but they’d
follow their enquiry with ‘Bit different from London, isn’t it?’ or ‘Do you think you’ll be staying?’

Once, I’d had what I thought was a really successful chat with two women outside Ella’s school one afternoon, talking about all the usual school-mum things from class cake sales to
the stress of the morning rush. I even had them laughing, though I can’t remember what about now. But when I walked away from them to meet Ella I couldn’t help overhearing one of them
saying to the others, ‘How long do you think she’ll last?’

These things just made me try harder. I thought of it as a bit like joining a club; the initiation period, if you like. Pass that and you’re in.

I remember a particular conversation with Melanie, at my house, one Friday evening over a bottle of wine. I must have been complaining about David getting home so late every night, and she said
to me, ‘What exactly does your David do in
Lon
don?’

‘He works for a magazine company,’ I said, and I named it, expecting to see recognition in her eyes.
Everyone
had heard of it. But Melanie’s eyes gave nothing away.
‘He’s the new-business manager,’ I said, ‘which is sort of marketing. They’re based in Soho. I used to work there too, once.’

Melanie drank down the last of her wine, watching me levelly over the rim of her glass. She said nothing. The truth is, I had expected her to be at least a little impressed by all this, and the
fact that she clearly wasn’t threw me; it made me work all the harder.

‘I didn’t work in marketing, though,’ I said quickly. ‘I was a designer.’

‘You told me before that you were an artist,’ she said and I immediately felt as if I was being picked up for boasting, which I hadn’t meant to do at all. But those magazine
days were a big part of my life and at times I missed them hugely. I didn’t want to forget them and have them shunted into the distant past of life before children. Sometimes I felt envious,
resentful even, that David was still so much in that world whereas for me it had ended years ago.

‘Still,’ I said, putting myself down before she could, ‘the only painting I get to do these days is decorating the house.’

‘It’s a nice house,’ Melanie said. ‘Marketing managers must earn a lot of money.’

Was that a dig? I wasn’t sure.

‘Not enough to buy a decent house in London,’ I said.

‘Is that why you moved here?’

‘Well, and for the schools,’ I said. ‘And the space. Just to find a better life.’

Melanie laughed. ‘Well let me know if you find it,’ she said.

Nothing impressed Melanie. That was one of the things that I liked about her, most of the time. Other times I didn’t like it quite so much; it unnerved me. I always had the feeling she
could see straight through me. Still, I was certainly in no position to take offence at anything Melanie said.

It was thanks to Melanie that I became friendly with a few other people. It would have taken me an awful lot longer on my own, had I ever managed it at all. I couldn’t
get used to the sheer strangeness of having everyone spread out so far and wide. In London my friends had all been a quick walk or drive or train ride away; to reach them was fast, safe and
street-lit. The prospect of driving for twenty minutes or so along pitch-black deserted roads on my own was as great a deterrent for a night out as I could ever imagine. But Melanie would have none
of it.

‘You’ve got to come,’ she insisted, when now and again there was a school mums’ night out. If ever I objected on the grounds that I couldn’t leave the children
she’d send Jake out, often with Kelly, to babysit. She had no worries about leaving Max and Abbie alone, but then they were in the town, and Max was a whole nine months older than my Sam. And
on the Friday of the Renfree Park quiz night she got Jake to pick me up in her car and drive me home again afterwards while Kelly stayed with my children, so that I didn’t have to drive and
could therefore have a drink. That night felt like a huge step forward to me, laughing with the others over the absurdity of the questions and our combined lack of general knowledge. On our team we
had Lisa Staples, whose son Will was in Sam’s class, and Melanie’s friends Angie and John, and another couple whose names I forget now, and we all drank far too much wine. It was just a
shame that David couldn’t get home in time to come too.

It was Melanie who suggested I should offer to go into Ella’s school, to help with art. Melanie knew everything that was going on in both schools; she made it her business. News never came
to Melanie second-hand.

‘Put your art to some good use,’ she said. ‘They’re crying out for help.’

And I loved it; sitting with the children, showing them different techniques using different materials and helping them to develop their skills. It was infinitely more rewarding than making
those cards at home on my own, cards which cost almost as much to produce as I could ever make by selling them. And as Melanie pointed out, where would I sell my cards around here? Besides, going
into Ella’s school once a week made me feel part of the community, and less like ‘that woman from London’.

I embraced my new life with enthusiasm, and integral to it all was Melanie. Sometimes, especially on all those long dark nights waiting for David to come home, I thanked God that I had met her.
Because how lonely would I have been stuck out here, in our house miles from everywhere, had I not?

I hardly ever saw David during the week. The times he managed to leave work in time to catch the 7.20 train from Paddington were all too rare now, and most nights we were all
in bed asleep before he got home. It seemed there was always some reason for him to stay late at the office, work to finish, meetings to be had.

Things were harder these days; in these tough economic times the magazine world was suffering. There were redundancies already announced, and more on the way. The fear of this kept him awake at
night, and had him counting the cost of our mortgage. The stress of the long journey added to the stresses of work; it became a constant issue, wearing him down.

‘Couldn’t you just change jobs?’ I said to him once, trying to be helpful. ‘Find something closer to home.’

But he said, ‘I can’t just change jobs. What would I do out here?’