The safe house

‘Look at me,’ said Kirsty. She slapped her nose and chin into the water for a nanosecond and came up triumphant with one lock of hair dripping. ‘I can go underwater. I bet you can’t do that.’

Elsie looked at me for a moment, my anxious little landlubber. I thought she would cry. Then she ducked her head down into the pool, struggling clumsily amid her bright orange floats.

‘I did it,’ she said. ‘I did it, Mummy, did you see?’

I wanted to pick her up and hold her.

‘My two little fish, aren’t you?’ I said. ‘Shall I be a shark?’

Under the water, I was weightless and half blind; my eyes squinted through the thick green water and the luminous legs swirled like seaweed; my hands held out for flickering ankles. The tiles were reassuringly only a few inches away from my submerged body. I heard the girls squeal and giggle as I floundered beneath them. I’m not a fish, not me. I only like solid ground.

In the changing room a teenage girl nudged her friend as I tugged vests over wet heads, forced stubborn feet into recalcitrant shoes and buckled stiff straps. She pointed at me with her eyes.

Chicken nuggets and chips and bright pink ice-lollies for lunch. Popcorn, savoury and sweet mixed, and fizzy orange in a huge cardboard cup with two stripy straws poking from the top. The girls watched a cartoon and I let the screen slip into a blur as I looked beyond it and they both held my hands, one sitting on either side of me. Their fingers were sticky, their heads were tilted towards my shoulders. The air all around us felt second-hand, overused. I tried to match my breath to theirs, but couldn’t. It came in ragged unsymmetrical tearings out of lungs that hurt. I put my dark glasses on as soon as we came out into the foyer.

‘Mummy.’

‘Yes, my love.’ Kirsty was safely returned to her mother and we were driving through a milky mist towards home.

‘You know in the video,’ except Elsie pronounced it ‘vidjo’, a surviving trace of baby-talk, the last frail brown leaf left hanging on the tree, ‘of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?’

‘Yes.’

‘When he’s killed by the wicked witch and he lies with the mouses?’

‘Yes.’

‘And then he comes back to life, he does. Well…’

‘No. Danny and Finn won’t come back like that. We’ll miss them and we’ll remember them, and we’ll talk about them to each other, you must talk to me whenever you want to, and they won’t be dead here.’ I put one hand against my thundering heart. ‘But we won’t see them again.’

‘But where are they? Are they in heaven now?’

Charred lumps of flesh, hilariously grinning skulls with burnt-out eyes, features pouring in a ghastly river down their ruined faces, melted limbs, on a metal tray in a fridge a few miles from where we were driving.

‘I don’t know, my sweetheart. But they are peaceful now.’

‘Mummy?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was I brave to put my head in the water?’

‘You were very brave; I was proud.’

‘Brave as a lion?’

‘Braver.’

As we drove towards the house, it looked as if a party was going on, looming out of the fog. A flock of white lights; a herd of cars. We pulled to a halt and I softly touched the tip of Elsie’s nose with my forefinger.

‘Beep,’ I said. ‘We’re going to run through these rude men with their cameras and their tape recorders. Put your head on my shoulder and let’s see if I can get to the door before you count to a hundred.’

‘One, two, skip a few…’

‘Your father and I think you ought to come and stay with us for a few days. Until all the fuss has died down.’

‘Mum, that’s…’ I paused, searching for what I ought to say. ‘Kind of you, but I’m all right. We have to stay here.’

My parents had arrived just after us. They marched into the house like two guards, left-right, chins up, eyes ahead. I was grateful for their resilience. I knew how much they must be hating all of this. They brought a fruit cake in a large maroon tin, a bunch of flowers wrapped in Cellophane and some Smarties and a colouring book for Elsie, who hates colouring books but loves Smarties. She took them off to the kitchen to eat meticulously, colour by colour, leaving the orange ones till last. My father made a fire. He stacked twigs in a neat pyre over half a firelighter and then arranged four logs on top. My mother made tea with a bustling air and thumped a hunk of fruit cake in front of me.

‘At least let us stay here then.’

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘You can’t do everything by yourself.’

Something in the tone of my mother’s voice made me look at her. Beneath her glasses, her eyes swam; her lips were tautened against emotion. When had I last seen her cry? I leaned forward in my seat and touched her knee, under her thick wool skirt, awkwardly. When had I last touched her, apart from those stiff pecks on the cheek?

‘Let it be, Joan. Can’t you see Samantha’s upset?’

‘No! No, I can’t see she’s upset. That’s my point, Bill. She should be upset; she should be – be – prostrated. Her friend, I always did think she was sly that one and I told you so that day we met her, and her boyfriend run off together and kill themselves in a car and it’s all over the newspapers. And everything.’ She gestured vaguely at the window, at the world beyond. ‘And Samantha sits there as cool as anything, when all I want, all I want, is to help.’ She paused, and perhaps I would have leaned forward and hugged her then, but I saw her give a twitch and she said the final thing, the thing she must have promised herself not to say: ‘It’s not as if it’s the first time this has happened to Samantha.’

‘Joan…’

‘That’s all right, Dad,’ I said and I meant it. The pain of that being said to me by my mother was so intense that it almost became an astringent twisted pleasure.

‘Elsie shouldn’t be here at all,’ my mother said. ‘She should come away with us.’

She half-rose, as if she were going to make off with my daughter at once.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Elsie is with me.’ As if on cue, Elsie appeared in the living room, crunching on her last Smarties. I pulled her on to my lap and put my chin on her head.

There was a knock at the door.

‘Who is it?’ I called.

‘Me. Michael.’

I let him in, closing the door quickly behind him. He took off his coat and I saw he was wearing old jeans and a faded blue cotton shirt, but otherwise he looked relaxed, steady.

‘I’ve brought smoked salmon and brown bread and a bottle of Sancerre, I thought we might… oh, hello, Mrs Laschen, Mr Laschen.’

‘They’re just going, Michael,’ I said.

‘But Samantha, we’ve only just…’

My father nodded insistently at my mother and took her arm. I helped them on with their coats in silence and steered them to the door. My mother looked back at Michael and me. I don’t know which disquieted me more, her puzzlement or her approval.

Elsie was waiting for me in my bed that night. As I slipped under the cover, she shifted, wrapped a tentacle arm around my neck, butted her face into my shoulder, sighed. Then, with the miraculous ease that children have, she closed her eyes again and sank into sleep. I lay awake for a long time. Outside it was moonless and dark.