Accidents Happen A Novel

CHAPTER ELEVEN



The evening light was fading as Kate emerged onto the riverbank. The sky was the colour of a light bruise. Two fishermen were packing up for the evening. Kate turned right, then left, and saw Jago waiting for her fifty yards up ahead on his bike.

‘Where are you . . .?’ she repeated, but he just turned and started cycling again, with a gesture for her to follow.

What was he doing?

Filled with apprehension, Kate went after him, pushing hard on the pedals to negotiate the bumpy towpath. Going away from Oxford, the path was quieter. She cycled past a dog walker; two students jogging together with swinging ponytails under baseball caps; and a lone rower on the river heading for home, his oars creating rippling silver pyramids in the water.

She kept expecting Jago to stop, but he didn’t. Kate panted with the exertion of cycling so fast. This was ridiculous. She looked behind her. They must be a mile from the pub now. What was he doing? In a minute they’d be outside Oxford, in the countryside.

‘Stop, please,’ she mouthed at his back, but Jago was already disappearing around a bend.

It was too far to go back now alone. So she turned on her lights and pushed on, hoping he’d be waiting.

Eventually they stopped passing anyone. Just three solitary canal boats moored for the evening, smoke drifting from their chimneys; a heron on the bank. She cycled on, taking in the unfamiliar sights. She never came out here on her bike. After her embarrassing hysteria on the pavement tonight, she had to admit that the ride through the still evening felt oddly calming. It was beautiful out here on the river at this time. She turned behind her to see a disappearing sun cracked orange along the horizon, turning the ferns and ducks black against it. A meditative pace took over in the motions in her legs. An unusual lightness filled her body.

She was leaving Oxford behind, for whatever reason she wasn’t sure yet, but she was leaving it. And in doing so, she became aware of it falling away from her, even for a short time, the trouble with Richard, and Helen, Jack and Saskia caught up in the opposite direction of the river’s current. For a few exhilarating seconds, Kate realized she wanted to cycle like this all night.

In the end, it was another five minutes before Jago started to slow down. She saw him up ahead, in the dying light, coming to a stop.

‘Here!’ he shouted, and disappeared. She arrived thirty seconds later to find a gate off the towpath. She dismounted and pushed her bike through, onto what appeared to be a single-track country road, overhung with branches, with a few gated houses set discreetly back from the road, a forest behind them.

Jago was already back on his bike, cycling ahead.

Kate jumped on hers again. Right. Now she could catch him. Tell him to stop.

She pedalled fast, only to see Jago turn right again, this time down an even narrower lane with a rough, unserviced surface. He pulled over after fifty yards.

Kate came up behind him in the dark.

‘What are you doing? I had no idea you were going . . .’ She panted. ‘Where are we?’

Jago put his finger to his lips as he dismounted.

‘What?’ she whispered.

‘There.’ He pointed at the ditch. He put his bike in it and walked off before she could protest. There was only one streetlight back at the top of the lane, so she could hardly see his face, just the curve of his cheek from behind, as he walked towards a gate.

‘This way,’ he said quietly, pointing up at the ten-foot-high arched bars.

‘No!’ she gasped. ‘No way!’

But Jago completely ignored her, put his foot on the first iron railing of the gate and hoisted himself up.

‘What the . . .’ Kate grunted, throwing down her bike beside his and following him. By the time she reached him, he was halfway up the gate. She peered. Through the iron railings lay a sprawling country hall, Gothic peaks silhouetted in the sky.

‘Jago. What are you DOING?’

‘Ssh,’ he replied, again holding his finger over his lips. He reached the top of the gate, put his leg over, and headed down the other side. ‘Come on,’ he said, as he reached her at eye level through the railings. His eyes dared her.

‘Absolutely not,’ she mouthed furiously.

‘OK. Stay there, then.’

‘Jago!’ But he had already begun to melt into the darkness beyond.

What was he doing?

Kate peered behind her at the lane, and then at the forest. She wasn’t bloody staying here by herself or cycling back down that empty dark towpath alone. Crossly, she reached up to the bars and pulled herself up and over. As she scrambled down the other side unsteadily, she saw Jago emerge out of the shadows to take her waist gently and help her dismount.

‘Quick,’ he whispered, grabbing her hand again. ‘Before anyone sees us.’

‘Who?’

He didn’t reply. Her heart thumping, she allowed her hand to settle into his, despite feeling self-conscious at the touch of his skin. Pulling her firmly, as he had done in the pub, Jago skirted the boundary hedge, staying in the shadows, away from the gentle light cast from the ground-floor windows of the grand hall on to a manicured lawn.

Kate inhaled deeply. The air was fresh and warm, filled with the scent of blossom and cut grass.

‘I think it’s round the back,’ Jago said.

He led her along the hedge till they cleared the illuminated patch of lawn, then bent down and scurried like a soldier on manoeuvres towards some stone steps. She copied him, entering a network of vegetable and flower beds.

‘There it is.’ She heard him exclaim quietly.

In front of them appeared a square pond surrounded by an old stone wall. Lilies floated in black, silky water.

‘Glow worms!’ Kate pointed in delight at tiny green lights glowing in the gaps of the wall.

Jago smiled. He let go of her hand and pulled out a jumper from his bag, and laid it on the grass. He motioned her to sit on it, then sat down beside her. He sighed contentedly then lay back on the grass.

‘What is this place?’ she whispered. ‘It’s beautiful.’

‘It’s cool, isn’t it? Someone at Balliol told me about it.’

‘But what is it?’

He winked. ‘Now that, I’m not going to tell you.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve taken you somewhere you know nothing about, so you can’t calculate anything that’s going to happen.’

Kate tried to make out his expression in the dark to see what he meant.

‘I’ve decided to do a guerrilla experiment on you – the kind of thing my department head keeps threatening to sack me for.’ He threw her a look. ‘He thinks I’m “unorthodox”, by the way. We’re going to sit here without you knowing anything.’

She blinked. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Kate?’ Jago said, sitting up on his elbows. ‘You’re sitting in a strange garden with a guy you know nothing about, miles from anywhere. No one knows you’re here.’

She glanced at him warily. ‘And . . .’

‘Are you scared?’

She watched the reflection of the moon in his pupils and waited for the fear to come. She shook her head slowly. ‘No.’

‘And why do you think that is?’

She paused. ‘Because I haven’t had time to think about it.’

‘And there you go.’

He sighed and lay back down.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

Kate let her eyes adjust to the dark. She scanned the garden, making out the trailing branches of a weeping willow and a statue that lay behind it in the shadows.

‘Well, it is beautiful. Whatever it is.’

‘“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul”,’ Jago murmured.

‘Hmm?’

A rustle told her that he was turning to face her.

‘Nothing. Kate, can I ask what happened? To your husband.’

She sat forward and picked up a twig.

‘Or should I not ask?’

The glow worms shone like fairies on the pond wall. She dug the twig into the grooves on the sole of her shoe, dislodging dried mud. She imagined trying to tell him, but knew she couldn’t. She shook her head.

‘Sorry,’ Jago said. ‘I’m being nosy.’

‘It’s fine. I just don’t really talk about it.’

‘Why?’

She glanced at him sideways. He still wasn’t giving up.

She continue to pick at her shoe.

‘Well, I used to. I just found it didn’t help. People would say the wrong thing. Not on purpose, but they just did. They’d say: “How do you feel?”, really kindly. And after a while I realized that, yes, they did care about me, but underneath they were actually more terrified by what had happened to me. What they actually wanted to know was not “How do you feel?” but “How bad do you feel? How bad is it? Will I be able to endure it if it happens to me?”’

She paused. Jago said nothing. His silence was like Sylvia’s, relaxed and unhurried. It made her want to talk more.

‘Then,’ she continued, ‘after an hour of me talking, you’d see them thinking, “God, get me out of here. This is depressing.” Not that I could blame them. I’d see them five minutes later chatting on the pavement to a friend about getting their highlights done. Back in the real world.’ She glanced back at Jago. ‘Where I felt I couldn’t go any more. And it was difficult. So I stopped.’

Kate turned her attention to the mud at the bottom of her other shoe, digging the twig into the grooves, waiting for him to change the subject.

Jago, however, stayed silent. They sat two feet apart, side by side on the damp grass, listening to the trickle of water from the pond, and a splash of fish jumping.

He plucked a piece of grass and put it in his mouth. ‘OK, but can I ask if that’s when it happened? This obsession with numbers. Because of your husband dying?’

Inside, Kate felt all the words she’d prepared so carefully for Sylvia pushing hard to escape from her again, desperate for release now that someone was finally willing to listen. Even if it were to a man she’d only just met.

Jago was lying, chewing grass, like a chilled-out student at a festival. If he had worries of his own, they didn’t show. What would it be like to be like that? What would it be like to spend time with someone like that, with an easy, boyish laugh?

She leaned forwards and dug methodically back along each groove of her trainer again. ‘I feel like I’m in a therapy session.’

Jago grunted. ‘Really? My ex-girlfriend would think that was hilarious. Apparently I am officially “the worst f*cking listener in the world”.’

Kate glanced over curiously. Ex-girlfriend. ‘Ha. Well, trust me, you’re better than the so-called therapist I saw this week.’

‘Oh, really? So what’s the answer . . .?’

Awkwardly, she rested back on the grass beside him, aware of how strange it felt to lie beside a man again, even two feet apart. How long had it been since she had done this, just been with someone, just talking?

‘No. I think I’d already started obsessing about this stuff before then.’

‘Oh. How come?’

She looked ruefully at the dark sky. ‘Oh, because my parents were killed in a weird accident.’

Jago hesitated. ‘Seriously?’

‘Uhuh. About five years before Hugo died.’

‘And is that difficult to talk about too or . . .’

‘No. It was a long time ago. On the night of our wedding, actually.’

Jago turned, his face astonished. ‘Are you making this up?’

‘Wish I was.’

‘And that’s when it started?’

‘Well, I do remember obsessing about the accident.’

‘What happened?’

She shrugged. ‘That was the thing. It was just really bad luck. My parents were in a taxi coming back from the reception. They were travelling up the mountain road to our house in Shropshire and they came round a bend and drove straight into the body of this big stag that had been shot by a poacher. It must have escaped, then collapsed on the road. And I remember wondering what the chances were of the stag dying right on that road. I mean, why not by the side of the road, or not on a bend? Why at night, and not during the day when the driver might have seen it? Why on the night of my wedding? I mean, I found out afterwards that fifteen people die each year in Britain in traffic accidents caused by deer. Fifteen out of sixty million. So why my parents?’

Jago shifted. ‘And, what? They hit it . . .?’

Kate nodded. ‘They were going about fifty miles per hour. Probably too fast. The taxi swung sideways across the road and overturned down the hill into the river. The taxi driver, Stan, from our village, was in his sixties, and I remember a doctor telling me that reaction times slow with age. That if he had been in his fifties, like my dad, his reaction time would have been 50 per cent quicker. And I kept wondering, if my dad had been driving, if that millisecond of difference would have changed everything. I was angry at Stan for a long time. I had been at school with his granddaughter, and I couldn’t speak to her again.’

Jago whistled. ‘Wow. I don’t know what to say.’

Kate pushed her hair behind her ears. She wanted to talk more. It was good to talk like this. ‘Don’t worry. Really. There’s nothing to say.’

‘God, you’ve had some bad luck, Kate.’

She faced him, resting on her elbow. ‘Ah, now there’s a question. So tell me, do statisticians believe in luck?’

She watched his silhouette in the moonlight. He had a neat-shaped head and sharp cheekbones that suited a crewcut.

‘What? In a mathematical sense? No. I mean, you will always have people at either end of statistical calculations. The one who gets struck by lightning seven times. The person who wins the lottery four times. But, no. It’s totally random. There is no formula for luck.’

‘Well, I’m not convinced about that,’ she said. ‘Don’t laugh, but sometimes I think I’m cursed. I think I am that person at the end of the statistical calculations. I am the person who gets struck by lightning seven times. I mean, it has to be someone, doesn’t it?’

‘You?’

She knew how crazy her words sounded.

He made a pff noise then put out a hand and touched her arm fleetingly. ‘Well, I’ll tell you, that’s nonsense, Kate. Being cursed is for fairytales. Not for kind souls, which I know you are.’

There was a note of paternal kindness in his voice that reminded her of a Scottish dentist she had seen as a child. Unexpectedly, it brought a bittersweet tug of memory of her father.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

There was a long pause. The branches of the willow danced in the breeze. After a while, Jago cleared his throat. ‘Kate, I’m just wondering.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Well, obviously I was joking about this being a guerrilla experiment. But, seriously, I’m curious . . .’

‘What?’

He frowned. ‘I just wonder . . .’

She sat up. ‘What?’

He ripped some more grass away. ‘Would you mind if I spoke to my publisher about what you’ve told me? See what the psychologist he told me about is doing in the States on this kind of anxiety?’

He was offering to help. ‘I suppose it would be interesting. But why would you do that?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m interested from an academic perspective, I suppose. That’s my thing, doing interdisciplinary work with other departments. So, partly because of the involvement of probability, but also because I . . .’

There was a rustling past Kate’s ear. She sat up. A rabbit lolloped past the pond and up onto the unlit lawn beside the house.

‘F*ck,’ she heard Jago mutter.

There was a sharp click and a huge sensor light abruptly illuminated the whole lawn and the pond. Kate and Jago’s faces were caught blinking in its beam.

‘Go!’ called Jago, jumping up and grabbing her hand.

There was no time to think. Kate let him pull her blindly across the lawn and back towards the hedge. Somewhere behind her she heard a door opening, spreading a slice of light onto the hedge.

‘Quickly,’ Kate gasped as Jago reached the gate and stood back to let her go first. He put a strong hand on the small of her back to help her climb up. To her amazement, she heard a chuckle behind her.

‘I can’t believe you’re laughing,’ she spat as she hauled herself up over the gates, her legs trembling, and waited for him to follow.

‘Go!’ he shouted, pointing at the bikes.

Kate grabbed her head. ‘My helmet!’ she yelped. ‘I’ve left it on the lawn.’

‘No time – go!’

Gritting her teeth, she jumped on her bike and waited for Jago to get over the gate and grab his, then followed him up the dark lane, wobbling so much she nearly tumbled in a pothole. She could hear him up ahead, as he crossed back through the gate, still laughing. Despite her heart pounding at the fear of being caught, she couldn’t stop a reluctant grin breaking on her own face.

When they hit the towpath, Jago didn’t stop, but sped back to Oxford, checking occasionally that she was behind him. She pedalled hard, trying to keep up with him, feeling her thighs protesting at being asked to work so hard when the adrenalin was still pumping through her body.

Without the helmet, her hair flew away from her face and flicked around her eyes. It made her feel as if she were cycling at seventy miles an hour; that the ground was disappearing beneath her in the dark.

In fact, she thought, it didn’t even feel as if she was cycling. Perhaps it was the two glasses of wine, but she felt as if she’d lifted off the ground and was speeding above it.

Like she was flying.

Kate lifted her chin into the wind, spitting bugs from her mouth. A real swarm, not a number swarm. The night-time breeze caressed her skin. An image popped into her head of the man with the jester’s hat on Cowley Road yesterday. Was this how he felt? She imagined her features set like his, bemused eyes, whistling lips.

And before she could help it, Kate did something extraordinary.

She lifted her hands off the handlebars. Just for a second, ignoring the water beside her. The bike sailed, just for a moment, effortlessly onwards.

‘Oh!’ she gasped, as the bike began to wobble.

‘Woo-hoo!’ came a shout.

She looked ahead to see Jago looking back, pedalling slowly, waiting for her to catch up. Seconds later she reached him, and he sped up again. She fell in behind him, into his slipstream. Their legs began to move in tandem, in a shared rhythm.

They were flying together through the dark.

Together. She was together, with someone. Connected. Talking. Not just physically sharing the same space with another adult, like Saskia or her Oxford neighbours or the parents of Jack’s friend’s, yet feeling a million miles away from them. She had forgotten what it felt like.

Kate shut her eyes, just for a second. Another sensation flooded back to her as she cycled along, from long ago. Of falling, and falling, and falling. Of floating into nothing, her body relaxed completely, not tense and rigid like it was now. Of tumbling at speed into a beautiful void but not being scared. Free from worry and physical restraint. Of having no choice but to let everything letting go and . . .

Crack!

Kate’s front tyre hit a stone, sending her bike to the left an inch.

She yelped. Her eyes jerked open, and she pulled hard on the handlebars to remain upright.

The bike wobbled, then steadied. Alarmed, Kate peered around.

How had that happened? They were nearly back at the pub.

Houses and lights emerged on their right. She saw Jago duck under the bridge, and followed him. Seconds later, they swerved back up the alleyway. Jago stopped at the pub. Kate pulled up beside him, panting.

He got off his saddle, straddling his bike frame, and grinned. ‘OK?’

Kate spluttered to a stop. ‘Just about. I can’t believe you made me do that,’ she gasped. ‘What was that place?’

He touched his nose. ‘Ahah. The less you know, the less you’ll try to predict.’

She tried to draw breath. ‘No. It was fun.’

She blinked, surprised at her own words. But it was true. Unbelievably, she’d actually had fun.

Jago sat back on his saddle. ‘Thank God. I was starting to think the extent of my social life in Oxford was going to be talking to Gunther from Austria about algorithms in the bar.’ He wiped an insect from his brow. ‘Right, are you all right from here, Kate, or do you want me to cycle you home?’

Kate shook her head, touched by the gesture. It was the type of thing Hugo had offered to do when they first met at university in London, even though she’d lived north of the river, and he’d lived south.

‘Listen,’ Jago said, checking his new tyre. ‘Thanks for telling me what was going on. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman’s run off on me half an hour into the evening.’

Somehow Kate didn’t believe it.

Then Jago slapped his forehead. He opened his bag and searched inside it. ‘Shit, I forgot to bring you that book.’

Kate wavered, remembering Jago’s promise. She tried not to show her disappointment.

‘You know what, though,’ Jago said. ‘Perhaps we could call this Step Two of our guerrilla experiment. Step Two: Binning the Numbers. See if you can do without it.’

Kate stood there uncertainly, thinking of the airline statistics she needed desperately if she was going to book tickets for Mallorca. ‘What was Step One?’ she asked.

Jago put his finger on his lip, as if thinking. ‘Step One: Not Thinking about it: Riding off into the Night with a Weird Scottish Bloke and Doing a Bit of Breaking and Entering.’ He watched her closely. ‘Could you do it? Cope without the book?’

‘Um, OK . . .’ She knew her struggle to agree was etched on her face.

Jago shot her a sympathetic look. ‘OK, well, what if I promise to keep one for you in my bag at all times in case you change your mind?’

She nodded, grateful at his understanding.

‘Brilliant.’ Jago gave her a grin. ‘Kate, listen. This was the most fun I’ve had in, well, a while. Can we do this again?’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Good. I’ll give you a ring? Tomorrow?’

Then, without warning, Jago leaned forward and kissed her cheek. ‘Right . . .’ The warmth of his skin on hers stunned her. ‘Better go. OK.’

‘OK.’

‘See you,’ Jago called. He stood up on his pedals and cycled to the junction, turning left towards central Oxford.

Kate stood paralysed, waiting for him to disappear. She lifted a finger to touch her hot cheek, which was stinging slightly from the brush of faint stubble on his chin. It had been so long since she’d felt the touch of a man’s face against hers. The smell of soap from his skin mixed with the damp saltiness of his T-shirt lingered for a second.

She shook herself. What was she thinking? It was dark and she needed to get home. She cycled to the junction, and looked. Iffley Road lay in front of her. The turn for Hubert Street was a few hundred yards away on the right.

The brief sense of elation she had from riding along the river-bank lingered. Could she do it, while she was on a roll?

On the road? No helmet?

She looked left, then right. When she was confident there was no traffic in either direction, she stood up on her pedals and pushed hard out into the empty road, gripping the handlebars.

As soon as she did it she knew it was a mistake. Out of nowhere a car came speeding round a bend and up behind her.

‘Oh no,’ Kate groaned, starting to wobble. A bassline thumped through open windows as the car swerved around her.

What was she doing? Idiot! Cycling on a main road without a helmet! Kate waited for the impact. The number she’d read on a website about bike accidents flew into her head.

• 85% of bike casualties are not wearing helmets.

The car shot past her, leaving three feet of room – but it was enough to force her, gasping, onto the pavement. She pushed her bike over the kerb.

‘I just don’t think about it,’ Jago had said.

Just don’t think about it.

Desperately, she tried to push the numbers away but they wouldn’t leave her. No. She wasn’t quite ready for this yet.

But tonight something had changed.

She had taken a step forward. Tiny, but still a step.

She’d had fun.

By the time she reached home, five minutes later, the lights were out. Saskia and Jack must be in bed. Kate crept in, feeling guilty.

She locked the inner doors downstairs, turned on the alarm and tiptoed upstairs. At the top, she saw the cage door. It stood wide open. She walked through it, ignoring the impulse to run to the garden and find the padlock.

Again, she heard Jago’s voice in her head.

Just don’t think about it.

She passed the front spare room where Saskia slept and then Jack’s room, to reach the bathroom.

She was about to turn off the upper hall light when a noise stopped her. It was a heavy scraping noise that seemed to be coming from Jack’s room.

That was odd.

His door was half open. Kate peeked in and tried to focus in the dark. A heavy breathing from the bed told her that Jack was asleep.

The noise started again, like something substantial being pushed along the floor.

It was coming from his wardrobe.

Kate’s stomach did a somersault. Jack was right. This was not imagined.

Nervously, she crept towards the wardrobe door, and carefully picked up Jack’s guitar. She grasped its neck with her right hand like a bat, and with her heart thumping hard, ready to scream out to wake up Saskia, began to open the door . . .

‘What are you doing?’

Kate jumped.

Jack was sitting up in bed, staring at his guitar in the shaft of light from the hall outside.

‘Oh, hi! Nothing,’ she barked, sharper than she intended. ‘I was just . . . um . . . putting away your washing. Sorry.’

She opened both wardrobe doors wide, hoping Jack wouldn’t spot the absence of laundry, and surreptitiously swept the back of the wardrobe to check no one was there.

‘Did you hear that funny noise?’ Jack asked.

Kate berated herself. What was she doing? Exactly what Helen had warned her about: transferring her anxiety to Jack.

‘Uhuh, and it’s nothing to worry about,’ she replied brightly. ‘It’s just someone next door moving something around in their room. The walls in this house are so thin. I hear noises sometimes, too – from the bedroom next to me.’

Not as loud as that weird scraping, she could have added, but didn’t.

His voice came back uncertain in the dark. ‘Oh, OK.’

‘You OK? Sure?’ She tried to sound reassuring.

‘Yeah.’ He turned over in his bed. ‘Night, Mum.’

‘Night, Jack.’

Kate tiptoed to the bathroom, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that had crept back over her. She brushed her teeth and washed, replaying each scene from the cycle ride in her head to distract herself. Soon lost in thought, she crossed quietly to her bedroom, turning off the hall light. She shut the door, turned on her beside lamp, and took off her T-shirt. It smelt of the grass from the walled garden. She picked up her moisturizer, and did a double take in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She sat on the bed and smoothed the cream onto her skin.

What the hell had she just done? With a complete stranger?

She lay on the bed, running the evening’s events back through her head.

That feeling she’d had, as she’d climbed the gate. That tension in her stomach. What was it? It hadn’t been fear. She knew that. It was different. It had arrived as she climbed up to the top of the gate, and saw the dark garden beyond. A kind of tension she hadn’t felt for a very long time. A kind of . . .

And then she knew.

Excitement.

Intrigued, Kate changed for bed. She climbed in between the sheets, and looked at the pile of unread books Saskia kept giving her from her village book club. Poor Sass. She was only trying to help. Her nervous blink had been back tonight. It wasn’t as if her little sister-in-law’s life had turned out the way she’d planned it, either.

Kate turned out the light. She felt the cool sheets on her body. And, as she did, a thought about Jago Martin and his blue eyes passed through her mind. The touch of his hand on her arm and . . .

There was a clicking noise.

Kate jerked upright and saw a strip of light appear under her door. Jack had turned on the hall light again.

He was still scared.

Kate lay back, cross with herself. If ever she needed evidence of the harm she was doing to Jack, there it was. Right under her door.

‘You have to stop this,’ she whispered. Jack had seen her anxious face by the wardrobe. Seen her holding the guitar as a weapon. Knew that she, too, feared there were bad men in his wardrobe.

She had to get a grip.

Normal adults didn’t check their wardrobes at night.

She thought back to the garden. What did Jago say? Just because she’d had some bad luck, it didn’t mean she was cursed. Just because her parents and Hugo had been killed, it didn’t mean it was more likely to happen to her or Jack. She was not fated to be struck by lightning seven times.

How did that American professor put it? People living with a constant fear of imagined danger, convinced their instincts are trying to warn them.

No, she reassured herself, she and Jack had no more chance of being killed than anyone else. They were normal, too. Not cursed; just unlucky.

She lay back on the pillow, feeling new hope again. Jago was going to help her – was already helping her – stop worrying about threats that were completely imagined.

She was not cursed.





Mother woke around 10 a.m. The child stood in the hall, watching her emerge from her bedroom in a long T-shirt, pulling a belted woollen cardigan around her waist. She was scratching her head. Make-up was smudged under her eyes. Her dull brown hair was hanging around her face, streaked with metal grey, her fringe pushed back angrily.

Once Mother would have said, ‘Do you want some breakfast, sweetheart?’

But not any more. The child had learned to make breakfast alone.

The child watched as Mother began to walk into the kitchen.

From behind the child there was a faint squeaking noise.

Mother stopped.

With a silent gasp, the child dropped back into the shadows, waiting to see if Mother was going to stop and come back.

But, after a second, Mother carried on, marching into the kitchen. She slammed the door.

The child turned quickly and ran back to the bedroom where the rocking horse was.

The squeaking was much louder in here. The child lay flat on the floor as quietly as possible and pressed an eye against the gap in the floorboards.

It took a moment to come into focus, but finally it did.

Father’s head, a few feet below. He was turning a metal handle in his hand, trying to be as quiet as possible.

Planning to kill the snake.

But this time the child wasn’t so sure that Father could stop it. It was bigger than the other one. The child was starting to think that it was going to wrap around this house and squeeze them all to death.