Accidents Happen (27 page)

. . . The swarm inside her head had gone.

She stood on the doorstep, checking cautiously.

No. Really. It was gone. That quickly. Pleased, she stepped forwards to empty the kitchen box into the green recycling bin quickly, before turning to shut the front door behind her.

This was really working, she smiled. Just thinking about Jago and his advice improved things instantly.

And she was thinking about him.

Constantly.

Especially about the kiss on the dark country road, and then in the car.

Kate walked to the mirror. She ran a hand down over the flat front of her new T-shirt, stopping it on her hipbones. She had woken at 3 a.m., in the dark, and found herself imagining Jago lying next to her on the opposite pillow, watching. In the dim light of the moon coming through her curtains, she had thrown back her covers, lain sideways and slipped a hand under her nightshirt, allowing it to rest on the dip in her waist, as if the hand were his. She had explored her body, to see what he would find. What she discovered was a mountain range of jutting hip and clavicle bones, and sharp ribs that made bridges across her chest above the hollow valley of her stomach. Two quiet little mounds of breast in the middle that no longer filled the old bras she couldn’t be bothered to replace. The rough terrain of dry skin on neglected knees and elbows.

What would she see in his eyes if he ever saw all this, she thought again, looking in the mirror? Disgust? Pity?

Hugo had loved it. All of it. Pregnant, ill, stretched, shrunken. From the start, and to the end.

Last night, Kate had turned over onto her stomach and pulled the covers close. She had only kissed Jago. He had made it clear he was not going to expect more unless she wanted to. She still had a choice. She did not need to let him see her this way, so there was no point anticipating her own self-consciousness or his disappointment.

Yet, as she looked now in the hall mirror, she knew that wasn’t really true. Her body was rebelling. She was wearing earrings for the first time in years, bought before she knew what she was doing, this afternoon in Oxford. The small silver hoops hung under her hair, in reopened holes stinging slightly, emphasizing the cut of her cheekbones. A newly fitted lace bra sat under a pretty charcoal top that set off the blackness of her hair and the amber of her eyes. The choice was slipping away from her. Jago’s kisses had jump-started her body out of a five-year slumber, whether she liked it or not.

And now her body was staging its own private coup, waking her up at 3 a.m. to think about him lying opposite her on the pillow, when her mind was telling her to proceed slowly.

You have a child, it said. If this man can help you, fine; if he can bring you and Jack back together, fantastic; but your priority must always be fixing your relationship with Jack not what
you
want. You need to get to know this man before you think of doing anything serious with him because . . .

Drriiiiinggg
.

Kate jumped.

Sass. Please, be Sass.

She walked to the front door and opened it.

‘Oh! Hey!’ said a tall man with glasses standing there, very close to the doorway. His head jerked back as if he were surprised to see her.

‘Oh,’ Kate said, startled, moving back. ‘Hi.’

‘Magnus!’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Your neighbour.’

‘Oh, hello,’ Kate replied, giving him hers automatically. The man took her hand in large, damp fingers. He grasped it hard. Too hard. He grasped it till the bones squeezed it together and it began to hurt. It was all she could do not to say ‘ow’. She pulled it back off him, and stepped back into the house to give herself more space.

This must be the one Sass was talking about.

‘You know maybe when the bin men come?’ he asked, waving an arm towards the dustbins outside his own house.

‘Oh. Tomorrow,’ she said, putting her hand under her arm to stop him grasping it again. ‘Wednesday.’ How could the students not know that? No wonder there were bloody binbags all over the front of their garden.

He still wasn’t moving back. She felt herself withdrawing further. Didn’t they have personal space where he came from?

‘Tomorrow? Hey, great. Thank you.’ He paused and looked at her for a long second. The look made her want to pull even further inside her house. But before she could, the student walked off.

Kate nodded uneasily. ‘You’re welcome.’

Relieved, she shut the door. She walked quickly to the kitchen and washed her hands. Saskia was right. A little strange.

Her phone buzzed on the kitchen table. She dried her hands and grabbed it, praying.

‘Yes!’ she hissed, when she saw Jago’s number.

Blackwell’s at 7.45 pm

Kate’s face broke back into a happy grin. ‘Bit close to the bone there, mate,’ she said.

She walked around, tidying the kitchen, imagining telling Jago about the weird student.

‘Kate, he’s just a student with a nervous handshake who turns into a tosser around women,’ she imagined him saying. ‘Trust me, I have six of him in every class. You’ve got to tell the difference between real danger and imagined danger.’

She looked at the clock. Only half an hour till she saw him.

‘Please, Sass,’ she muttered, before running upstairs to clean her teeth, her thoughts about the odd student next door left downstairs, her mind now fixed on a challenge she’d been planning to set herself all day.

Saskia came just before 7.30 p.m., full of apologies, her fine pale hair even flatter than normal, as if she had spent the day pushing it back. To Kate’s relief, Jack arrived back at the same time, with Gabe and Damon in tow to drop him off, their cheeks all flushed from playing football. Inwardly, Kate congratulated herself for the second time this week. She had managed not to phone Jack in the park to check up on him, and he looked as if he’d had fun.

This was all going even better than she’d hoped. And now she was going to try something she hadn’t done in years. She was going to try to cycle to Broad Street on the road.

Determined, Kate pulled on her denim jacket and, at the last minute, remembered to grab the bag with her ankle boots. She buckled up her new bike helmet firmly, checking the straps twice, and went outside. ‘Jack, show Sass where the dinner is, will you?’ she called, taking her bike out of the sidegate.

Then she saw Jack and the other two boys mumbling at each other, scowling at her under their skater-boy fringes.

‘Jack’s mum?’

The call came from Gabe. She turned as she walked down the drive, to see Jack hitting Gabe’s arm crossly.

She stopped reluctantly, anxious to face the challenge she’d set herself. ‘Hi, Gabe.’

‘Can Jack come to my sleepover on Saturday? My mum’s says he’s got to ask you, and he keeps not asking you because it’s in the garden and he thinks you’ll say no. And if you say no, I’m going to ask Sid. So can he?’

The smile slid off Kate’s face.

In the garden? What was he talking about?

‘Oh, what? Like camping, Gabe, in a tent?’

‘No – on the trampoline. In the sleeping bags.’

He was joking? Three ten- and eleven-year-olds, lying outside at night, alone in a city, with city foxes, and burglars and . . .

The numbers began to buzz annoyingly in her head.

Kate realized everyone was looking at her: Saskia, Jack and his friends. She tried to pull herself together.

Gabe stared curiously at her freshly blow-dried hair, and she lowered her made-up eyes.

‘It’s just my mum thinks you might worry about it . . .’

‘Shut up, Gabe,’ Jack glowered.

‘
My
mum said yes,’ Damon piped up.

Kate saw Saskia start to open her mouth, probably to tell some irritating story about how her and ‘Hugs’ used to camp in their garden, and shot her a dirty look.

Don’t dare, it said.

Then, to her sorrow, Kate saw Jack jut his jaw tensely as he had in the car the day she’d gone to Sylvia’s. He was embarrassed. In front of his friends.

The buzz of numbers grew louder in Kate’s head. She tried to ignore them, cursing Gill, Gabe’s mum, for putting her in this position.

‘Um, listen, I’m in a hurry, Gabe,’ she said, trying to keep her tone bright. ‘Can you tell your mum I’ll ring her tomorrow? And, Sass, don’t wait up, I might be a bit later tonight,’ she continued, pushing off on her bike before Saskia could interrogate her.

Kate waved at Jack, and pulled into the road, aware of the murmur of astonishment passing between Jack and Saskia as they realized that she was not riding on the pavement. Trying to concentrate, she cycled to the junction and regarded Iffley Road nervously and the long stretch of it that ran right into Oxford.

But it was no good.

Gabe’s request had rattled her. Rattled her good intentions.

She looked up and down Iffley Road. This afternoon, on the way back from Tesco to buy ingredients for the tagine, she’d managed half on the road, the rest on the pavement. Yet now she felt less brave. Kate gripped the handlebars, waiting for a long break in the traffic, then pedalled hard across the road, trying not to think about it. She cycled down Iffley Road as fast as she could, desperate to get this over with.

But the idea of Jack sleeping outside with no adult to protect him was starting to make her feel sick. The other numbers she knew by heart began to bombard her.

• A third of children do not report sexual offences to an adult.

‘Don’t think about it,’ she whispered. A lorry went past, making her swear out loud.

The numbers caught her up again.

• Two-thirds of road accidents happen on 30 mile per hour or less roads.

She tried to ignore it.

• More crime takes place at night than at any other time.

It was no good. Panting, Kate pulled in by the ivy-strewn school on the corner of Magdalen Bridge.

Bloody Gill, and her bloody laid-back, hippy ways.

And this bloody, bloody road.

Kate leaned against a wall, raging at herself. The figures were flying at her so thick and fast now that she suspected she might have to push her bike all the way to Blackwell’s, which would make her late for Jago.

‘Get a grip,’ she told herself. ‘Lots of stats are made up by people to sell things. Jack wouldn’t be on his own in the garden. The others would be there. If you don’t do it, he’ll be left out of the group.

One thousand.

Two thousand.

Three thousand.

Four . . .

Seconds later, she started to relax. A minute later, she was back to normal. Tentatively, she climbed back on her bike and headed shakily across Magdalen Bridge.

Almost immediately, she found herself in a pack of city cyclists. Mostly students, and a mother, to her alarm, with a toddler in a child’s seat. Kate stayed firmly in the middle, as if the pack would protect her, gritting her teeth. The toddler was laughing, as his mother cheerfully sang ‘The Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Round’. Kate gripped her handlebars as if she was hanging from a trapeze as the road dipped round to Longwall Street, to the quieter turn-off to Hollywell Street.

Eventually, the welcome width of Broad Street loomed ahead.

‘Come on,’ she muttered.

However, her rhythm started to escape her. Her legs felt as if they were jamming down randomly on the pedals now, at risk of slipping off with each push.

Finally, the Sheldonian Theatre came into view, and Blackwell’s.

She was nearly there.

She had done it!

Kate drew up in the central parking area and dismounted. Her hands were trembling, and she shook them.

She looked behind her, amazed. For the first time in five years, she’d cycled the whole journey on the road. It had been horrible, panic-inducing. But she had
done it
.

All thanks to Jago.

She looked across the road, with a shiver of anticipation. Broad Street was busy, packed with pedestrians on this summer evening. She couldn’t see him. She pushed her bike through a group of Japanese tourists, to the bike rack by Blackwell’s, conscious of a tremor in her leg muscles, too. Locking her bike, she looked around. A ‘ghost walk’ tourist group was gathering on the pavement. A boy cycled past her in college robes, a carrier bag of wine balanced on each handle.

Kate stood by a wall, glancing intermittently towards Balliol. She was a little early. She wandered to Blackwell’s arched windows and peered in at a display. She checked her watch for the fifth time: 7.52 p.m. Oh God, this wasn’t going to be another of Jago’s taxi rides was it? Because . . .

‘Hey. Good timing.’

She turned, to see Jago walking towards her, holding a rucksack. He was wearing a white T-shirt and darker jeans, and looked really pleased to see her.

‘Hi,’ she said demurely, panicking at how to greet him. Jago had no such reservations. He leaned down, smiling, and kissed her confidently on the mouth, the smell and touch of him making her blush a little – then he stepped back and hit himself on the forehead.

‘Shit.’ He held out his rucksack. ‘Can you take this, Kate – my bike’s just there.’ He pointed. ‘I’ve left my jacket in my room.’

Kate nodded, trying to hide her flushed cheeks.

‘You look nice.’ He winked, walking back towards Balliol. Kate pushed her hair behind her ears awkwardly, trying to remember how to behave in this situation. She had met Hugo when she was twenty-one. It hadn’t felt awkward then, but normal. He was the last in a steady succession of teenage and college boyfriends, so she was well practised. She took the rucksack to Jago’s bike, noticing a clinking noise inside.

As she went to put it down, a piercing sound made her jump. It was high pitched and sounded like the rape alarm Dad had made her take to university that had gone off on the coach to London. It came from Jago’s bag.

The tourists from the ghost walk looked over.

Squeallll!!

Leaning down, Kate ran her hand along the front of the bag. She felt a hard lump in the front pocket.

The noise stopped suddenly.

She hesitated, about to stand up . . .