The One Safe Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

try to tell me how to bring him up."
    "We'll see what our Henry's school says about what your Darren done," Henry's mother said, and pushed Henry along the pavement. "They know all about him."
    She shouldn't have tried to have the last word, Darren thought, although the outcome might have been the same in any case. As soon as she turned away his mother darted out of the gate and thumped her as hard as she could on the back of the neck. Henry's mother collapsed to her knees, and one of her bracelets flew off. "That's just a warning," Darren's mother cried, and flounced back to the house.
    She saw Darren at the transom and brandished her fist at him. When the front door shook the house he was afraid she was going to come up and add to the pain in his face. Nevertheless he watched as Henry ran after the rolling bracelet and caught it once it fell over, and fetched it to his mother. She almost pulled him over in the process of hauling herself to her feet, then staggered away, supporting herself with one hand on his shoulder. Once she was out of sight, and Darren's mother had either forgotten or decided not to come after him, Darren climbed down from his perch.
    His face felt invaded and too big, as though the pain had been inserted between it and him, but familiar enough. He hung the earphones from his scalp and switched on the Walkman and lay on the bed, having kicked the quilt onto the floor. When he turned the tape up full, the sound seemed to get between him and the pain. He tore off a wad from the toilet roll and laid it beneath his nose to sop up the blood. After a while the bubbling of his nostril became almost pleasurable, and when the tape ended he lay there breathing and listening to the static, and thought there was nothing he enjoyed more. Hearing that stillness felt like being asleep without needing to sleep.

1 Violence
    "Mom, we need to go in now. Everyone is."
    "I'm sure we're okay for a few minutes still."
    "No, they said it was the last call. What do you think happened to dad?"
    "Nothing to look like that about, Marshall. I expect he got held up."
    "Or lost."
    "That could be Don, true enough. Don't worry, just about everyone in town must know the way here."
    "Suppose he had an accident?"
    "Don't suppose quite so much, honey. I think his driving's getting pretty near as good as mine. You don't have accidents by being too careful."
    Susanne leaned out past the New York Interstate 190 sign and gazed along the street as a car as red as Don's swung around the curve, but it wasn't his—not even a Volvo. "Let's go in, then. They'll send him to us when he shows up," she said, and followed Marshall past a NYPD car.
    Beyond it was a yellow school bus, and a line of phone booths next to a 5th Avenue and East 42nd sign overlooked by an illuminated Baskin-Robbins billboard and one for Coca-Cola up which waves of red light were rising. But the phones in the booths were British, as was the rest of the small theme park that belonged to Granada Television, and the interior of the studio building was even more of a jumble of locations. Along a corridor which contained one side of Downing Street, railings and all, the Travises came to a room full of furniture so large that Susanne would have needed help to climb onto a chair. A dressing room crowded with period costumes provoked Marshall's secret smile which tugged his small mouth leftward and half closed his bright blue eyes, an expression which she was never sure whether he'd consciously learned from his father. Ahead was the illuminated plaque of the studio, outside which a young woman with the waist of her long skirt pulled up almost to her breasts was glancing at the Travises over a clipboard. "You'll be... ?"
    "Not too late, I hope."
    "Ah, Mrs. Travis. And son." The studio assistant had apparently gathered all this from Susanne's accent, and inscribed two ticks on her list with a pencil bearing a rubber cat's head. "Some of your students are here, and—yes, well, we'll have