Accidents Happen (17 page)

Kate turned out the light. She felt the cool sheets on her body. And, as she did, a thought about Jago Martin and his blue eyes passed through her mind. The touch of his hand on her arm and . . .

There was a clicking noise.

Kate jerked upright and saw a strip of light appear under her door. Jack had turned on the hall light again.

He was still scared.

Kate lay back, cross with herself. If ever she needed evidence of the harm she was doing to Jack, there it was. Right under her door.

‘You have to stop this,’ she whispered. Jack had seen her anxious face by the wardrobe. Seen her holding the guitar as a weapon. Knew that she, too, feared there were bad men in his wardrobe.

She had to
get a grip
.

Normal adults didn’t check their wardrobes at night.

She thought back to the garden. What did Jago say? Just because she’d had some bad luck, it didn’t mean she was cursed. Just because her parents and Hugo had been killed, it didn’t mean it was more likely to happen to her or Jack. She was
not
fated to be struck by lightning seven times.

How did that American professor put it? People living with a constant fear of imagined danger, convinced their instincts are trying to warn them.

No, she reassured herself, she and Jack had no more chance of being killed than anyone else. They were normal, too. Not cursed; just unlucky.

She lay back on the pillow, feeling new hope again. Jago was going to help her – was
already
helping her – stop worrying about threats that were completely imagined.

She was
not
cursed.

Mother woke around 10 a.m. The child stood in the hall, watching her emerge from her bedroom in a long T-shirt, pulling a belted woollen cardigan around her waist. She was scratching her head. Make-up was smudged under her eyes. Her dull brown hair was hanging around her face, streaked with metal grey, her fringe pushed back angrily.

Once Mother would have said, ‘Do you want some breakfast, sweetheart?’

But not any more. The child had learned to make breakfast alone.

The child watched as Mother began to walk into the kitchen.

From behind the child there was a faint squeaking noise.

Mother stopped.

With a silent gasp, the child dropped back into the shadows, waiting to see if Mother was going to stop and come back.

But, after a second, Mother carried on, marching into the kitchen. She slammed the door.

The child turned quickly and ran back to the bedroom where the rocking horse was.

The squeaking was much louder in here. The child lay flat on the floor as quietly as possible and pressed an eye against the gap in the floorboards.

It took a moment to come into focus, but finally it did.

Father’s head, a few feet below. He was turning a metal handle in his hand, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Planning to kill the snake.

But this time the child wasn’t so sure that Father could stop it. It was bigger than the other one. The child was starting to think that it was going to wrap around this house and squeeze them all to death.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Why hadn’t Jago rung?

Three days after her night in the secret walled garden, Kate looked out of the kitchen window at the magnolia tree, trying not to feel disappointed.

The irony was that, at first, she’d hoped that he wouldn’t call her.

On Wednesday morning she’d woken in a panic, wondering what on earth she’d said the night before. About the numbers. About her parents. Jack? She had let her guard down with a man she hardly knew. Let his intense blue eyes into places where no one was supposed to go. Kate had sat up alarmed, and turned off her phone.

By Wednesday evening, however, when she turned it back on to find he hadn’t rung as promised, she’d been slightly perplexed. By Thursday, she was checking every ten minutes.

Now, on Friday, she was sitting here, fighting the urge to ring Jago.

She looked back at her new laptop, which had arrived this morning. She closed down her proposal for David, which she’d transferred onto a spreadsheet, and Googled Jago for the sixth time that day. His own website had turned out to be the best: a small photo of him smiling on a mountain bike, listing his education (Stirling University, MSc; University of Edinburgh, PhD; University of North Carolina, post-doc research) and interests (travel, music, hiking, mountain biking). There was even a sweet little biog with details about his mum (a GP) and dad (a maths teacher), who lived in Stirling, and his two (teacher) sisters. She followed the links, too, to his department at Edinburgh, which had a more official photo, and a few American newspapers that had reviewed his book, and a list of his publications. His specialty, she noted with interest, was applying probability theory to economic models set up by new governments recovering from civil war. That must be why he flew to developing countries so much.

Professor Jago Martin was even more impressive than he had let on.

To her consternation, she realized she really did want to see him again.

A man she hadn’t even known a week ago.

Grabbing a pile of fresh laundry, Kate headed up to Jack’s room. She looked at Hugo’s shoes on Jack’s shelves, and turned guiltily away. Putting Jack’s pyjamas in his bag, she realized she would miss him this weekend. They had baked twice more this week. Nothing much had been said. Just chatter about ingredients and who was stirring the pot, or rubbing in the butter, but it was something. A breakthrough. Again, tiny, but something. And now he was off to Helen’s again and . . .

Kate’s hand flew to her mouth.

A memory detonated in her mind.

She had
completely forgotten
, in all the upset about Jack hitting his head on the radiator.

What had he said to her in the hallway, just before it happened?

‘Nana lets me walk to the shop alone.’

Kate’s eyes flew to Jack’s calendar. Tomorrow was Saturday. Oh God. He’d be walking along the river path with other people’s dogs running around off the lead.

She shut her eyes, knowing the numbers were coming for her.

• Hospital admissions for dog attacks have risen 5% this year.

In her mind, she saw Jack walking on his own along the river path from Helen’s house a quarter of a mile to the shop in the village. A horrible dog running round the corner, attacking Helen’s Labrador Rosie, and Jack trying to save her.

She smacked her hand down on her bed.

How
dare
Helen overrule her like this? It was almost as if she were trying to make her more anxious, not better.

Kate tried to remember. At what point had she given them this blatant co-ownership of her son? At first it had been necessary – that first year after Hugo when she couldn’t lift her head from the pillow. And moving to Oxford to allow them to fill in for Hugo’s absence with Jack in practical ways had seemed sensible. Yet now, it had become so much more: the fortnightly weekend sleepovers, the constant ‘popping in’, the up-coming trip with Jack to Dorset at half-term, the bloody house key to let themselves in, the decisions about Jack’s safety with no regard for her feelings . . .

They were taking over her son.

Kate looked over at Jack’s wardrobe. The guitar was back against the doors. He was still trying to lock in the bad men.

A sense of helplessness came over her. If she tried to cut down contact with them right now and cancelled tomorrow’s sleepover, Helen might really blow up. Carry out her threat to tell Social Services about Kate’s anxiety, and give them examples of the detrimental effect it had on Jack.

No, she couldn’t risk it.

There was only one way out of this.

She would just
have
to learn to control it.

Then, in August, she would find a way to get Jack to David’s house in Mallorca, away from Helen and Richard’s interference, and give their relationship a real chance to start afresh.

Kate stood up, determined, and headed back downstairs to the laptop, remembering that David needed her proposal for the Islington house by six. She could ask him about the Mallorca house in the email.

Then she just needed to work out how to get on a bloody plane. Jago’s book with its reassuring pages of airline statistics came into her mind.

Followed by an image of Jago.

Disappointment coursed back through Kate. She had been so convinced this Scottish man with his kind voice and searching blue eyes had the answer.

Richard arrived at Hubert Street to collect Jack at 5.30 p.m.

‘Hello, young man!’ he called cheerily as Jack appeared with his bag. Fighting every instinct she had, Kate stood on the step with the most relaxed smile she could muster, and said nothing.

Helen’s absence on the doorstep said it all. The threat was clear. The years of pretending to be fond of her for Hugo, and then Jack’s sake, were over. If Helen could take Jack, she would.

Richard kept beaming, as if protesting his innocence in all this, but Kate knew better. His eyes still moved busily, as they had done the first time she met him, analysing the situation. By now, however, Kate knew why. Richard looked for ways to maximize every situation – work or social – to his own benefit. Luckily, Hugo had taught her to ignore the ebullience and not trust him an inch.

‘We’ll have him back by five on Sunday, Mum,’ said Richard, arm round Jack’s shoulder. ‘Good golly!’ he exclaimed, when Jack proudly handed him a box of flapjacks and brownies. ‘Are those for us? Fan-tastic!’ Kate winced. ‘So – Sunday at five, Mum!’ he repeated, as he left, as if Kate suspected he was in the middle of a child-snatching operation organized by Helen.

‘Bye, Mum,’ Jack said, waving.

As she watched him go, Kate couldn’t help it. ‘Jack?’ He turned. She pulled him into an awkward hug, aware of Richard watching as he opened the car door.

‘Please be careful,’ she whispered in his ear. From this angle she saw the faded scratch on his head. Could she really trust him not to tell Helen about the radiator? she thought shamefacedly. It was so much to ask of him.

Jack nodded and pulled away. Kate wrapped her arms around herself and walked back to her front door. As she waved Jack off with a raised hand, a movement of curtain from next door caught her eye. She looked up and saw the student with the strange-coloured eyes watching Richard’s car as it reversed out of the driveway.

For a second, Kate’s mind flickered somewhere uncertainly, as if trying to focus on something.

And then her phone buzzed in her hand.

are you there? jx
, the text said.

And she forgot.

Jago!

Kate shut the front door, and rushed to the kitchen. After various attempts to type funny, clever replies, she deleted them.

yes . . .

i’m in the juice bar – can you pop down?

She read the message again. Now?

She looked at her laptop screen. She still hadn’t finished the proposal. If she went now, the spreadsheet would be late for David. He’d waited patiently for her laptop to be delivered all week, on the condition that he got the figures by six o’clock tonight to give him time to calculate his sealed bid for the Islington house tomorrow.

But if she didn’t go, Jago might not be there later.

Chewing her pen, Kate stood up. The proposal would be late by only half an hour or so. She’d still get it to David by 6.30 p.m.

This was more important.

Pausing to think, Kate picked up her coat, texted Jago to say she was on her way, and flew out of the door, hoping David would forgive her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She arrived ten minutes later, trying not to look as if she’d been running. Jago was sitting at the same place by the window, reading a
Guardian
. He looked up and waved as she passed the window.

Her stomach fluttered.

‘Hi, Kate,’ he said, standing up. Before she knew it, he had leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. ‘How’re you doing?’

‘Good, thanks.’ To her dismay, she blushed. She placed her jacket on the back of the chair next to him, trying to hide her face.

‘I wasn’t sure if you’d be on your own,’ he said, as she sat up at the counter.

‘No. Jack’s at his grandparents for the weekend.’

‘Oh. Does he get on well with them?’

She kept her hands self-consciously over her hot cheeks, nodding. ‘They’ve got a huge garden and a dog, so he’s in heaven.’ An image of Jack beside the river alone forced itself back into her mind, and she pushed it away.

The waitress with the auburn plait came over and did a double-take. ‘Oh, hello again.’ She grinned at Jago. ‘You managed to track him down, then?’

To her annoyance, Kate’s cheeks burned even hotter. ‘Ah, it was just about buying your book . . .’ she stuttered at Jago, avoiding his eye. She gave the waitress what she hoped was a dismissive look. ‘Juice of the day, please.’

‘Oh. Sure,’ the girl said, raising her eyebrows.

‘So, am I keeping you from work?’ Jago said, turning to her. It was good to see him again. He was wearing a navy T-shirt emblazoned with the name of a band that she didn’t recognize.

‘No. Not at all. As long as I get it over tonight,’ she lied.

‘OK. Well, look,’ he said, leaning on the counter. ‘Anyway . . .’

‘Yes.’ She smiled.

‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘Uhuh?’

‘About the other night.’

She took a sip of juice, knowing she had to say it. ‘Jago. I’m a bit embarrassed about that, actually. I think I probably sounded a bit weird and . . .’

‘No.’ He touched her arm. His voice was reassuring. ‘You didn’t, Kate. At all. And, actually, I am hoping I might be able to help you, with this obsessional data anxiety stuff.’

Kate glanced around the cafe. It was fuller this time, the tables occupied by students. Jago dropped his voice. ‘Sorry.’

‘No. It’s OK. Well. That’s nice of you, but what do you . . .?’