Accidents Happen A Novel

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE



It was Friday afternoon, and the roads were unusually quiet, perhaps because the colleges were shutting for summer. Kate cycled into town, not believing what she had just done.

The sun was out again. The trees were a rich, dark green. The air was filled with the fresh smell of summer.

There were no numbers today.

She cycled easily up the High Street, going over what she’d just done in her head.

She dismounted at Carfax and walked towards the end of Cornmarket Street, enjoying the new-found energy in her step. She no longer had to force one leg in front of the other to get through each day.

Vaguely, she noticed a couple of people glancing at her as they walked past. It had happened a few times this week, mostly men. She kept her eyes straight ahead, curious to realize she was visible again in the real world, now she had colour back in her face and light in her eyes.

There was a buzz on her phone. She checked it and her stomach lurched again.

It was too late now.

An email sat in her intray confirming the two flights she had just booked to Mallorca for August.

She and Jack were going on a plane.

A frisson of excitement ran through her at the thought of the warm sun on her skin, and swimming in the sea. She forced herself mentally to sidestep the stat about skin cancer when it threatened to come by, concentrating on what it would be like to have so much time with Jack on his own to talk.

Richard and Helen would be nowhere to be seen.

They could discuss their memories of Hugo. Perhaps take some of their old photos with them. They could talk about their future. She could even bring up the idea of Jago.

The thought of Jago sent a thrill through her.

She crossed the street, swinging her bag of ankle boots, recalling each word of their phonecall last night from London.

‘Kate, I had to tell you,’ Jago enthused down the phone. ‘That psychologist guy in the States rang to see how you were. I told him what we’d been up to and he was fascinated. He mentioned us doing an interdisciplinary paper together on this anxiety disorder theory of his – I’m going to stop off and see him in New York when I go to Utah in the summer.’

‘That’s brilliant,’ she’d said, pleased.

‘But he thinks we should stop after this weekend, so we don’t go too far. And he said that you’re welcome to ring him to discuss the kind of cognitive behaviour therapy he would recommend if you want to try a different kind of counselling in Oxford.’

‘Thanks, Jago,’ she said, touched by his effort. ‘Thanks for doing this for me.’

‘You’re very welcome.’ He paused. ‘Although, of course, I have dodgy ulterior motives, which would be seriously unethical if I was actually a psychologist. But we statisticians are allowed to be as dodgy as f*ck as long as we can count . . . so I was thinking, that if you fancied it, maybe we could sneak you into my room at Balliol on Saturday after we get back to Oxford.’

She had hesitated, feeling a spark between them along the telephone line.

‘I mean, if you can steal a boat and terrorize young girls in a wood, that’ll be old hat for you by then, missus.’

She smiled. ‘No, I’d like that.’

‘Good,’ he said.

They had arranged to meet at 8 a.m. tomorrow at an M25 service station.

And it was after that phonecall, which had made her feel so positive about the future, that she had, terrified, decided to book the tickets to Mallorca.

Kate arrived at the heel bar a minute later, squeezing past an umbrella stand. The old man was working behind the bar again, as irritable looking as last time.

‘Hi,’ Kate said, taking out the boots.

He lifted his head slowly again and peered at her.

‘Sorry, but I picked these up from you last week and when I got home, I realized that the heel had been shortened by about this much.’ She held up her fingers. ‘I can wear them, but I really preferred them the height they were. Could I ask you to redo them, please?’

The old man turned with effort, took the boots from Kate, and peered through his glasses. He put them down on the counter.

‘He asked me to do it. The bloke.’

‘Who?’ What was he talking about?

‘The bloke that brought them in.’

‘Who?’ she said, confused. ‘A Scottish bloke?’

The old man shrugged. ‘Can’t remember.’

She frowned. ‘I’m sorry, but no, I mean, why would he?’

‘Seen it before,’ the old man said, tucking in his tortoise neck.

‘Sorry?’

‘Some blokes don’t like it. When their wife is tall. Ask me to shorten their heels.’

Kate shook her head not believing what she was hearing. ‘I’m sorry.’ She smiled. ‘First of all, I’m not his wife. And secondly he’s about six foot, and I’m five foot seven. Even with heels on, I’m shorter than him.’

The old man scratched a veined cheek. ‘Some do it to keep their women in their place.’

Kate had to stop herself laughing out loud. ‘Excuse me, I’m sorry, but I find that quite offensive. How could you . . .’

He turned away from her, putting his hand up between her face and his. ‘I’ll redo them if you want. But he did ask me.’

‘OK. If you say so,’ she muttered, peering in the back of the heel bar, to see if there was anyone more rational here. The old guy was even madder than she’d first thought. She gave him her name again, put the boots on the counter and walked out, cross, as the uneasy feeling she had so often at Hubert Street crept over her again. How bizarre.

She walked back up the street to her bike, distracting herself by concentrating on what Jago might have planned for this weekend.

Kate arrived home an hour later, holding a bag with some new holiday clothes for Jack and her, to hear a commotion on the pavement.

She looked up to see the tall student with the glasses and spiky hair leaving the house next door, with two large holdalls. A small mousey woman in her twenties was standing in the doorway, talking to him with a harassed expression in her face.

‘But we need it before you go, Magnus,’ she was calling out. ‘None of us can cover your share, and there’s the electricity bill too. That’s due soon.’

‘I send it to you!’ he yelled, placing the keys in her hand and waving in the air.

‘But we don’t have an address for you and . . .’

‘I send it!’

He turned, then stopped when he saw Kate. She noticed he had a bruise on his face that ran from under his eye down the side of his face.

Some connection began to register in her mind, then slipped, like a foot off a pedal.

‘Hey. I’m leaving!’ he shouted.

Kate looked sympathetically at the girl, to show her support if she needed it, but the girl just turned away.

‘Too many crazy f*cking people round here,’ the spiky-haired student called out.

He stomped off down the street, leaving Kate standing on the doorstep.

Oh, well, perhaps Saskia had been right. At least, that was one thing less to worry about, having him next door.

Inside the house, Kate walked up to Jack’s bedroom, and put away his new summer clothes.

Then she sat on her son’s bed quietly, and looked around.

Jack’s world, where he had lived on his own for so long while she had been lost in her head, worrying about how to keep them both safe.

With one hand, she reached up and took down the little snowdome. Jack had loved this when he was a baby. Asked for it again and again. She shook it and a glittering snowstorm rained over the little plastic mountain inside, swirling glittering rain, feeling like her life for the past five years.

She lay back and thought of Jago.

With him, there could be a real possibility of something. She sensed he felt it too.

Just one more step in this experiment. The glitter settled. And then life would really restart.

But first she had to be honest with Jago about who she really was.





‘No!’ the child screamed.

Mother went flying at Father’s head, brandishing the clump of bricks that had fallen off the side of the house.

Father turned round and looked up to see Mother coming at him, her face contorted with fury.

‘ You stupid, bloody bastard!’ she shrieked, holding the bricks aloft. She waved a hand at the hole in the side of the house. ‘Everything my father worked for just thrown away in this pile of shit. He said I should never have married you.’

The child ran at her, trying to claw the bricks away from her. ‘No!

A creaking noise stopped the three of them in mid-movement.

They turned to see the end of the roof starting to sway. With a groan, the main beam began to slide to the left, bringing tiles down with it.

The roof collapsed into itself. More crumbled away.

The child’s bedroom fell apart, taking with it the rocking horse and the cuckoo clock from Aunt Nelly.

The child jumped back, dropping the snowdome on the rubble.

Mother dropped the clump of bricks down beside Father’s foot and stood, shaking.

The child watched in shock as she turned away feebly, starting to sob.

‘ You stupid little man.’

Father’s face was going purple. The veins in his neck stood out.

The child gasped.

‘Enough!’ Father screamed, turning round, his big arms swinging. With one punch he knocked Mother across the jaw, sending her flying onto the grass. Before the child could open his mouth, Father picked up the block of wall with a huge roar, and threw it down on Mother’s head.

The was a crack like an axe on wood.

Blood seeped into the hillside and ran down it like a stream.