Accidents Happen (2 page)

Kate turned off the packed main road and sped through the back streets of east Oxford, taking routes the tourists wouldn’t know. Bouncing over speed bumps, she dodged around shoals of cyclists and badly parked rental vans evacuating ramshackle student houses for the summer. Where there was only room for one vehicle down streets so narrow that cars had parked on the pavement, she forced her way through, waving with a smile at on-coming queues of drivers, ignoring their mouthed insults.

‘They’re here!’ Jack shouted, as she made the last turn into the welcoming width of Hubert Street.

Damn. He was right.

Richard’s black 4x4 was parked in its usual gentlemanly way outside her house, leaving the gravelled driveway free for her. A box of pink tissues on the dashboard announced Helen’s presence. Of course they were here. They would have been here on the dot of five. Desperate to get their hands on him.

‘So they are,’ she said, turning into the drive and braking abruptly in front of the side gate. She pulled on the handbrake harder than she meant to. ‘Right – run. I’m late.’

They spilled out of the car, hands full of plastic bags of Jack’s school clothes, the empty wrappers of post-football snacks and his homework folder for the weekend.

‘Hi!’ Jack called out, waving. Helen was mouthing ‘Hello’ from between Kate’s sitting room curtains, her indented two front teeth giving her a strangely girlish smile for a woman in her sixties.

Kate growled inwardly. Why hadn’t they waited in their car? That house key was for when they were looking after Jack. Not for letting themselves in when she was late. Mentally, she tried to visualize what the house had looked like when she left this morning. What state was the bathroom in? Had she tidied away her bras off the radiators?

Then she remembered what was upstairs.

Oh no.

She slammed the car door and locked it. She was supposed to tell them, before they saw it. Explain.

Keeping her head down, Kate marched after Jack to the front porch.

‘Hello! Have you grown again, young man?’ Helen called, flinging open the door.

‘Not since last week, I don’t think, Helen,’ Kate said. Why did she do that? They all knew he was small. Pretending he wasn’t, was not doing Jack any favours.

‘Gosh, you’re going to be tall like your dad.’ Helen laughed, ignoring her. She placed her arm round Jack, and led him along the hall to the kitchen.

‘Everything OK, Kate?’ she called back. ‘Traffic?’

‘Yup. Sorry.’

Kate couldn’t help it. She gritted her teeth, as she turned to close the door behind her.

‘Let me take those.’

Rapidly, she ungritted them, and turned to see Richard striding towards her, his hands outstretched, without any apparent awkwardness at having let himself into his daughter-in-law’s house. His imposing frame filled the hallway. ‘How did you get on? Traffic?’

‘Hmm, sorry,’ she said, giving him Jack’s homework. Richard’s usual fragrance of pipe smoke and TCP drifted over to her.

They stood for a second, fumbling their fingers between the plastic bag handover. Kate looked up at Richard’s brown eyes, waiting for them to check that Jack was out of earshot, then glance up to the upstairs landing above them, then firmly fix back down on her face, serious and questioning. But they didn’t. Instead, he turned on his heels and bounced after Helen and Jack to the kitchen at the back of the house, grinning through his grey-flecked beard at the sight of his grandson.

‘So did you beat their socks off, sir?’ he boomed at Jack, who was stuffing a muffin in his mouth.

Kate glanced upstairs.

It was still there.

Richard just hadn’t seen it. This was interesting.

She checked her watch. Five-twenty. The woman wanted to see her at six sharp in north Oxford. The traffic was so bad she was going to have to cycle. Concentrating, Kate worked out a few figures. Thirty-four . . . Eighty-one – or was it eighty-two? Damn it, she needed that new laptop. It was high, anyway.

She shook her head. It would have to be OK.

She followed Richard through to the kitchen, opened a cupboard and bent down to find her helmet.

‘Helen, do you mind if I rush off?’

‘Of course not, dear,’ Helen replied, filling up a jug at the sink. ‘Something interesting?’

‘Um . . . just a woman who might have some renovation work,’ Kate said, avoiding Helen’s eyes.

‘Where?’

‘In Summertown.’

‘Oh well, good luck, dear.’

‘Thanks.’

Kate turned to see Jack, his mouth still too full of muffin to answer his grandfather’s question about the match score in this afternoon’s tournament final. He was grinning and sticking up two fingers like Winston Churchill.

‘Peace, man?’ roared Richard. ‘It’s the 1960s, is it? No! Two all, then? No? What? A bunny rabbit jumped on to the pitch?’ Richard chortled, his arms wrapped round his rugby player’s chest, as his grandson shook his head at his jokes. ‘What? Two– nil, then?’

Jack nodded, laughing, dropping crumbs out of his mouth.

‘Aw – well done!’ Helen clapped, cheeks as pink as fairycakes.

‘Good lad!’ Richard exclaimed. ‘Was he good, Mum?’

Kate grabbed her helmet from the back of the cupboard and went to stand up. ‘He was. He made a good save, didn’t you?’

As she turned round, the sight of Helen and Jack together took her by surprise.

A pit of disappointment opened up in her stomach.

Jack was a clone of her. You couldn’t deny it.

Kate buckled up her helmet, watching them. It simply wasn’t happening. However desperately she willed her son’s hair to darken and coarsen like Hugo’s, or his green eyes to turn brown, it was Helen and Saskia whom Jack took after. As he sat, arms touching with his grandmother, the similarities were painfully obvious. The same pale hair that was slightly too fine for the long skater-boy cut he desperately wanted; delicate features that would remain immune to the nasal bumps and widening jaws that would wipe out his friends’ childhood beauty; the flawless skin that tanned so easily and would remain unmarked by Kate’s dark moles or Richard and Hugo’s unruly eyebrows.

No, he was nearly eleven. Nothing was going to change now. Jack would be a physically uncomplicated adult, like his grandmother and aunt, with none of the familiar landmarks of his father.

Kate stood up straight and tried to think about something else. She walked to the fridge and opened it.

‘Oh, by the way, Helen, I’ve made this for tonight,’ she said, pulling out a casserole dish and lifting the lid. ‘It’s just vegetables and lentils. And some potatoes . . .’

Kate stopped.

She stared at the dark brown glutinous sludge of the stew. It was an inch or two shallower in the dish than she’d left it this morning.

‘Jack, did you eat some of this?’ Kate asked, turning around alarmed. He shook his head.

Kate’s eyes flew to the kitchen window locks and the back door. All intact. She then spun round to check the window at the side return – and came face to face with Helen, who had come up behind her.

Watching her.

Helen gave Kate a smile and took the casserole gently from her, replacing it in the fridge.

‘Now, don’t worry about us, Kate. We stopped at Marks on the way over. I got some salmon and new potatoes, and a bit of salad.’

Kate noted the salmon sitting in her fridge on the shelf above the casserole and felt the waves of Helen’s firm resolve radiate towards her. ‘Oh. But I made it for tonight. Really. There’s plenty for the three of you. I’m just confused at how so much of it has disappeared. It’s as if . . .’

‘Oh, it’ll have just sunk down in the dish when it was cooling,’ Helen interrupted, shooting a reassuring smile at Jack. ‘No, Kate. You keep it for tomorrow.’

Kate peered into the fridge. Was Helen right? She lifted the lid again to check if she could see a faint line of dried casserole that would prove its original height.

There was nothing there.

‘Absolutely,’ Richard boomed. ‘Take the weight off.’

Richard and Helen together. Two against one, as always.

‘OK,’ she heard herself say lamely. She replaced the lid and shut the fridge. They could eat their bloody salmon. Jack didn’t even like it. He only ate it to be polite.

‘Now, you’re probably starving, darling, aren’t you?’ Helen said to Jack, taking Kate’s apron off a hook and putting it on. There was a fragment of tinned tomato on it left over from making the stew this morning. It was about to press against Helen’s white summer cardigan.

Kate went to speak, and then didn’t.

‘OK, then . . .’ She hesitated. ‘By the way . . .’

They both glanced up.

Jack looked down at the table.

‘I’ve . . . have you been up . . .?’ She pointed at the ceiling.

They shook their heads.

‘No, dear,’ Helen replied. ‘Why?’

Jack kept his eyes on the table, slowly finishing his muffin.

‘Well, I haven’t got time to explain, but anyway, don’t worry about it. It’s just . . .’

They waited, expectantly. Jack’s jaws stopped moving.

‘I needed to do it. And it’s done now. So – see you later.’

And with that, she marched out of the door of her house –
her
house – cross that she had to explain at all.

CHAPTER TWO

It was a warm May evening and Oxford was bathed in a pale lemon tint. Kate pushed her bike across Donnington Bridge, then freewheeled down the steep path on the other side to cycle along the river.

It was busy. She set off, cycling around a woman with two big wet dogs, and a student on a bike who had clearly not learned to drive yet and wasn’t sticking to the left side. Kate pumped her legs hard, averting her eyes from the water on her right, trying to clear her mind of what she was about to do. She pushed against the resistance of each pedal stroke, changing gear when the journey along the flat path became too easy, until she could hear her own breath whistling gently on the summer breeze.

A swarm settled around her head like tiny flies.

One out of five. About 20 per cent, she thought, trying to ignore it.

She hit a steady pace around Christchurch Meadow. The grand old college looked especially beautiful tonight across the river, its stone facade soft and pretty in the low light. The grass in front of it glowed that rich, saturated Oxford green that suggested high teas and country estates. It was scattered with groups of the cheery, hard-working students who imbued the air in Oxford with their optimism and best efforts, who sprinkled its streets and parks and alleyways with goodwill, like bubbles of sweetness in a fizzy drink. Who made Oxford feel safe.

No, on nights like these, she hardly missed London at all.

After Folly Bridge Kate cleared the crowds and stepped up her speed again. She sailed past the waterside flats at Botley and the circus-coloured canal boats moored around Osney Lock. Behind Jericho, she ducked under a graffitied bridge and carried on along the canal path till she could cross into north Oxford.

There. She had done it. Dismounting to cross the bridge, she checked her watch. Twenty-five minutes flat. She could still make it for six.

As she set off, pushing her bike along the pavement to Summertown, the enormity of what lay ahead hit her.

She was here finally. She was actually going to do it this time.

Before she could change her mind for the tenth time, Kate made herself walk on, pushing the bike along the pavements of quiet side streets before emerging into the rush-hour traffic of Woodstock Road and Banbury Road, which she crossed to arrive in a leafy Summertown avenue.

Peace descended as she entered the exclusive Oxford enclave. The houses were spectacular. Imposing Victorian detacheds, with grand pianos in grand bay windows and walled gardens. Inspector Morse streets, as Helen would call them. As far from the clattering noise and cheerful chaos of east Oxford as you could be. The kind of leafy avenue Helen and Richard had assumed Kate would buy in when she and Jack moved from London – the first thing she had done to annoy them.

To avoid thinking about her destination, Kate observed each house as she passed, searching for a feature Hugo would appreciate. The houses were Victorian Gothic revival. Not his period, but she bet he would have known the correct name for every architectural detail on their splendid frontages.

Before she knew it, the sign was in front of her. Hemingway Avenue.

Kate stopped. Her cheeks were covered in a gentle sheen of perspiration, her lips still slightly numb from riding fast into the breeze.

Her watch said five to six. She had made it.

She was nearly there.

This was nearly it.

The urge to run overwhelmed her so abruptly, she put a hand out and touched a wall.

She was outside No. 1. If she carried on to No. 15 Hemingway Avenue there would be no going back.

Shutting her eyes, she forced herself to summon the memory of Jack’s face in her rear-view mirror an hour ago. His cheeks rigid like a mask, his lips thrust forward as he bit the inside of his mouth.

‘You are going to do this,’ she whispered, pushing herself off the wall.

And on she went, with smaller and smaller steps.

The house was even more impressive than its neighbours. One gable jutted in front of the other. Ivy grew around medieval-style stone window frames. The glass revealed nothing inside but the red silk fringe of standard lamp, then darkness beyond.

Kate pushed her bike into the driveway and locked it to a railing. She removed her helmet and ran her fingers through her hair. It fell forwards, thick with the Celtic blackness Mum told her she had inherited from an Irish aunt, blocking out the early evening sun for a second. She threw her head back and straightened her hair down to her shoulders, then forced herself up the stone steps to a white, carved portico. The front door was magnificent. Hugo would have loved it. An eight-foot-high Gothic revival arch, wooden, with roughly hewn baronial black metal hinges and a thick knocker.

Kate paused.

She lifted her hand before she could run away – and banged it.

The sound made her jump. It resonated around the front garden, like a shotgun. The huge door swung open to reveal a blonde woman in her sixties. She was as tall as Richard, and broad, with a matronly bosom. Her hair was drawn up into an elaborate bun which looked as if it had first been created in the sixties. The woman wore a green print dress and had a strong piece of turquoise jewellery around her neck.