Accidents Happen A Novel

CHAPTER FIFTEEN



Kate sat down at the computer, typed in the last few figures and sent David the document twenty minutes later. Relieved it was done, she wandered back out of the study to go downstairs.

A whiff of something drifted into her nostrils. A male smell. Hormonal. Cloying and unfresh. It wasn’t the first time she’d smelt it, but Jack wasn’t here right now. She poked her head inside the boy’s bedroom. His deodorant was lying on the shelf as normal.

She looked around for discarded sports clothes to see if that was what was causing the smell, but there was nothing there. Compared to most boys his age, Jack was tidy, she guessed. Bed made, toys in boxes. The only thing that was out of place was his wardrobe door, which had fallen open again, pushing the guitar to the floor. She walked over and closed the door, resting the guitar against the handle this time, to keep it shut. She picked up the deodorant and shook it. No. Still some in there. Maybe his teenage hormones were just going into overdrive right now. She sighed. If only Hugo was here to guide him through the secrets of male puberty.

A pang of guilt stopped her. If she started something with Jago, how or when would she even begin to broach it with Jack? How would it affect her efforts to bring them closer again?

But without Jago, would it even happen?

She rubbed her lips together. They were dry from biting them in concentration as she wrote the proposal earlier. It was too early to think about all that. She’d only just met him. Briskly, she walked out of Jack’s bedroom, and entered her own to find some lip salve.

She paused mid-step. That was strange. The smell was in here, too. Kate wandered to the dressing table and slicked some salve across her lips, looking round for the source again.

As she turned to go out, something caught her eye. The ankle boots she’d meant to have re-heeled ages ago, were sticking out of the bottom of the bed.

Humming, Kate leaned over and picked them up.

As she headed back downstairs to place them by the front door, she realized there was a new bounce in her step. And then she knew why. For the first time in a long time, she was looking forward to something. Eight o’clock tomorrow night at the Hanley Arms.

Back in the kitchen, she saw Jago’s bag on the floor, and felt a new resolve take over. Before she could change her mind, she marched out of the back door and locked the bag in the shed. Back in the kitchen, she grabbed the kettle, pleased with herself. As she waited for the water to fill it, her eyes focused on the magnolia tree outside, the only plant she had brought from their Highgate home. The tree was so much taller than when Hugo had last seen it. Its trunk and branches were thickened and matured. They had grown up and away, in different directions.

A band of pain tightened around her chest so fiercely, so unexpectedly, Kate gasped.

Hugo.

Oh God.

Tears welled in her eyes.

Was this it?

After five years, was she going finally to leave him behind and move on?

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘But I think this man will help me. Please, don’t be cross. It’s for Jack, too.’

Just at that minute a bird flew off a branch, the bounce shedding two dark green leaves onto the soil below.

Kate watched, startled. Was Hugo watching her? Trying to tell her not to do it?

Resolutely, she turned and plugged the kettle in. No. It was time to stop exhausting herself looking for imagined signs. There had been a time when she thought she would never let Hugo go. She would die old and lonely, holding onto the shirt he wore that night, splattered with the blood that spilled onto the floorboards, covered the table, the half-eaten food, the table runner. Now, she knew she would go insane if she didn’t let him go, and take Jack with her into the future. Whatever this thing with Jago was, it was time to at least try . . .

A thud from upstairs made Kate recoil.

She stood stock-still. The sound had come from the front of the house. From Jack’s room.

Ice entered her veins.

Her mind shot back to the break-in of two weeks ago. The sickening terror of seeing the dining room lying open, shattered glass on the floor. Was there someone in here again?

She glanced terrified at the alarm box in the hall. It had definitely been on when she came home. How could they have broken through this one?

Then common sense returned.

Kate felt colour return to her face.

Jack’s wardrobe door. The guitar must have fallen over.

Calm, she thought. Calm. She shut her eyes and tried to summon the sensation she’d had on the riverbank on Tuesday night.

She inhaled deeply.

One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand . . .

Tumbling down, into a never-ending void.

Her arms and legs free, with nothing to fight against.

Everything falling away.

Kate opened her eyes, and felt better.

Pleased, she realized she had done it again. Wrestled back a little control.

Pouring boiling water into a cup, she wondered what Jago had planned for tomorrow night. As she did, an impulse came to reach out and take a flapjack from a plate on the worktop. She bit into it, surprised at how sweet it was. The sticky oats felt chewy between her teeth. The sugar exploded into her mouth, into each crevice, making her jaw ache for more.

She looked at the flapjack with surprise. That was delicious. She chewed, thinking.

This thing Jago kept saying – that the statistics were just exacerbating her anxiety – was interesting. That they were making her feel even more unsafe than she did already.

She took another bite, and nibbled it, a touch of optimism flushing through her.

Things were going to get better.

Then she remembered about Jack going to the shop in Richard and Helen’s village tomorrow morning.

She looked up at the kitchen clock.

‘Don’t panic,’ she whispered to herself. There were still ten more hours to decide what to do.





The sun appeared through the clouds at lunchtime, caressing the house, trailing its golden fingers from room to room. The child sat on the bedroom floor at the far end of the house, fitting pieces into a jigsaw of a seascape, tensing each time Mother came near, to the bathroom or to empty the laundry basket outside in the hall. If there was a creak of floorboard or a heavy sigh that sounded perilously close, the child gently knocked on the floor to alert Father to be quiet down below. At least Mother was doing the laundry now, far up at the other end of the house in the kitchen. You could tell by the slam of the washing machine door, then the metallic clank and hiss of the iron, slammed across shirts and trousers, back and forwards.

Father grunted. Through the tiny crack the child could see he was still turning the metal pole. His face was red. Sweat drops were pouring down his face.

The child crawled to the door to check Mother was still in the kitchen down the hall, then turned back to the pile of jigsaw pieces to look for the puffin’s beak. If Father killed the snake, then maybe that would be it. The house would be quiet again, maybe even forever this time.

The child saw the puffin’s beak in the pile of jigsaw pieces and grabbed it, distracted.

Then there was a thud.

A door was flung open.

The child jumped up and peeked out of the bedroom door.

Mother was emerging from the kitchen with a basket of wet washing under her arm. Her face was the colour of a week-old potato.

The child jumped back, dropping the puffin’s beak on the floor, and whispering loudly.

‘She’s coming!’

Father made a loud sound. It was not a groan of effort, like before. It was painful, like the yowl made by the farmer’s dog on the other side of the hill, chained to a post in the yard.

The child stopped breathing, peering out of the door.

Mother was coming towards the bedroom.

At the last minute, she turned and headed down the stairs of the house and went outside the front door to hang the washing on the line in the hillside. ‘Never get clothes fresher smelling than hung outside,’ she had said once, in the old house that they had rented down in the town. The small, dark, cosy house with its nice neighbours, where no one had ever screamed. Where Father used to lay his arm on Mother’s shoulder in the kitchen after work, when she was cooking, and she didn’t pull away as if he had burned her.

The child jumped up and checked through the picture window in the hallway, then returned, ears hot, to whisper through the floorboards.

‘She’s going to the washing line. She’s going to see it!’

Father groaned heavily, and shook his head. There was something wrong.

The child ran to the rocking horse, and pulled away the dressing gown, then gasped in horror.

A new snake had arrived. A huge snake. Twice the size, maybe three times the size of the first one. And it was writhing down towards the floor.