Read The One Safe Place for Free Online Page B

fourth, yes?"
    "Mom, that wasn't what you said."
    "Maybe I've said enough," Susanne murmured, failing to catch the response the presenter provoked. "Anyone else?" he urged. "Lady's daughter there?"
    "I was just wondering," Elaine said in the somewhat strident voice that meant she'd had to persuade herself to speak up, "if anyone's done any research into the effects of programs like this."
    "If we ever do a show on it we'll have you on. Violence, though, any thoughts?"
    "That's what I was trying to get at. I can't see what you setting people at each other like this achieves except making them angry, which is on the way to violence, and people watching at home as well."
    "I'm the real cause of violence. Well, that's a new one. Any takers? Yes, we haven't been hearing much from that side?"
    "You just want to let ordinary folk be heard."
    Susanne couldn't decide if that was intended as praise or complaint. "Democracy's the name," the presenter said, and was leaning toward the next speaker when a small woman who looked squashed by her brim-less mauve hat and its burden of pins appeared at the end of the front row and stumped toward Susanne. "I'll say this to you in front of all these people," she declared as she came. "You infect our Elaine with any more of that stuff and I'm telling you, I'll split you from gob to navel."
    Susanne's instinct was to laugh or to say "That's colourful," but those were only ways of delaying her sense of shock. "Can we keep our seats, please," the presenter said, though failing to direct the microphone away from Susanne and Mrs. Nash, and then Marshall intervened. "You oughtn't to say that. My mom doesn't infect anyone."
    "They're just turns of phrase, honey," Susanne assured him, but Mrs. Nash turned on him. "What are you supposed to be doing here? What's any of this got to do with a kiddie of how old?"
    "Twelve," Marshall said with injured pride.
    "Pull the other one, love." Mrs. Nash peered narrowly at him. "Your mother never lets you watch those films, does she?"
    "I'm allowed to see films in America I can't see here."
    "That's no answer. All right, keep your hair on, I'm sitting down." Mrs. Nash appeared to be proposing to do so on the floor as she stooped to push her face into Susanne's. "Take yourself and your violence back where you came from," she said, and stumped off.
    Susanne was tugging her skirt down again, though the gesture made her feel no less assaulted, and wishing the cameras away when the presenter said to Marshall, "Just clear up a point for me. Who lets you see films in America?"
    "The state, I guess. Just because it's rated R doesn't mean you have to be seventeen to see it, but here it's rated eighteen and I'm supposed to wait six years before I can watch it again."
    He was talking about an action movie which he'd seen with Don in Florida. "No age restrictions on what you can see and read in America," the presenter interpreted him as having said. "Any comments? Yes, with the glasses, no, the other glasses?"
    "Of course there are restrictions," Susanne said, but the microphone had found a woman saying, "All commercial films are an act of male violence. Just look at the titles. They even call cinemas Cannon."
    "If we're going to sit here chunnering about films all night," a man on the front row said in a tone as plain and blunt as his face, "I'm off."
    Susanne wondered if the assistant with the high waist and the clipboard had eased the studio door open to let him out, but she was inching it shut again, having admitted herself. "Increasing violence," the presenter said. "Any more ideas on why there's so much?"
    Susanne had some new ones, but preferred to keep them to herself now that the burning glass of the argument had moved away from her. She gave Marshall a quick grin which wasn't too far removed from how she felt, then realised that the studio assistant was gazing at her and displaying a scrap of paper.
    When Susanne made to rise, the assistant gestured her back and held up