Accidents Happen A Novel

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN



Kate arrived at the Hanley Arms five minutes early. The pub was busy. Saturday night crowds spilled into the little beer garden at the back. She stood nervously, in a small space between the front door and the garden gate, moving from side to side, to let people come and go through the two entrances.

What on earth did Jago have planned for tonight?

A few men glanced at her, a couple behind their girlfriends’ backs. She diverted her eyes to the road, unused to the attention.

By eight o’clock, Jago was not there. At five past, Kate was checking her phone every few seconds, with a growing sense of unease.

Had she misunderstood?

It was when she was checking her phone again, that she became aware of someone waving at her from a car.

It was a woman in an old white saloon, parked up on the pavement, its engine running. She was stretching across to wind down the window manually.

‘Kate?’ the woman rasped through the gap.

The woman had short bleached-blonde hair striped with dark roots and she had bags under her eyes. Her stomach strained at her navy T-shirt.

‘Sorry?’

‘ARE YOU KATE?’ The woman’s voice was not unfriendly, just firm and good natured.

Kate nodded, confused.

‘Taxi, darling. Out to the Warwick Arms at Chumsley Norton?’

Kate shook her head, bewildered.

‘No. Sorry. That’s not me. Must be someone else.’

The woman glanced at a piece of paper on her lap. ‘I think it is you, darling. Your bloke ordered it. Jay-boy or something?’ the woman asked.

Kate baulked. ‘Jago?’

‘Something like that,’ the woman said, glancing back at the note, then giving Kate an expectant smile.

‘Um,’ said Kate, flustered. ‘But I don’t think that can be right. He’s not even here.’

‘So do you want it or not, love? Makes no difference to me. He’s already paid. You’ll have to hurry up, though, I’ve got another pick-up back in Cowley at nine, so . . .’

Kate stared at the car.

He was trying to get her to go in a taxi?

After what she’d told him, about her parents being killed in one?

To face her fear?

She felt panic rising. No, that was too much. She was not getting in that car. There was rust on the back door and there was a growling noise coming from the bonnet. Absolutely no chance.

‘No, I think there’s been a mistake,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Sorry.’

The woman shrugged. ‘OK, darling. No problem.’ She put the car into gear. With a heavy bump, it jerked off the pavement and down towards the alleyway. Desperately, Kate looked around, hoping that Jago would appear and explain. Instead she felt a buzz in her palm. It was a text.

Kate! Get in the taxi, it said.

What? She glanced up.

Where was he?

The woman had reached the end of the cul-de-sac and was doing a clumsy three-point turn.

She was talking to someone, on a radio.

A number buzzed around Kate’s head. It was the one that had stopped her going in taxis ever since her parents’ accident.

• People who drive for business purposes have a 40% higher chance of road accidents.

She tried to focus.

The car looked even worse from the front, with a cracked number plate.

Kate brain scrambled. All taxis would have to have MOTs and licences, wouldn’t they?

The woman gave Kate a nod as she went to drive past.

There was another buzz. Kate looked down.

Kate. You said you could do this!

Where the hell was he? She looked around helplessly.

What should she do? She visualized the alternative: sloping home because she was too scared to get in a taxi. Spending the evening at Hubert Street alone again.

Jago’s words crept into her mind: ‘You wouldn’t fly to the developing country. You wouldn’t go to the important conference. You’d stay at home trying to be safe.’

What was the alternative? Sitting with Sylvia in her sombre sitting room for years, talking about her feelings?

Or take a leap of faith and put her trust in Jago.

The taxi picked up speed as it headed past Kate to the T-junction.

Before Kate could stop herself, she raised her hand. It braked abruptly.

‘Changed your mind?’ the woman called out.

Kate nodded.

She opened the rear door.

They didn’t talk at all on the way to Chumsley Norton. The woman was too involved in a conversation with her sister on her headset, about their mother’s sciatica. Another of Kate’s regular traffic accident statistics flew at her.

• In 80% of car crashes, the driver is distracted.

Kate tried to ignore the anxiety it immediately provoked in her, gripping the seat, pushing her body against it, as if she could control the car’s speed with her thighs. She was sweating inside her new jumper, subsumed with the effort of ‘not thinking about’ what was happening, as they sped through traffic lights on the ring road, the engine roaring grumpily, and then took an A road under a bridge.

‘Nine miles,’ ‘eight miles,’ Kate mouthed, trying to forget about a local news story she’d once read about teenagers dropping bricks off a bridge on this road, as they passed signposts for this mystery village, her eyes fixed on a box of man-size tissues, glancing behind every so often to check if Jago was following.

Soon, they turned off the A road and took rural lanes, the names on the signposts becoming increasingly old English in their eccentricity. Pog Norton. Sprogget Corner. Hedges rose higher, verges widened, and the road narrowed, so that by the time Kate’s driver and her sister had decided to see if they could tempt their mother out of the house with a trip to Bicester Village shopping outlet centre, the chance of becoming stuck if they met another car seemed a certainty.

But they didn’t.

The woman took a series of twists and turns, then cut off her conversation with her sister.

‘That’s you, darling,’ she said, pointing up at a battered sign with pellet shots in it which said Chumsley Norton.

Kate blew through her cheeks like an athlete finishing a sprint.

She’d done it.

‘Here you are,’ the woman called, pulling up.

‘Thanks,’ said Kate. She lunged out of the taxi onto the verge, dumbfounded at what she’d just achieved. Her first time in a taxi in eleven years.

She looked around. Chumsley Norton had sounded like a pretty, chocolate-box village. Instead, it looked more like an unremarkable scatter of houses that the country road stopped at momentarily before travelling on to somewhere more interesting. There were about ten pairs of them, semi-detached and red brick, with the look of 1950s council houses. On the bend before the houses stood an ancient thatched pub.

As she turned to shut the door, the quietness of the village hit her.

She popped her head back in the taxi.

‘Excuse me. Did he definitely say here?’

‘He did.’

‘OK . . .’ Kate said uncertainly, still holding the door. ‘And he said he’d meet me here?’

‘Back in Cowley in twenty minutes, Control,’ the woman barked into her radio. ‘Don’t know, darling.’ Her expression told Kate that she needed to go.

Not wanting to, Kate shut the door.

The taxi headed on to a layby in front of the pub. Kate stood at the car park entrance. The pub looked deserted.

Hang on. This didn’t feel right.

Suddenly, she knew what she should do. Wait for the taxi to turn around in the layby, then ask the driver to wait so she could check Jago was here. Resolutely, Kate stuck out her hand. But to her shock, the taxi accelerated round the bend, past the pub and down past the houses, presumably taking an alternative route back.

‘No! Wait!’ Kate shouted, throwing up a hand. The taxi disappeared into the distance.

As the noise of the engine faded, it was replaced by an expansive quietness. Not the idyllic rural tranquillity of a meadow; more a creepy absence of human life.

Holly hedges down either side of the road obscured the front gardens of the red-brick houses. There was a smell of silage in the air.

Kate dropped her head and hurried into the car park to find Jago.

From a distance, it had looked like an advertisement for English tourism, but as she neared the pub, its neglect became apparent. White distemper flaked off chubby cottage walls; dark ridges of rot streaked the window frames.

Kate glanced up the empty road. If Jago had been watching her back at the Hanley Arms, where was he now? She looked up at the approaching dusk, and then at her watch. It was 8.40 p.m.

Jago must have somehow got ahead of her, she reassured herself, or come on the alternative route the taxi had taken home. Kate walked up to a studded door and swung it open to reveal a small bar. A large man with rolled-up shirtsleeves under a waistcoat, stood wiping glasses. His hair was pulled back into a greasy black ponytail. He surveyed her without expression.

‘Evening.’ His voice was gruff.

‘Hi,’ she said shyly.

She saw him glance to the right, and raise his eyebrows. Three men sat huddled at the bar, backs to her, like wolves around a kill. They stared with unfriendly curiosity.

Kate glanced round. Scuffed chairs and tables sat on a flagstone floor.

Oh God. Jago was not here.

The barman nodded his chin upwards in a ‘what can I get you?’ gesture.

‘Um, orange juice, please,’ Kate said, looking out of the window back at the darkening road. Where was he? She jammed her hand in her bag and yanked her phone out so abruptly that tissues flew with it. Bending to pick them up, Kate lifted a finger to dial and . . .

There was no signal.

Kate waited, praying, as her phone searched . . .

The barman smacked the orange juice down on the bar, making Kate jerk her head up. She stood up and approached, aware of the wolf pack’s eyes on her.

She checked her phone again. Still no signal. Oh God.

‘I’m actually looking for someone,’ she said quietly, aware they were listening. ‘A Scottish bloke with a crewcut?’

‘A Scottish bloke, eh?’ the barman repeated loudly.

Kate shrank back, wishing he would lower his voice. Grins split the wolves’ mean faces.

‘I could do you a Welsh bloke with a fat arse,’ the oldest one, with a long nose and purplish lips, said, pointing at his mate, a rotund man in a dirty red jumper.

There was a group snigger.

Memories of the Hanley Arms and the football fans came back to Kate with unpleasant clarity. She glanced outside again. There was, however, no escape from them here. No bike outside. No pavement to run back along to Hubert Street.

Where the hell was Jago?

An approaching engine noise made Kate swing around hopefully. Through the window, she saw five or six scooters pull into the car park, ridden by young lads, gesticulating and swearing at each other as they stopped their bikes. The old familiar band of stress tightened around her chest. Were they coming in here too?

Trying to hide the anxiety in her voice, Kate handed over her money, gesturing to her phone. ‘Sorry, I can’t get a signal. Have you got a payphone?’

The barman regarded her with eyes as hard as a rockface. He jerked his head backwards. ‘One up the road,’ he said, turning back to the wolves.

Up the road? What did that mean? Kate felt her cheeks smart at his rudeness. She took her drink uncertainly to a table by the window. Peering out she could see a dim light in a layby, fifty yards beyond the houses in the dark. Was that it? Was he joking? She couldn’t walk up there alone in the dark! The wolf pack talked under their breaths. The word ‘tart’ floated out.

The door banged open and she turned, hoping again for Jago. Instead, a teenager walked in. He had a ratty face and short hair gelled carefully onto his forehead in fine lines.

‘Evening,’ he said with a sly grin.

Outside, Kate saw the rest of the group sit at a table with a broken umbrella in an empty beer garden. She sat forwards, to relieve the stress tightening around her chest.

Where was Jago? How would she get back to Oxford without him?

She tried to control her anxiety and to think calmly. Was this a test? To see if she could take a taxi to this village, then walk into a pub full of belligerent men on her own. And then what? Phone a taxi from the pub back to Oxford?

But would Jago even know there was no phone signal out here? Kate glanced out at the phonebox again.

What if she ordered a taxi and an old man like Stan who’d killed her parents turned up? At least back at the Hanley Arms, she could see the woman. She’d had a choice whether to get in the car.

The urge to get out of this horrible pub was overwhelming. Almost on reflex, Kate stood up, knowing she couldn’t do it. She’d have to ring Jago and ask him to come and pick her up instead. Or Saskia, although God knows what questions that would lead to later.

But first she needed a phone.

Kate looked apprehensively at the barman, who was pulling pints for the teenager. She walked up casually and put her hands on the bar.

He ignored her, continuing his work.

She waited half a minute, sensing the wolves’ eyes on her again.

And another.

When she could take no more of the sneering looks and muttered grunts, she forced her to lift her hand. ‘Uh. Excuse me.’

The barman stopped, a tray for the teenagers in mid-air.

‘I’m sorry. I was supposed to meet someone who hasn’t turned up. And I can’t get a signal. Would you mind if I used your phone?’

Her voice sounded tinny and posh among the gruff, spat-out words of the men.

The barman shook his head in astonishment. ‘Am I talking to myself here?’ he exclaimed without warning. ‘I haven’t got a BLOODY payphone! Up the ROAD!’

Kate stood in the middle of the pub in shock. Why was he being like this to her? ‘No. Your phone,’ she tried to say miserably. ‘I mean your own phone. I could pay you.’

The wolves howled in delight. The teenager shook his head, sniggering, as he loaded his tray with six pint glasses.

‘The phone in my house?’ the barman said, sounding incredulous.

Kate shrugged. What had she done to him?

The barman banged down the tray. He walked to a door behind the bar, and opened it. Kate saw rickety stairs leading to somewhere dark. ‘Go on, then,’ he said.

Five pairs of mean eyes burned into Kate.

‘Um,’ she muttered, stepping back. ‘No, actually. It’s fine. I’ll use the phonebox.’

Face burning, she ran to the door, and rushed outside, letting it slam back into the wave of male laughter.

What had Jago done?

Why had he sent her to this shithole of a village?

This was not funny.

This was not silly.

This was horrible.

Kate marched up the dark country road towards the phone-box, bewildered. What did he want her to do? She didn’t understand.

‘Idiot,’ she muttered to herself. She should never have stolen that dog to impress him. Clearly, he now thought she was much more relaxed and tough than she actually was, which had landed her here, on a remote road at night, completely out of her depth.

As the lights from the pub faded, the intense blackness of the countryside fell over Kate like a blanket. She tried not to think about what could happen to her out here, hugging her arms around her for protection, despite the warm air. The aggressive squawks of the teenagers back in the beer garden floated behind her, and she marched faster to escape the whole horrible scenario.

And then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, something happened.

As Kate reached the second-last house in the row, she realized the teenagers’ noise had changed. It was becoming louder.

Somewhere inside her head, an alarm went off.

Without making a conscious decision to do so, Kate dived off the road and into the shadow of the holly hedge. Swivelling round, she saw the teenagers climbing on their bikes. They’d just ordered pints. Why would they do that?

Holly leaves spiked Kate’s skin through the wool of the new jumper that she’d so carefully chosen for her date. Right now, however, she didn’t care. Nervously, she watched the gang put on their helmets. Rat-boy had heard her say she was walking to this phonebox.

They knew she was out here, alone.

Kate stared at the boys as they revved up their engines.

She knew then that she had done something very stupid.

She should have never have got in that bloody taxi.

She should never have left the pub before she’d found a way to speak to Jago.

The holly ripped into her jumper again, and she let it, knowing that if she was right, she was in trouble.