Accidents Happen A Novel

CHAPTER NINETEEN



Kate dived into the small garden of one of the semi-detached houses and crouched on the ground, her heart banging like a pneumatic drill. The garden was unlit, as was the house. She listened to the scooter engines burst into life in the pub car park. If she was right about this, there was no way the teenagers could see this far up the dark country road. If they started looking, they’d be simply guessing where she’d gone.

Kate crawled along the holly hedge till she reached the fence that divided this semi from the one next door. A dustbin stood in the corner. Its unpleasant fishy smell mixed with the stink of silage drifting off the fields. Kate pushed the bin firmly, slipped into the gap behind it, then put it back in front of her.

She tried to think calmly. The boys wouldn’t have a clue where she was. For all they knew, she’d had her own car outside, or entered one of these houses, or run off into a field.

She sat, hugging her knees, trying to stop them shaking.

So why was she so certain they were coming for her?

Her mind flew to Hugo, to those men in the courthouse, and then she knew.

The noise of the scooters grew into a harmonized whine. Kate peeked through the hedge. Her stomach lurched.

She was right.

Once you have encountered evil, you recognize it, she knew. It makes a different sound to everything else. A splintered, clashing commotion that causes heads to rise in alarm. It has an energy that blurs all around it, forcing you to look.

The gang was searching for her.

Accelerating out of the pub, they spread out across the road like an airshow formation, their headlights on full beam creating a spotlight effect.

Moving forward slowly.

Hunting her.

Kate held herself even tighter. They can’t find you, she told herself. They can’t search every part of twenty dark gardens, every surrounding acre of field, every ditch. It would take hours. One of the residents would hear them. Call the police. Do something.

‘Where’d she go?’ came a yell from beyond the hedge.

There was a shriek of out-of-control laughter.

Kate sucked in a lungful of air. Bring more oxygen into your body, she told herself. She’d seen it on a self-defence course on the telly once. It stopped you becoming paralysed with fear. Helped you run. She looked around the cramped front garden. But where would she run to?

‘Go up to the phonebox, John! See if she’s there,’ a shout came. A second later a scooter roared past her up to the layby ahead. Now they were in front and behind her on the road.

‘Shit,’ she whispered. They were serious. This was not a prank.

She peeked through the hedge again, and saw the headlights separate off in different directions.

Kate kept trying to breathe away the tightness spreading across her chest.

‘Coming to get you!’ One of them yelled.

‘Look in the gardens!’

They were doing exactly what she thought they wouldn’t, entering each front garden.

Methodically.

One by one.

Kate turned, desperately hoping to see one of the residents looking out of a window, phone in hand to the police. Yet no curtains twitched. Presumably the people who lived in these isolated houses were also scared. They were choosing diplomatically to ignore the rural gang, presumably hoping they’d go away and not cause them any more trouble.

Kate was on her own.

Her mind returned to Hugo, with a sudden, awful clarity. And in that moment, she knew. This must have been what he’d felt like that night with those men. His heart pounding. Hunted.

Frantically, she stuck out a hand, searching for something. Anything. Nettles stung her fingers. She jerked them away, only for them to trail over a wet and spongy object, making her recoil even further. She tried the other hand and felt something hard. Holes and ridges, on a dry surface.

A brick. She grabbed it. She knew it was stupid, but somehow the hardness gave her strength.

There was a deafening roar to her right. In the tiny gap under the fence she saw a scooter enter the semi next door. Its light tickled her feet under the fence.

‘Not here, mate!’ a voice shouted close by.

Kate grasped tighter.

Another memory of Hugo detonated in her mind. Of finding him on the floor, a pool of blood soaking into the floorboards he’d so lovingly restored. Of her, screaming and screaming, as she watched all that passion and expertise and love disappear into nothing in front of her, as his brain and his heart shut down. Gone. Stolen. Wasted. For nothing.

And right then, Kate realized, perhaps because things had come to a head recently, that she’d had enough of being scared.

A seam of anger opened up inside her.

People like these boys had ruined her life. Their wilful, thoughtless violence had killed her husband, terrified Jack and damaged her relationship with her son to the point where his life would be ruined before it had even started, and she was at risk of losing him.

Kate scraped the tips of her fingers on the brick pores.

She was sick of it.

People like this, taking the power away from others because they could.

And in that moment, she knew that despite the shaking in her legs and arms, if a single one of these boys came near her, if they threatened to do any more harm to her and Jack, she would take this brick and she would fight him.

‘Here, p-ssy, p-ssy!’ a teenager shouted above the scooter engines. His friend laughed in encouragement.

‘Come and try it,’ Kate mouthed.

The scooter reversed out of next door, and travelled along the front hedge. The growl changed to a put-put-put as it finally turned into the garden she crouched in.

‘Seriously,’ Rat-boy shouted through the hedge, ‘where the f*ck is she?’

‘I’ll look in here, mate,’ yelled his friend.

A scooter entered Kate’s garden in an explosion of light. She could see the silhouette of the boy from here. He was small, not even her height. Skinny, too. His headlights lit up the shabby front door of the house, and part of the bay window. As the boy began to turn his handlebars to the right, towards the dustbin where she hid, Kate lifted her hand, knowing she had to take her chance before he did.

A plan formed. She would strike him as hard as she could, before running out into the dark field behind, where she hoped the gang could not follow on scooters.

Kate lifted the brick, her hand shaking, as the headlight moved towards her, ready to leap out and . . .

A new noise arrived out of nowhere. A car, speeding towards the scooters.

Kate froze.

‘Oi, oi,’ a teenager said. Someone whistled. Without warning, the scooter in front of her was backing out of the garden, draping darkness back over her.

All the boys were backing up now. Through the hedge she saw them gathering around a black hatchback, their engines whining together.

The car door opened. A new voice joined the melee. Deeper, bassier. One of the men from the pub?

Kate watched, trying to stay calm and think clearly. Was this her chance to sneak through the hedge next door and make for the fields without being seen?

Then, without warning, the scooters moved again. They turned full circle in a blaze of light, and with a roar started to accelerate. Like a swarm of vicious wasps, the six scooter boys buzzed past her, past the phonebox, and carried on out of the village.

‘Woo-hoo!’ they yelled.

Kate stood uncertainly, holding the brick, listening to the increasingly distant drone.

‘Kate?’ She heard a man shout in a Scottish accent.

‘Jago?’

Her breath broke from her in painful gasps. She didn’t even realize she’d been holding it again.

‘Where are you?’ he said. After all the ugly yelling and spat-out insults, his voice sounded kind and civilized, drifting over the hedge.

‘Here,’ she replied, still listening out for the boys. But the whine of the scooters was fading. The gang was gone, really gone. It was over. Kate bent over with relief, and rested her hands on her knees.

‘Kate?’ Jago called again. She wiped her face, guessing from the scraping on her skin, that she was just rubbing grit from the ground into the sweat.

It was over. She shouldered the bin away, her nose wrinkling at the smell of cat poo, coming, she suspected, from her shoe.

A gate scraped open. Jago’s head appeared round it.

She contemplated him crossly, waiting for his face to register the state she was in, then break into an expression of abject apology.

But it didn’t.

‘Hi there,’ he said breezily, surveying her. ‘So, how did it go?’

Kate wiped mud off her hands, registering his tone and finding herself confused by it. ‘Er, how did what go, exactly?’

‘The experiment.’

Was she hearing right? Yet from what she could tell in the dark, his face looked untroubled. No, more than that – interested.

Like he was . . . observing her.

Jago seriously did not seem to have a clue.

‘Er, Jago?’ Kate said, trying not to sound as irate as she was starting to feel. ‘Do you have any idea what’s just happened here?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Tell me?’ Kate repeated, waiting for him to sound even a little penitent. What did he think had gone on here? That she’d rung a taxi from the phonebox and was sitting in this scruffy little garden for fun, while a gang of rabid teenagers roamed the road outside?

‘Uh, well. Everything went wrong. The guy – sorry, the f*ckwit – in the pub had no payphone.’ Her voice started to rise, but she didn’t care. She pointed a muddy finger at herself and caught it on a holly leaf sticking to her chest. ‘I had no phone signal, so, I don’t think you realize, but I’ve had to walk to down here in the dark, to this phonebox to ring you, and those –’ she pointed to the road, and her voice rose even more – ‘little WANKERS heard me talking about it in the pub, and followed me.’

She waited for him to analyse her meaning. To throw his hand across his mouth, as he registered the dangerous position he’d put her in. To beg forgiveness and offer to make it up to her.

But Jago stayed still.

Observing her.

‘Jago!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘I don’t think you quite understand. Those boys were CHASING me.’

He still didn’t react.

‘Er, you know your experiment?’ she said, her voice rising further. ‘The one where you sent me out to this shithole with no way of getting home – it went very horribly wrong. I was nearly really badly hurt.’

She took a big step back and waited for him finally to acknowledge his blame.

But to her astonishment . . . Jago smiled.

He must be joking.

‘Kate,’ he said, turning his hands palm up, as if he were explaining a point of mathematics to his students. ‘It didn’t go wrong. In fact, it went perfectly. You did brilliantly. Seriously. The boys just told me they had absolutely no idea where you’d gone.’

Kate stood in the horrible little garden, repeating Jago’s words in her head to check she’d heard them right.

‘The “boys”?’ she exclaimed. ‘You mean the GANG who just chased me up a dark country road, shouting, “Here, p-ssy, p-ssy”.’

‘Did they?’ Jago grimaced. He walked a step towards her. ‘Listen. Kate. That’s Liam, he’s the porter’s son, from Balliol. I told him and his little mates to chase you for ten minutes then call me. I was hiding in my car at the pub. I didn’t realize they’d be quite so, er, imaginative, though.’

She scowled.

‘Jago. Please tell me you are joking. You could not have set this up.’

‘Well, it took me a bit of planning. I had to bung them fifty quid and buy them a round – they were quite specific about that, cheeky little bastards – but I thought it was worth it. You said you wanted to do this, Kate.’ Jago reached out and picked a holly leaf off her jumper. ‘You said you could be spontaneous.’

Kate pulled back from him. ‘What? You PAID them? To do that?’ She lifted her hands and put them on her head, unable to believe her ears. ‘That’s just . . . I’m sorry, that’s just . . . CRAZY!’ With a surge of anger, she marched right past him, desperate to get out of this horrible pit of a garden.

She flung open the gate and let it slam behind her, walking out into the dark road, not even caring where she was going. ‘OK. Fine!’ she shouted back, not knowing what else to say. Humiliated that he was seeing her like this, out of control; that he’d made her behave like this. ‘Brilliant. Well done, you. Now could you just please get me out this f*cking place?’

But, on reaching the road, Kate felt the brick she still grasped in her sweaty hand, and realized she was not finished. She spun round to see Jago walking unhurriedly through the gate. His calm demeanour somehow just made her angrier. Angrier because he’d frightened her so much, on purpose, when she’d confessed so much to him about her anxiety, but also because, she suddenly realized, she’d had so much hope that he might be the answer. And instead he’d forced all the feelings outside. Betrayed that trust. Forced her to lose control. Humiliated her. Turned her into this screaming lunatic with twigs in her hair who couldn’t stop shouting.

‘Actually, it’s really not OK!’ she yelled, unable to hold back her fury. ‘Because, do you know what I nearly did?’ She raised the brick. ‘I thought that boy was going to hurt me, and I was preparing to hit him. To defend myself. That’s serious, Jago. That’s a ridiculous position to put someone in, experiment or not.’

To her fury, Jago just shrugged.

‘Jago! I am not a GAME,’ Kate yelped, smacking the brick down on the ground with a crack. She walked to his car, her legs shaking harder as the adrenalin of the chase drained from her.

Jago continued behind her, looking bemused. ‘Jago!’ Why was he not reacting? ‘You don’t understand. You shouldn’t have done this to me. For God’s sake, my husband was . . . was . . . MURDERED!’

The word came from nowhere. The word she never said. Kate shouted it out into the country lane and heard it echo around the houses and gardens and fields.

For the first time since he’d arrived, Jago seem to come to life. He stepped forwards and put his hands on her shoulders.

‘Kate, I know,’ he said.

‘No!’ she said, flinging them off. ‘You don’t know. He was murdered, Jago. By a pack of men who came to our house in London and pushed their way in the front door to get the key to his stupid sports car. And when he fought back,’ she said, clutching her stomach, ‘they stabbed him. Just like that. With Jack upstairs. And now you . . .’ She pointed at him. ‘. . . send me out here and set a pack of feral teenagers on me!’

For the first time, Jago looked sorry.

Kate stopped, knowing she was really starting to get out of control. This was doing nobody any good. She put a hand on the car to steady herself, and counted, the way she’d been taught so long ago.

One thousand.

Two thousand.

Three thousand.

Four thousand . . . Her pulse slowed. Jago stood, saying nothing, letting her recover.

After a moment, she leaned back against Jago’s car. She shook her head ruefully. ‘I’m sorry, I know you’re trying to help me, I really do, but you shouldn’t have done this. You really don’t know enough about me to make decisions like this.’ She pushed off the car, and went to open the door. Her voice was calm now, the disappointment of all that Jago had seemed to offer fallen apart on this empty road. ‘Can you take me back to Oxford, please,’ she said, starting to feel very, very cold.

And then she felt Jago’s hands on her shoulders from behind.

‘Kate,’ Jago said quietly. ‘When I say, I know, I really do know. About Hugo.’

‘You can’t.’

‘I know what happened,’ Jago said. ‘I went on the newspaper websites for Shropshire, and worked out from what you’d told me about your parents’ accident, who they were, and what their names were, and from there, I worked out who Hugo was. I know everything.’

Hugo’s name sounded so oddly wrong on his lips. As if he’d stolen it from her head. Kate lifted her eyes, baffled. ‘You knew? And you did this to me?’

Jago turned her towards him. This time she was too stunned to fight him. Part of her, she realized, wanted this still to be OK. Still wanted to hang on to the hope he would help her. So when he then pulled her gently towards him, into his arms, she resisted but did not refuse.

‘Listen, Kate,’ he murmured above her head. ‘I might look like a student but you have to trust me. I know what I’m doing. I read up on what psychologists are doing in the States before I set this up tonight. I got some advice from one on the phone, too. You were safe. The whole time this evening.’

She started to speak again, but even as she did, she felt his words soothe her. He was giving her an escape route from her fear. Telling her she had been fine the whole time.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Listen,’ Jago continued, his chin on her head. ‘I’ll explain. We had one chance to kick-start your survival instincts. And we did. And you’re fine,’ he mumbled into her hair. ‘A bit muddy, and slightly smelling of cat poo, but fine. I mean it, Kate, you were brilliant.’

She stayed in his arms, a warm refuge in this stinking hellhole of a village.

‘The reason I did it is that you need to get faith back in yourself that you can deal with things. And you can. You lived in London, for God’s sake. You have street sense. You know how to look after yourself. You hid. They’d have given up soon and f*cked off. You’d have rung me to pick you up, and you’d have been fine. This was real danger, not imagined. And what did you do? You dealt with it. You survived.’

Kate listened to him. It was true. After all this time of being scared of shadows and creaks in the dark, it had been a relief to fight back. To know she would have hurt them before they hurt her.

As Jago held her tight, calm slowly descended. She allowed herself to lean against him a little, partly because her legs were shaking so much and she was so cold. The anger subsided a little. She knew then that she wanted still to hope. She wanted Jago to be the answer. She hadn’t lost him after all. Her body relaxed a little. He gave her a gentle squeeze, then laughed. ‘I thought you were going to belt me with that bloody brick.’

‘I might still,’ she growled. ‘Bloody hell, Jago. How could you do that to me?’

He blew something off her hair. ‘You know why. Anyway, I’m impressed. I wouldn’t mess with you.’

She couldn’t help it. She reluctantly smiled into his T-shirt.

‘So how do you feel?’ he asked.

She shook her head, self-conscious. ‘Don’t ask.’

‘I mean it, tell me,’ he repeated, dropping his head down to meet hers. His lips brushed her cheek as he said it, and she closed her eyes, distracted by the singular sensation on her skin.

She couldn’t say it.

‘I don’t know. Confused.’

Jago lifted her chin. ‘Bollocks. You know exactly how you feel. Now say it.’

She looked past his eyes and up at the sky, hating herself. She had thought of Hugo tonight, of that terrible night that had torn them apart. If she said it, it would mean saying goodbye to that. To Hugo. She would be stepping back into the real world.

‘Say it,’ Jago murmured, his mouth getting closer to hers.

But she couldn’t, so Kate did something else. She lifted her own mouth, not knowing what would happen, but to her relief, found Jago’s lips waiting for her.

And to her shame, the kiss on that dark road, covered in mud and holly leaves and sweat, was unlike any kiss she and Hugo had had for a very long time.

It was a kiss from before they married.

From before Jack.

From before her parents died.

From a time when there was no anxiety or fear.

‘Alive’ was the word she wanted to say to Jago, but couldn’t, as she let his kiss jolt her back to life.