Read Online The Safest Place by Suzanne Bugler - Free Book Online Page B

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