Accidents Happen (22 page)

Somewhere inside her head, an alarm went off.

Without making a conscious decision to do so, Kate dived off the road and into the shadow of the holly hedge. Swivelling round, she saw the teenagers climbing on their bikes. They’d just ordered pints. Why would they do that?

Holly leaves spiked Kate’s skin through the wool of the new jumper that she’d so carefully chosen for her date. Right now, however, she didn’t care. Nervously, she watched the gang put on their helmets. Rat-boy had heard her say she was walking to this phonebox.

They knew she was out here, alone.

Kate stared at the boys as they revved up their engines.

She knew then that she had done something very stupid.

She should have never have got in that bloody taxi.

She should never have left the pub before she’d found a way to speak to Jago.

The holly ripped into her jumper again, and she let it, knowing that if she was right, she was in trouble.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Saskia glanced up from her laptop to the clock on the other side of her mother’s vast country kitchen – 9.40 p.m.

‘Snores!’ she shouted.

She shut down the webpage she’d been reading while no one else was in the kitchen.

‘What’re you doing?’ said Jack, wandering in from the sitting room in the dressing gown he kept at his grandparents’ house.

‘Nothing,’ she lied. He walked over the flagstone kitchen floor towards the oak table where she sat. Rosie ran in behind him and dropped her head into Saskia’s lap, looking up with soft brown eyes. ‘Just catching up on work. Right. Time for bed.’ She smiled, stroking Rosie’s head. ‘Want some juice or something?’

He nodded. His face had relaxed again, she noticed, like it always did when he stayed with his grandparents. The little lines that prematurely etched his forehead dropped away, and his cheeks looked softer.

Saskia stood up. Jack pulled Rosie towards him. She licked his face and lay down on the floor.

Saskia returned with the drink.

‘Thanks.’

She looked at him sideways as she sat back down. She dropped her voice.

‘Snores, what’s wrong? You’ve been quiet all day.’

He shook his head. Too quickly, Saskia thought.

‘Is something wrong?’

‘No.’

‘So what really happened to your head?’

He hesitated. ‘My skateboard, I told you,’ he said, gulping juice.

‘Well,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘I don’t think it was your skateboard. I know when you’re lying. You’re rubbish at it.’

He dropped his eyes.

She reached out and rubbed his arm. ‘Come on. This is me.’

He shrugged. ‘She didn’t mean it.’

Saskia blinked, realizing he was telling her something important. ‘What, someone at school? A girl?’

‘No.’

Saskia frowned. ‘So who . . .’ She looked at him, startled. ‘You mean your mum?’

He glanced behind him.

‘Hang on,’ Saskia said, getting up. She closed the kitchen door and came back. ‘Right – come on. What happened.’

‘Don’t tell Nana.’ She could see the worry in his eyes.

‘I won’t.’

Jack put down his juice half-finished. ‘She was trying to stop me going out of the front door when the alarm was on, and we were arguing.’

‘You and Mum?’

‘And I was shouting.’

Saskia’s mouth dropped open. ‘That’s not like you. What about?’

‘Lots of things. She locked the gate again.’

‘But Nana has the key.’

‘Mum got a new one. With a padlock.’

Bloody, bloody Kate, Saskia fumed. Not that she was surprised. She rubbed his arm gently. ‘Oh, Snores.’

He pushed the glass away, and dropped one hand to his stomach. The lines appeared back on his forehead like skin on hot milk.

‘What’s wrong with your stomach? Did you fall there too?’

‘Nothing. No.’

She tried to think, knowing he was trying to tell her something. ‘Is that why you said it was your skateboard?’

He shrugged again.

‘Snores? And Mum told you to say that?’

‘It was an accident. She didn’t mean to do it.’

Saskia blinked. Oh God. This was all they needed. If Mum found out what Kate had done, all hell would break loose. She tried to sound reassuring. ‘Oh, OK. Listen, mate, you mustn’t worry. This is adult stuff. It’s between Nana and your mum. And it’ll all get sorted, I promise.’

‘But Nana says I’ve got to come and live here, and it’s making Mum cry.’

Saskia wanted to hug him but he looked so angry she suspected he’d shove her away. ‘Do you want to live with Nana?’

‘Sometimes.’ There was a tiny fissure in his voice. ‘But I don’t want to leave Mum on her own.’ The fissure widened, and his voice cracked. ‘And anyway, she says we’re moving back to London.’

Saskia regarded him with disbelief. ‘She said what?’

‘That’s why I shouted.’

Saskia glanced up at the door again, double-checking her parents couldn’t hear.

‘Oh God. OK.’ Right. That was going to send Helen completely off the scale. Saskia thought for a second, then took Jack’s hand. ‘Snores, listen. Right now, I want you to go to bed and not to worry about this. Me and Mum, and Nana and Granddad, all love you more than anything. And the rest of it, we adults will all sort out together, OK?’

Jack nodded. ‘But don’t tell Nana.’

‘I won’t. But don’t you tell her either – or about London. Not till I’ve spoken to your mum about it.’

The door opened and they both glanced up nervously. Richard walked in, holding an empty crystal tumbler. Rosie jumped up and ran to him.

‘What on earth are you two up to!’ He beamed. ‘Do you want a drink, darling?’ he said, without waiting for an answer, walking to an array of spirits on the worktop.

‘No, thanks, Dad. I’m going to head home. Snores is off, too, aren’t you, mate?’ She caught her nephew’s eye and winked. He nodded.

Jack stood up and gave his granddad an awkward hug, and then Saskia.

‘Good night, young man. Sleep well. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.’

‘Not everyone gets bedbug bites, Granddad,’ Jack replied. ‘Some people are immune. It was the news last night when they were talking about all the bedbugs in New York.’

‘Smartybum,’ Saskia said, as Richard chortled.

‘Seems OK?’ Richard said, turning to Saskia as Jack left the kitchen to say goodnight to Helen. ‘Darling? You think?’

‘Um.’ She hesitated, lifting the laptop lid to shut it down, hating Kate for putting her in this position. ‘Yes. I think so.’

‘Sure you don’t want to stay, darling?’ Her dad was pouring himself another Saturday-night gin and tonic, and a brandy for her mother.

Yes, she wanted to say. Anything not to spend another night in an empty bed opposite the space where Jonathan slept for four years, but she knew she couldn’t. ‘No. I should get home.’

As her finger hovered over the ‘off’ button, she looked at the page she’d been researching earlier, and at her father’s back. Then she looked up at the photo on the wall. The photo Hugo had taken of Jack. For a second, Saskia nearly opened her mouth. Nearly started to tell Richard about her dreams, to leave the agency and sort out the mess she had made of her life.

But she didn’t.

No, she thought, closing the laptop and standing up. Right now, Jack needed her more. That would have to happen another time.

Right now she had a battle to fight with Kate.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Kate dived into the small garden of one of the semi-detached houses and crouched on the ground, her heart banging like a pneumatic drill. The garden was unlit, as was the house. She listened to the scooter engines burst into life in the pub car park. If she was right about this, there was no way the teenagers could see this far up the dark country road. If they started looking, they’d be simply guessing where she’d gone.

Kate crawled along the holly hedge till she reached the fence that divided this semi from the one next door. A dustbin stood in the corner. Its unpleasant fishy smell mixed with the stink of silage drifting off the fields. Kate pushed the bin firmly, slipped into the gap behind it, then put it back in front of her.

She tried to think calmly. The boys wouldn’t have a clue where she was. For all they knew, she’d had her own car outside, or entered one of these houses, or run off into a field.

She sat, hugging her knees, trying to stop them shaking.

So why was she so certain they were coming for her?

Her mind flew to Hugo, to those men in the courthouse, and then she knew.

The noise of the scooters grew into a harmonized whine. Kate peeked through the hedge. Her stomach lurched.

She was right.

Once you have encountered evil, you recognize it, she knew. It makes a different sound to everything else. A splintered, clashing commotion that causes heads to rise in alarm. It has an energy that blurs all around it, forcing you to look.

The gang was searching for her.

Accelerating out of the pub, they spread out across the road like an airshow formation, their headlights on full beam creating a spotlight effect.

Moving forward slowly.

Hunting her.

Kate held herself even tighter. They can’t find you, she told herself. They can’t search every part of twenty dark gardens, every surrounding acre of field, every ditch. It would take hours. One of the residents would hear them. Call the police. Do something.

‘Where’d she go?’ came a yell from beyond the hedge.

There was a shriek of out-of-control laughter.

Kate sucked in a lungful of air. Bring more oxygen into your body, she told herself. She’d seen it on a self-defence course on the telly once. It stopped you becoming paralysed with fear. Helped you run. She looked around the cramped front garden. But where would she run to?

‘Go up to the phonebox, John! See if she’s there,’ a shout came. A second later a scooter roared past her up to the layby ahead. Now they were in front and behind her on the road.

‘Shit,’ she whispered. They were serious. This was not a prank.

She peeked through the hedge again, and saw the headlights separate off in different directions.

Kate kept trying to breathe away the tightness spreading across her chest.

‘Coming to get you!’ One of them yelled.

‘Look in the gardens!’

They were doing exactly what she thought they wouldn’t, entering each front garden.

Methodically.

One by one.

Kate turned, desperately hoping to see one of the residents looking out of a window, phone in hand to the police. Yet no curtains twitched. Presumably the people who lived in these isolated houses were also scared. They were choosing diplomatically to ignore the rural gang, presumably hoping they’d go away and not cause them any more trouble.

Kate was on her own.

Her mind returned to Hugo, with a sudden, awful clarity. And in that moment, she knew. This must have been what he’d felt like that night with those men. His heart pounding. Hunted.

Frantically, she stuck out a hand, searching for something. Anything. Nettles stung her fingers. She jerked them away, only for them to trail over a wet and spongy object, making her recoil even further. She tried the other hand and felt something hard. Holes and ridges, on a dry surface.

A brick. She grabbed it. She knew it was stupid, but somehow the hardness gave her strength.

There was a deafening roar to her right. In the tiny gap under the fence she saw a scooter enter the semi next door. Its light tickled her feet under the fence.

‘Not here, mate!’ a voice shouted close by.

Kate grasped tighter.

Another memory of Hugo detonated in her mind. Of finding him on the floor, a pool of blood soaking into the floorboards he’d so lovingly restored. Of her, screaming and screaming, as she watched all that passion and expertise and love disappear into nothing in front of her, as his brain and his heart shut down. Gone. Stolen. Wasted. For
nothing
.

And right then, Kate realized, perhaps because things had come to a head recently, that she’d had enough of being scared.

A seam of anger opened up inside her.

People like these boys had ruined her life. Their wilful, thoughtless violence had killed her husband, terrified Jack and damaged her relationship with her son to the point where his life would be ruined before it had even started, and she was at risk of losing him.

Kate scraped the tips of her fingers on the brick pores.

She was sick of it.

People like this, taking the power away from others because they could.

And in that moment, she knew that despite the shaking in her legs and arms, if a single one of these boys came near her, if they threatened to do any more harm to her and Jack, she would take this brick and she would fight him.

‘Here, pussy, pussy!’ a teenager shouted above the scooter engines. His friend laughed in encouragement.

‘Come and try it,’ Kate mouthed.

The scooter reversed out of next door, and travelled along the front hedge. The growl changed to a
put-put-put
as it finally turned into the garden she crouched in.

‘Seriously,’ Rat-boy shouted through the hedge, ‘where the fuck is she?’

‘I’ll look in here, mate,’ yelled his friend.

A scooter entered Kate’s garden in an explosion of light. She could see the silhouette of the boy from here. He was small, not even her height. Skinny, too. His headlights lit up the shabby front door of the house, and part of the bay window. As the boy began to turn his handlebars to the right, towards the dustbin where she hid, Kate lifted her hand, knowing she had to take her chance before he did.

A plan formed. She would strike him as hard as she could, before running out into the dark field behind, where she hoped the gang could not follow on scooters.

Kate lifted the brick, her hand shaking, as the headlight moved towards her, ready to leap out and . . .

A new noise arrived out of nowhere. A car, speeding towards the scooters.

Kate froze.

‘Oi, oi,’ a teenager said. Someone whistled. Without warning, the scooter in front of her was backing out of the garden, draping darkness back over her.