Accidents Happen (34 page)

She thought she’d misheard. ‘
Bats?
’

‘No bat phobias?’

She examined his expression. ‘
Bats?
No, but . . .’

‘Good, because I’m taking you bat-watching in Highgate Woods. Have you done it before?’

She finished her whisky. ‘No. I’m surprised you got tickets – don’t you have to book months ahead?’

Jago winked. ‘Ah. Now, I said I was taking you on a bat-watch. I didn’t say I was taking you on the official bat-watch. And it may not end up being bats that we actually watch.’

‘What do you mean?’

He took a final swig and put his glass down. ‘Now, that would be spoiling the fun. Right, come on. Let’s go.’ Jago looked outside. He checked his watch, then looked back at her. He folded his arms on the table and leaned forwards on them until they were touching hers.

‘Did I say, I’ve got the car? I can take you home afterwards.’

Their eyes met. Kate felt her cheeks flush again, remembering the gentle trail of his finger across her body. He beckoned her with his eyes, and she leaned forwards to meet his second, longer kiss.

They entered Highgate Woods ten minutes later, through Onslow Gate, standing back to allow the last of the day’s buggies and joggers and dog-walkers out. A thick canopy of hornbeams and oak trees announced the start of the dense, ancient seventy-acre wood. Jago dropped his eyes as they walked onto the main path. He pulled up his hood, obscuring his face, and nodded to her to do the same. ‘This way,’ he muttered, taking her hand.

Kate did as she was asked, dipping her head down.

There was a noise behind her. She turned to see two small groups enter behind them. They were heading down the main path, which she knew led to the rangers’ hut and cafe in the middle of the wood. One group consisted of two loud, well-spoken men in their late thirties, accompanied by – and happily ignoring – two boys a little younger than Jack, with fashionable long shaggy haircuts and expensive fleeces, who fought with sticks and yelled at each other in confident mini versions of their fathers’ voices. A few steps behind was a separate group of two women in their early twenties, speaking to each other politely in heavy English, one with a Spanish accent, one possibly Polish. Lonely au pairs who’ve met through the school playground, Kate guessed.

‘Oi,’ Jago whispered, touching her arm.

‘What?’

Keeping his head down, he motioned sideways. Checking there was no one else behind them, and that no one from either group was looking back, he pulled her abruptly off the main path onto a smaller one that forked to the left. He broke into a fast walk.

‘Where are we going?’ she whispered.

Jago held his finger to his lips. He led Kate down yet another path, then forked left again. Then, without warning, he pulled her off it.

A giant fallen oak lay on the ground. Jago motioned for her to crouch down with him behind it. How did Jago know where they were? she thought, looking around at the thicket of trees. She’d come to this wood at least twice a week for years with Jack till he was five, and she had still occasionally become lost due to the lack of landmarks. Had Jago memorized a map?

‘OK?’ he said, turning round.

‘Oh, yes. Having a lovely time, thanks,’ she deadpanned, picking an insect from her face.

He grinned. ‘It won’t be much longer. The rangers are going to lock the park gates in a minute. They’ll come through looking for stragglers, so stay down.’

‘They’re going to lock us in? I didn’t know they did that.’

‘At night, yes.’

On cue, a distant roar of engines drifted across the woods.

‘Ssh,’ Jago hissed, putting his arm round her.

Kate crouched down into him.

The ranger’s truck passed on the other side of the trunk.

Kate’s stomach started to churn.

She looked around at the darkening wood and thought of Jack. Quickly, she whipped out her phone and texted:

are you all right?

She waited, but nothing came back. He was probably too embarrassed in front of his friends to reply, she thought, putting her phone away.

Jago leaned into her ear. ‘The bat-watchers gather by the wildlife hut, for the ranger talk. Then they give them bat detectors and set off when it’s properly dark.’

‘Right. So what are we doing? Stealing the rangers’ sandwiches from their hut?’

‘No, but that’s not a bad idea. I haven’t had any tea.’

She snorted suddenly, and put her hand over her mouth as he poked her in the side. ‘No. We’re going to build on our canal boat escapade. Step Five:
Monster in the Dark
.’ He pointed at her. ‘That’s you, by the way. The monster.’

‘What do you mean?’

Jago pushed her hair away from her face, trailing a finger across her cheek as he did it. Any resistance she felt to tonight’s experiment started to drain away.

‘I’ll tell you in a minute.’ He looked back up. ‘Right. They’ve gone. Scared?’ he whispered.

‘What do you think?’ she said sarcastically.

She watched him take a black box out of his pocket. He shook it and it made a crackling sound.

‘What’s that?’

He gave her a mischievous grin. ‘I got it off the internet. Are you ready?’

She shrugged.

‘Good. Come on, then.’ He grabbed her hand and headed off through the woods.

They crept along the lane towards the rangers’ hut, staying among the trees. Gradually, a murmuring of voices reached them. The wildlife hut loomed ahead. Kate surveyed its familiar shape with a shock.

This place
?

She’d completely forgotten about it.

A hundred potent recollections filled her mind. Jack had loved that hut. How many times had she taken him to see the wildlife exhibits, opening the nesting boxes and crouching down beside the stuffed fox.

As they crept along through the trees, more buried memories came back to her. Jack had been a
different child
then. A child who whined like normal children. Cried if she didn’t let him stop to colour in the sheets the rangers left in the hut. Laughed if she chased him around the cricket field. Let her kiss his cheeks and ears again and again, when she caught him, then returned them to her, the kisses of a child; soft, wet, toddler lips hungry on her cheeks.

As Jago pulled her along, Kate looked back in the direction of Highgate Village.

And then those men had come to their house one night and . . .

For the first time in years, Kate felt that sickening hatred return.

Maybe it was being back in Highgate after four years, but with a painful clarity, she saw the long-term consequences of the men’s actions. At the time, they’d just stolen Hugo. Now she realized how much else they’d taken. They’d ripped her and Jack from their home and friends, from Jack’s school, and forced them to move far away. They’d given her no choice but to rely on Richard and Helen. They’d turned her into a nervous wreck. Turned Jack into a fragile, frightened boy who had to turn to Richard and Helen or his friends, even his friend’s mother, because Kate was so damaged, so lost to him . . .

Jago put out a hand, making Kate jump. They stopped behind a thick trunk.

‘OK. We’ll wait here till they start moving across the field,’ Jago said.

‘I still don’t get this.’ She heard a tone of bitterness in her voice, and tried to eliminate it. It wasn’t Jago’s fault.

Jago took her hands.

‘Kate,’ he whispered. ‘You’re convinced you’re cursed. That you and Jack are fated to fall into the path of bad people. The burglars in Oxford. The poacher who shot the deer. The robbers who stabbed Hugo . . .’ She winced. ‘But you’re not. You’ve just had some really bad luck. We all do at some point. You took control of the numbers at the canal boat. Now I want you to take control of those monsters that scare you.’

Kate shivered, despite the warm air.

‘How?’

‘I want you to become one. See how it feels.’

She shook her head, not understanding.

Jago ushered her forwards.

The sky was darkening now, but in the distance, crossing the wide open acres of the cricket field encased by forest, she could see the torchlight movements and shadowy outlines of a group of twenty bat-watchers. She could hear the boisterous boys with long hair shouting from here. Two rangers with torches walked beside the pack, talking.

‘Them,’ Jago said, pointing.

Kate followed his finger and saw the young au pairs at the edge of the group.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Jack sat on Gabe’s bed, looking out of the window into the garden, the lacy outline of the tall trees waving against a dark sky. Gabe’s house wasn’t as big as theirs, but the garden went on forever, disappearing round a bend where Gabe’s mum grew her vegetables, and down to the fence, where the trampoline lay out of sight of the house.

Gabe’s mum hadn’t been quite truthful with his mum about where it was situated. She’d made it sound on the phone as if it was outside her house, but Gabe’s bedroom was next to hers, and you couldn’t see it from there.

The clock said half-past nine. They’d had their pizza and watched a film. It was time for the sleepover.

Gabe’s mum stared through his bedroom window.

Jack prayed, his hand on his stomach trying to calm the burning sensation inside.

‘You know, I think it’ll be fine, boys, yeah?’ she said, scratching the blue scarf she often wore wrapped around her head. ‘I thought it was going to rain earlier, but it’s still warm. You still up for it?’

Jack looked at Gabe, hoping he’d be brave enough to say he was scared of the Year Eight boys, too, and call it off.

‘Yeah!’ Damon said, jumping off the bed.

‘Yeah!’ Gabe copied him.

Jack tried to smile but right now he wasn’t sure he could stand up, his stomach was so sore from the spasms.

Gabe’s mum turned. ‘Right, you lot, grab your sleeping bags and let’s go, yeah?’

Gabe jumped up.

‘But what about . . .?’ Jack whispered at Gabe. Gabe tried to look unconcerned, probably because Damon was there. ‘It’ll be cool, don’t worry.’

Jack stood up uncertainly, and they all trooped downstairs. Suddenly he didn’t like Gabe’s mum as much. His mum did lots of things wrong but at least she tried to keep him safe. Jack gathered up his sleeping bag and felt his mobile in his pocket, remembering Mum’s words that he could ring her.

Gabe’s mum was right. It was hot and sticky outside. They tramped down the long lawn, till they reached the vegetable patch, the light from the kitchen disappearing behind them as they turned the bend. Damon was making silly faces with the torch.

Jack looked around, worried. Gabe’s house was semidetached, with an alleyway next to it, so the Year Eight boys could get down the side and climb over the fence.

‘Right you lot, have fun!’ Gill called. ‘I’ll leave the key under the mat at the back, Gabe, if you need to use the loo – no peeing on my carrots. See you in the morning!’

She walked off, leaving them to line up their sleeping bags on the surface of the trampoline. They put down their Deadly 60 cards and torches.

‘This is fucking wicked,’ Damon laughed, using the swear words they all used whenever adults weren’t there.

‘Yeah!’ Jack said. In the light of the torch, Gabe was smiling, but Jack saw him look at the fence a couple of times, too.

Jack checked his watch. Only 9.40 p.m. Nine hours to go. He crawled inside his sleeping bag and put his hand his stomach to try to relieve the cramp, averting his eyes from the alleyway.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Kate watched the young au pairs on the cricket field.

A ranger was shining a torch in their direction, and it briefly illuminated them. The Spanish one was slightly heavy, wearing a light coat and had a bright smile. The other one had a long dark ponytail, and a square face, and was as skinny as Jack, and not much taller. Kate watched their awkward stances, knowing they were new to all this. Still finding out where they fitted in, in this enormous metropolis.

‘Why them?’ She turned to Jago.

‘Why not?’

‘Because they look like nice girls.’

‘You’ve got to get out of this way of thinking, that how you behave controls your fate. Fate is fate. We all have bad luck sometimes.’

‘But they’re just young. That guy on the boat at least looked like he’d . . .’

‘Kate. You’re not going to murder them.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Please. We’ll be out of here in half an hour and I won’t let anything bad happen to you, or them, I promise. I just want you to follow them for a bit in the dark. See what it feels like. It’ll be good for you. Now, listen, I’m going over to the field.’

‘What?’ she said alarmed.

Jago glanced up. If the moon was usually visible from here, it was now hidden deeply from sight behind charred clouds. Kate realized she could hardly see his face. She looked back in the direction of the cricket field, which was becoming difficult to make out. The torch had moved ahead of the au pairs, and the girls had disappeared into the dark cloak that fell over the cricket ground, inside this thick bowl of forest that sharply cut out the city lights behind it.

‘It gets so dark inside the trees – you can’t see twenty feet beyond your face. I’m hoping the rangers won’t notice me now, as long as I keep inside the shadows. And while I’m doing that, I want you to head that way –’ he pointed to the right – ‘and take the path behind the trees. Follow it to end up near the cricket scoreboard. Wait behind it. Just make this noise –’ he made a five-beat clicking noise, with his tongue, that could have been a bird pecking at a tree – ‘and I’ll find you.’

‘But I . . .’ she began to protest.

He squeezed her hand. ‘Try it.’

Kate tried out the noise, shaking her head at the ridiculousness of it, and he gave her the thumbs-up. To her shock, he then finally unzipped his jacket, revealing underneath it a dark fleece with some sort of badge on the chest. With his khaki trousers and black bat detector, she realized what he could pass for.

A Highgate Woods park ranger.

Before she could open her mouth to exclaim, Jago pulled out the black box and slipped off into the dark.