Accidents Happen (29 page)

‘It’s shallow. Get in the fucking boat,’ Jago said, running towards her.

Shakily, she did what he asked, putting in one foot, and gasping as the boat rocked underneath her.

‘Fuck,’ Jago hissed, jumping in beside her. He grabbed her waist to steady her, sat her firmly on the bench, then reached for the outboard engine cord, still standing up. ‘That went a bit tits-up.’

‘Jago. Stop . . .’ she hissed, as the boat roared into life.

‘Get off my fucking boat!’ the man shouted from the water.

Jago leaned over expertly, and shoved them off the side. Quickly, he manoeuvred the boat into the middle of the river, ignoring the impassioned yells.

Kate looked around frantically. ‘Jago. There’s no life jackets.’

‘Kate?’ he shouted above the engine. ‘Can you swim?’

Kate rolled her eyes.

‘Well, there you go, then,’ he shouted. He sat down and accelerated the boat back up the river towards Oxford. Frantically, Kate looked back. The boat owner was pulling himself up onto the bank, his dreadlocks flattened around his ruddy face.

He looked like a tree monster.

She turned and saw Jago watching the man. He transferred his eyes to Kate and made the face of a child who’d done something very naughty.

To her horror, a snort of laughter burst from Kate’s mouth. Appalled with herself, she tried to stifle it with a hand, but it was too late. Jago had seen it.

‘I knew this innocent nice girl thing was all a front,’ he called out, kicking her leg.

She shook her head, fighting back the smile but failing, and guiltily checked back again to ensure the poor canal boat man had made it out of the water safely.

It was an odd sensation, though, she thought, to be fighting back a smile, instead of tears.

They turned a bend, and the boat carried on, its cheap engine spitting and growling into the night. At a safe distance, Jago pulled into the bank to retrieve their bikes, then carried on, the bikes balanced in the middle of the boat.

When they were further away from the canal boat, he cut the noisy engine and pulled out the oars.

‘Er, OK. Sorry about that,’ he deadpanned.

‘I can’t believe you, Jago,’ Kate exclaimed, checking behind them. ‘We’re going to get arrested.’

‘No, we’re not,’ he said, pulling back on the oars. ‘I could smell his bong from behind the hedge. He won’t call the police. Lie back and enjoy it. He’ll be fine. He’ll think we’re drunk students and go looking for his boat in the morning.’

Kate made an unconvinced face at him; then, having no choice, stuck in the middle of the river, did what she was told, resting her head back and watching the thin blood-red stripe across the horizon to the west, as the last of the day’s sky collapsed into embers. Jago rowed on.

She’d never met anyone like him, Kate thought. While her conscience was telling her that stealing this boat was wrong, for some reason she trusted him. There was something maverick about him that fascinated her. Maverick but fun. Kind at heart. After all, he’d only run at the man with the dreadlocks to protect her, and he hadn’t hurt him.

As Jago turned to check the man wasn’t following on the bank, she cast her eyes surreptitiously over the neat shape of his close-cropped skull and the sharp cheekbones that always softened when he smiled, surprising her. She didn’t know why, but instinctively she knew that being around someone who was not scared of boundaries and rules was exactly what she needed.

The ebb and flow of the oars through the reeds rocked her gently.

The boat moved on under the arriving moonlight. The hard knot in her chest, as she thought about the man with the dreadlocks, started to relax. There was no point dwelling on it, or she would ruin the point of this evening. The man had climbed out of the river. He’d be shaken but not hurt. She made herself concentrate instead on the sky above and the rich smell of foliage. It was so unusual for her to be out at night, she’d forgotten how water and trees shape-shifted and became charged with new meaning and atmosphere in the dark, displayed a different type of beauty.

She realized she had no idea where they were going and, for the first time since she could remember, that was OK.

As they passed the spot where she’d seen the fisherman’s tent, the thought of Jack and his night-time sleepover pushed its way uneasily into her mind again.

So she tried something different. She concentrated on seeing Jack’s sleepover from the perspective of tonight. Jago rowed them to a fork in the river. They took the right turn, down a lane of water she didn’t recognize. Kate told herself that if she denied Jack the chance to go to Gabe’s and to do something exciting and different, he would never have what she had now.

An adventure under the stars.

Jago rowed them for another five minutes. The air was lush with wet plants.

‘Do you know why night smells different to day?’ he murmured.

Kate held up her hand. ‘Jago, I’m still mad at you for pushing that man in the water.’

‘But do you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s to do with convection. Heat moves molecules around in fluid. So when the sun’s shining it stirs it all up, and the smells are diluted in the air. Then when night comes, the heat goes, and things stop moving. Smells becomes more intense.’

‘Really?’ She nodded, impressed. ‘It’s a shame.’

‘What?’

‘That when we stop this boat how much useful stuff’s going to be lost when we get on to dry land and I kill you for making me do this.’

Jago snorted. She threw her head back, pleased that she had made him laugh.

She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped.

‘What?’ Jago asked.

‘I was just wondering, how did you get into academia?’

Jago carried on rowing steadily. She glanced at his arms, as they tensed with each stroke. Her hand moved to her own upper arm, and she rested it there, trying to remember how different the texture and density of a man’s arms were.

‘Well, my dad says that my brain just seemed to understand numbers from early on. I made him set me sums all the time. And I suppose I get the teaching thing from him – he teaches English, so do my sisters – and the maths stuff is probably from my mum’s side. They’re all doctors.’

She tried not to give away that she already knew this. ‘And you didn’t want to be a doctor?’

He shook his head. ‘No. I like working in a university. You get the freedom to explore areas you’re interested in. Paid to go abroad. Long holidays. I’m sure that sounds very selfish, compared to my mum. She’s amazing. She works with geriatric patients.’

‘No. But you do work for new governments in post-war countries – that’s not selfish.’

Jago shot her a curious look.

Damn. Kate kicked herself. What had she just said?

‘Did I tell you that?’

She pretended to look back at something in the water. ‘I don’t know. Didn’t you say you flew to developing countries, or something. I just thought that . . .?’

‘Oh. Yes. No, you’re right. So I did,’ he nodded.

Silence descended on the boat.

‘And you Googled me, didn’t you?’ he said after a second.

‘No!’

‘Yeah, you bloody did. Don’t worry. I’d probably Google me too. Scottish skin-head with a penchant for dog-rustling.’ He wiped a fly from his face. ‘I’m going to do you later. Find embarrassing photos of you at school.’

‘Fuck off,’ Kate giggled, savouring the word. It felt good to swear at some one in a bantering way again without it holding any menace.

There was a small lane of water up to the right.

‘That’s it, I think,’ Jago said.

Kate saw a white jetty in the moonlight, up ahead of them. It sat at the bottom of the garden of an Oxford college whose name she couldn’t remember.

‘Come on.’ Jago took the boat in, tied it up loosely, and climbed out. ‘We can hide out here for a while just in case he decides to come looking tonight.’

She passed out the bikes and the rucksack to him, then he held out a hand. She took it, glad to be back on dry land.

Jago took a rug out his rucksack and laid it down, then pulled out a bottle of red wine and two plastic glasses. Kate glanced at the wine, surprised. It was a good one. A French one that she and Hugo used to buy in the old days. She glanced at him, registering something she had only vaguely noticed before, that Jago’s T-shirt and jeans were always good makes. Expensive brands. Book deals in America and Britain, she suspected, sipping her wine, probably meant that he was far from being an impoverished lecturer. Relieved, she realized that would make things simpler.

‘You really think he might be looking for us?’ she said, sitting down.

‘Nah. Probably still drying his hair.’

‘Don’t,’ she said, feeling mean as she smiled.

‘So,’ he said. ‘You did well. How do you feel?’

How did she feel? ‘Er . . . I’m not sure.’

‘Like a terrible person?’

‘Would it be bad to say, Not really?’

‘Not at all,’ Jago said, looking at the bottle with appreciation. She liked the way he did that; it was what Hugo would have done. She sipped her own wine, watching him. He was so like Hugo in some ways. They were both people who created fun out of the most mundane moment. But Jago had an edge – an edge of adventure that Hugo had never had. Hugo would not have stolen someone’s boat. He would have bought them a boat if they needed it.

Jago put down the bottle. ‘No. I think it’s interesting,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I think normally you’d feel bad about doing something like that. You’d worry about the old guy, because you’re a kind person, but, in the context of what we’re trying to do . . .’

Kate interrupted him, blurting out: ‘It feels . . .’

She stopped.

Jago waited.

She tried again. ‘I do feel bad for him. I really do, and I’m worrying about him right now. But I do kind of understand what you’re getting at – why we did this. And I suppose, just for once, it feels comforting. For it not to be me who the bad thing is happening to.’ She picked up a flat stone and turned it in her hand. She hesitated, then knew she would. ‘Can I tell you something?’

‘Hmm,’ Jago said. He sat closer to her, then lay back so they were touching side by side, looking at the stars.

‘All evening, I’ve been worrying about Jack going on a sleepover in someone’s garden. Worrying about the bad things that might happen to him outside at night.’

She cringed as she heard her inner fears voiced for someone else to hear.

But Jago looked genuinely interested. ‘Ahah! And now you
are
that bad thing, outside at night? For someone else?’

She nodded and took another sip. It followed the last one to the back of her throat and gave her a little flame of courage. She turned the stone, over and over.

‘And how does that feel?’

‘Empowering, I suppose. In a very weird way.’

‘Did you ever feel like this before your parents died, too – anxious about things?’ He rubbed his hand over his head, and she remembered the feel of it, the soft stubble under her fingers, and wanted to do it again.

‘Oh God, no. No. I didn’t worry about anything then. Who does when they’re a teenager?’

‘Like?’

‘Well, I don’t know. We lived in the countryside. I rode horses – jumped five-bar gates, that kind of thing. Went on school skiing trips. Spent my teenage years bombing around country roads in Minis at ninety miles per hour with drunk farmer boys, feeling invincible.’

‘Seriously?’ Jago sat up to check her glass. There was a gentlemanly politeness about him that reminded her of her own dad.

‘Yeah. And that’s just the start of it,’ she said. ‘Me and Hugo were going to go travelling after uni but he stayed in London to set up the business and I went with some friends. I did all sorts of stuff I can’t even imagine now. Hitched through Vietnam. Bungee jumped in Thailand. I even worked at a parachute centre in New Zealand for three months as a receptionist. Learned how to skydive on my days off.’

Jago’s mouth fell open. ‘You’re fucking joking?’

She giggled at his face. ‘No, I’m a qualified skydiver – got my international licence and everything, believe it or not.’

Jago’s mouth dropped open. ‘I’ve always wanted to do that. Kate, I’m impressed. So you weren’t always such a wimp.’

‘Oi.’ She sat up and sipped her wine. ‘It’s funny. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently. How it felt.’

‘You haven’t done it since?’

She shook her head. ‘I nearly did. For my thirtieth birthday – a sort of symbolic re-entry into the world after losing my parents – but it didn’t happen.’

‘Why?’ Jago shifted towards her so that his leg brushed against hers.

She tried to make hers relax against it, unfamiliar with the physical contact. ‘Well, I did a refresher course and went up in the plane. But the weather changed, and we couldn’t jump. Hugo was watching me down below. Jack was with him. I think something rattled Hugo. The day he died, he was trying to persuade me not to rearrange the jump.’ She lay back. ‘I sometimes think he’d had a premonition of death when I was up there. Only it wasn’t mine. It was his.’

A crack came into her voice. She bit the soft part of her cheek, cross with herself.

That time was over now.

Tears were not allowed in the future.

Jago gave her a moment, then banged her gently on the leg, as if he sensed that she was struggling.

‘What’s it like?’

‘What?’

‘Jumping out a plane.’

How long was it since she’d spoken about normal things? About times before? Like tonight with Jack about Hugo, and Mr Sausage Fingers.

‘Oh, it’s unbelievable. Like nothing else. There’s all this noise of the plane engine, and you’re sitting at the edge, feeling more scared than you ever will in your life. Then you step out and throw yourself into this vast open space. You count slowly, and your parachute opens, and you’ve survived. You’re flying. And then there’s this sense of total euphoria.’ She shook her head wryly. ‘Honestly, I can’t even get on a bloody aeroplane to go to Spain now. Feels as if it was someone else.’

Jago rubbed her arm. ‘No, it was you.’

‘One in a million.’