Accidents Happen A Novel

CHAPTER FIVE



Oxford High Street was packed with people out enjoying the summer evening. Kate pushed her bike home over Magdalen Bridge, behind a young couple who had just bolted out of the hatch-door in the giant wooden gate of one of the university colleges on the High Street like rabbits from a secret burrow. Kate tried not to look at them but couldn’t help herself.

Clearly they had just tumbled out of bed. They stalked along on long, skinny-jean-clad legs, their arms roaming from waist to shoulder then back again, fluidly, as if they were so high on each other they couldn’t stop touching. The girl’s hair was long and expertly teased into a perfect bed-head ponytail. The boy wore pointed Chelsea boots and had a black quiff. They spoke in loud confident voices. Oxford University–King’s Road–Val d’Isère–Barbados, Kate thought. She knew that type of student.

Not her favourite.

She preferred the odds and sods. The girls in shapeless floral shirts and denim shorts, heavy legs self-consciously covered in dark tights, pointlessly long hair pulled back off spotty faces; the delicate-framed boys in glasses, dressed in white chinos and striped shirts, who looked as if their brains had developed so fast their bodies had never had time to catch up. The outsiders with their awkward physicality and brilliant intellects who looked as if they would spend a lifetime searching for like-minded souls.

That type were easier to bear right now.

Kate crossed the bridge and entered east Oxford. She pushed her bike up the relative peace of Iffley Road towards home, trying to shake off the humiliation of her aborted session with Sylvia.

She had been ready to talk, finally. After months of nearly ringing Sylvia, preparing what to say, she had gone there and it had all burst out at last. Now she had to shove it back inside, to be hidden away again. Her fear had been confirmed. Her problem was ludicrous. Laughable, even. No one could help her.

And if she couldn’t help herself, how could she help Jack?

Kate looked ahead up Iffley Road. As if it weren’t bad enough, Helen and Richard would be there when she got home, Helen plumping her cushions without being asked, Richard bellowing in his exhausting manner, asking how her fake client meeting had gone as if it was the most important job anyone had ever pitched for.

Kate walked wearily into Hubert Street a few minutes later and put down her bag.

Something was different. She listened. Voices drifted from the back of the house. A glance at the kitchen told her it was empty.

‘Hello?’ she said, taking off her helmet and peering into the sitting room.

‘Hi, Mum!’ she heard Jack shout.

She turned towards the dining room door.

Putting down her helmet, she turned the handle.

Unlocked.

She pushed the door open, with a growing sense of dread.

They wouldn’t have dared?

She walked into the room to see Richard, Helen, Saskia and Jack sitting at the dining table.

Her dining room table.

The dining room table, where Kate and Hugo and her own parents should have sat a hundred times, enjoying Christmas dinner and family weekend get-togethers and birthday and anniversary celebrations with Jack.

And now Richard and Helen, and Saskia, had forced their way in and taken their places.

Her eyes fell upon the table top. It was laid with plates and cutlery from the kitchen, along with Hugo’s bone china serving dishes from the sideboard, and illuminated by his candelabra, the flames of the candles flickering above the old table runner from Highgate. Quickly, she searched out the stain. It was inches from Helen’s hands.

There was a row of cards down the middle of the table. Jack was leaning close to Richard, hand on his chin.

Helen twitched nervously, her indented smile apparently stuck on her face, avoiding Kate’s eyes.

Kate looked at her sister-in-law. Saskia glared back defiantly.

‘We thought we’d sit in here tonight,’ she said. ‘Have a family meal.’

Kate ignored her. ‘Jack, could you go up for your bath, please,’ she said as calmly as she could.

‘Mum – look at this trick Granddad showed me!’ he exclaimed, jumping up, his green eyes flashing in the candlelight. He took her arm and tried to lead her to the cards. ‘You’ve got to choose cards and put them into two piles, and at the end I can turn one pile into red and the other one into black. Really.’

Kate took his hand and held it firmly in hers.

‘I said now, please, Jack. Bath.’

He checked with Saskia and his grandparents and dropped his head. He put the cards on the table and walked out, closing the door gently.

Kate stared at her in-laws. So Saskia had invited herself for dinner, too? Three against one now. Perfect. The dreaded triumvirate.

‘Let me get you a drink, darling,’ Richard said, grasping a bottle of rosé.

‘No. I don’t want a drink, Richard. Thank you.’

Helen nibbled a piece of bread.

‘How did it go? Any good, do you think?’ Richard continued, replacing the bottle. He pulled out a chair. ‘Have a seat.’

Kate shook her head, as she sat down. ‘I don’t think so. When I explained the work placement situation she wasn’t so keen.’

She surveyed the table. How could they do this?

‘Not keen on having the local ruffians buffing up her floorboards, eh?’ Richard was babbling now, filling the unpleasant silence around the room.

Kate shrugged. ‘They’re kids from deprived backgrounds, Richard,’ she murmured. This wasn’t the time for a sparring match with Richard about how she chose to use Hugo’s money.

She slumped on the chair, her eyes taking in the sight of her and Hugo’s private things. Ransacked. Displayed without permission.

She felt Saskia’s eyes boring into her.

‘It is the dining room, Kate,’ Saskia said.

‘Anyone else want a refill?’ Richard exclaimed.

What was wrong with Saskia? Was she drunk? Her cheeks were pink like her mother’s, and her eyes flashed dangerously in the candlelight. Kate tried to control her words. She and Sass might sprinkle their own conversations casually with swear words, but never in front of Richard and Helen.

‘And very lovely it looks, too, doesn’t it?’ said Richard beaming. He waved his hand across the table. ‘Hugo would always . . .’ Without warning, his voice just cut away. His smile extinguished, like spit on a candle.

He coughed.

‘Was this your idea, Sass?’ Kate asked quietly.

Saskia sat up straight. ‘I think we’re the ones who should be asking questions, Kate.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling.

Kate sat, incredulous. Saskia hadn’t even been invited this evening. Just turned up, as usual. And now she was questioning her in front of Richard and Helen, in her own house.

‘Sass . . .?’ she said, shocked.

Richard raised his eyebrows. ‘OK, look.’ He raised his finger in a stop signal to his daughter. ‘Kate?’ He turned to his daughter-in-law ‘It’s just that it is a little unexpected, darling. What you’ve done.’

Saskia’s mouth fell open. ‘Unexpected? It’s complete bloody madness, Dad! At what point are you and Mum going to stop p-ssyfooting around her, and tell her this has to stop?’

‘Sass!’

Kate and Richard glared at her.

But the volume of Saskia’s voice kept rising.

‘Or do you think she’s going to stop you and Mum seeing Jack? Is that why you put up with it?’

‘Sass! Enough!’ Richard repeated, his jolliness long gone.

Kate sighed. After the trauma of Sylvia’s, a fight between Hugo’s family was the last thing she needed.

‘Look, I did it in case they come back, Sass,’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm.

‘But you’ve just spent thousands on a new alarm!’

What the hell was her sister-in-law doing?

‘Sass, I’m sorry, but this is none of your blood—’ Kate stopped herself. ‘. . . Your business. You know the old alarm was unreliable, always going off. And even if the new one goes off, it still gives them a few minutes to get upstairs. And what if me and Jack are here? What if none of the neighbours takes any notice because they’re so used to the old one going off by accident?’

‘Oh for God’s sake. This is BLOODY RIDICULOUS!’ Saskia yelled, half-standing up.

Kate sat, open-mouthed.

‘What about all that money you just spent on putting in the internal locks downstairs? And now this bloody thing,’ Saskia exclaimed, pointing upwards. ‘I mean, Jesus, Kate? How much did it cost? What the hell would Hugo say?’

Oh no.

Kate gulped hard. ‘Sass . . . don’t even . . .’

‘And then tonight Snores tells us you’re not letting him go to the secondary with his friends because you’re scared he’s going to be stabbed or something; you’re thinking of sending him to some private school on his own? I mean, for God’s sake, Kate, what is wrong with you?’

Kate blinked. ‘He’s called JACK,’ she said, her voice rising to match her sister-in-law’s.

Saskia stood facing her, furious.

Richard and Helen sat quietly. Why were they not stopping this?

Without planning it, Kate stood up, too.

‘Actually, Sass,’ she said, her voice icy, ‘if you must know, though I don’t think it’s any of your bloody business, someone from that school was threatened with a knife. A sixth-former. At a party last weekend in Cowley.’

Richard tutted. He shook his head at his daughter.

‘Listen, Sass. This isn’t helping. Sit down, darling.’

He waited until she begrudgingly obeyed, then turned to Kate. She also sat down.

‘Look, Kate, the thing is, these things happen,’ he said, taking her hand. His hand was large and warm and comforting, like her own father’s used to be. At what point did men’s hands become that shape? Hugo’s had never reached that stage. They had been too strong and busy and vital at his stage of life. Quick hands, energetic.

‘I know you’re just trying to protect him, darling, we all understand that. And you know I’d be absolutely delighted if you wanted to send the boy private . . .’ Kate bit her fingernail crossly. Richard had never stopped bloody going on about it since she and Hugo had announced they were sending Jack to the local primary school in London. ‘But I think what Sass is trying to say is –’ he glared at his daughter – ‘and perhaps not in the best way, Sass, is that perhaps things are going a little far. You have to prepare the boy for life, not hide him from it.’

Kate shook her head. It was all too much: the session with Sylvia, and now this.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding up her hands. ‘Richard, Sass, Helen – I appreciate everything you have done for me, I really do. And I know not everything is right in my life right now. But Jack is my child and, really, I’m sorry, but this is no one else’s business.’

The room fell silent. She picked out the stain on the runner.

Tears began to form again. Exhausted with the effort, she swallowed hard to keep them at bay.

Saskia shook her head, angrily, her cheeks reddening. Richard lifted his palms as if offering peace.

‘OK, darling, listen, everyone’s getting upset.’ He turned to Helen. ‘Why doesn’t Mum make us some coffee – we’ll discuss this some other time, when everyone is more up to it.’

Helen cleared her throat.

‘Actually, Kate. I think it is our business.’

Everyone looked at Helen in surprise. In fourteen years, Kate had never heard Helen speak with that firmness in her voice.

‘It’s gone too far, Kate. You’ve gone too far.’ Her mother-in-law’s voice quavered. ‘We’ve stood by for years now watching this . . . this . . . behaviour, but this?’ She pointed upwards. ‘It’s, it’s . . . lunacy.’

Kate froze.

‘And, for your information, Sass,’ Helen continued. ‘I have already spoken to Social Services anonymously about what is happening in this house and my rights as a grandparent, and, no, I am not worried about Kate not letting me see Jack.’

They all stared at Helen, shocked. Kate fought back more tears. ‘No,’ she muttered. ‘Helen. How could you?’

Helen dabbed at her pink cheeks with a napkin. ‘Because I won’t let you do this to my grandson any more, Kate. After the terrible thing that has happened to him, this little boy deserves love and reassurance and happiness. But instead you’ve turned him into a nervous wreck. Do you know he tried three times tonight to stop us eating in here? He was so anxious about what you would say. I mean, for goodness sake, it’s a dining room.’

Kate kept fighting back the tears, bewildered. What on earth was Helen doing? She waited for her mother-in-law to return to her benign, fragrant self. To apologize. To keep the peace.

But Helen continued, her voice cold.

‘In fact, if you want the truth, Kate, I think he needs to come and live with me and Richard for a while.’

‘No!’ Kate cried, horrified.

‘Richard can run him into town to school and pick him up.’

‘Richard?’ Kate said desperately, turning to her father-in-law.

Richard sighed. ‘Darling, you haven’t been yourself for a while. Helen’s just upset.’

‘I am NOT upset,’ Helen barked. ‘I am simply doing what we should have done a long time ago.’

Kate saw Sass flinch, too, at her mother’s unfamiliar tone. She sat back and picked at a long, French-polished fingernail.

Richard regarded his wife. ‘OK. Let me reword that. Darling, the thing is, Helen and I feel a strong responsibility to you, but we also need to think about what Hugo would want us to do.’

‘You think Hugo would want you to take Jack from me?’ Kate spluttered. ‘Jesus. Have you been planning this, Helen?’

Richard shook his head. ‘No. No. That’s not what we’re doing, darling. We’re just offering to take him for a while to give you a chance to start thinking about how to improve things . . .’

‘And if I say no?’

‘My next call to Social Services will not be anonymous,’ Helen said.

A stunned silence descended on the table.

Kate glanced frantically at her father-in-law. He shook his head sadly.

‘Helen,’ Kate gasped. ‘How could you say that?’

Helen sat upright. ‘I’ve never interfered, Kate. Not once, with all the alarms and hospital visits and the irrational rules and this obsession with . . .’ She stopped. ‘Because Richard said we needed to give you time after what happened. But you don’t even seem aware of your behaviour. You lie to Jack constantly. You told him last week that you were in London seeing a friend, but we know you were at the hospital because you left the letter in the drawer where the clothes pegs are. And this business tonight of frightening him by saying someone had been here, stealing your casserole.’

No. No. This couldn’t be happening. Kate clutched her seat.

‘Some of it had gone out the dish . . .’ she whispered.

‘It had NOT GONE!’ Helen exclaimed, dropping her delicate, pale hand on the table. ‘You imagine these things, Kate! Constantly! And now he’s copying you, for goodness sake!’ Helen shook her head. ‘I mean, this stuff about hearing noises in his wardrobe. Richard had to check inside three times the other night when you were in London. Jack was terribly anxious.’

Kate looked at her mother-in-law in horror. What was she talking about?

‘I mean, he’s nearly eleven, Kate! When are you going to let him go to the shop or walk to school on his own? What do his friends say? Nearly eleven, thinking there are bad men hiding in his wardrobe?’ Kate saw Helen spot her confused expression, then blink with comprehension before Kate could turn away.

Helen sighed deeply. ‘Oh, you don’t even know, do you? The boy hasn’t even told her, Richard.’

Richard shifted in his chair and grunted.

Kate felt the tears pushing and pushing, her resolve to fight them weakened by the shame of Helen’s exposure of her lack of communication with Jack.

Helen wrung her hands together. ‘I mean, can you even see what’s going on here any more, Kate? You’re his mother. Some opportunist, probably a drug addict, smashed a window, came in and snatched your laptop. It happens. You need to reassure Jack that’s all it was. Not talk constantly about crime and accident and burglary statistics! The poor little chap’s lying there in the dark, terrified that sinister figures are hiding in his wardrobe because of this constant anxiety of yours, and he can’t even tell you because he knows it will make you worse!’ Her face broke into a horrified laugh. ‘I mean, this is intolerable! You should be fixing this for the boy. Reassuring him that it will never happen, not making it worse, Kate! Not after what he’s been through.’

Desperately, Kate tried to think.

Helen continued. ‘And that’s why I feel it’s time for Jack to—’

Kate held up a hand. ‘No, Helen. No. Please. Don’t say any more.’

Helen stopped mid-sentence.

‘You’re right. I know I’m anxious. But I am trying to fix it. I just didn’t want to tell you,’ she said.

‘What, darling?’ Richard asked.

Helen and Saskia sat expectantly.

The lie tasted bitter in her mouth. ‘I’ve started therapy.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I’ve started therapy.’

‘When?’ Saskia asked, cynically.

‘Tonight. That’s where I was. A woman in Summertown. She’s called Sylvia.’

‘That’s convenient,’ Saskia murmured.

‘She’s at No. 15 Hemingway Avenue. Look her up if you like. My GP recommended her. And she said she can help me,’ Kate continued.

‘When?’

‘Next week onwards. I’m going once a week, on Tuesdays, indefinitely. At seven-thirty. She says that it’s all a reaction to the trauma of losing my parents, then Hugo. It’s just anxiety. She says it’s pretty normal. And that she can help me.’

The three of them sat, Richard nodding, Helen now a shade of fuchsia, Saskia, her eyes darting between them, checking their reactions.

‘And I can talk to her about Jack, too. Find ways to help him, too.’

‘Well – that’s fantastic,’ Richard said, using the overly jovial voice he always used to gee everyone up. ‘Well done, darling.’

Saskia tapped her finger on the table. ‘OK then. I’ll babysit for you. When you go.’ There was a challenge in her voice.

Kate nodded.

‘So, that’s every Tuesday, at seven-thirty? I’ll be here,’ Saskia added.

‘Helen?’ Richard said.

Helen began to rub at the stain on the runner with her finger. Kate watched her mother-in-law, her jaw slack, her eyes sad and serious, and she knew, in that moment, that Helen, like Kate, knew that the faded red mark was not wine.

‘If this is true, Kate, then I am glad. But I have to tell you, there will be no going back for me now. Perhaps I should have spoken before. But the situation is that I have lost one son, and I won’t allow my grandson to be lost, too. If you don’t allow him to start having the happy childhood he deserves, Kate, I will do exactly what I have said. He is not your parent. You are his. If you are unable to start behaving as a present, engaged mother and control your constant anxiety around Jack, I will interfere as I see fit. So, let’s call it a start. Let’s see how it goes.’

Kate nodded.

‘And now I would like you to go and get me the key.’

‘The key?’ Kate stuttered.

‘To that thing.’ Helen held out her hand.

Humiliation washed over Kate for the second time that evening. She felt her shoulders sink in defeat. Richard and Saskia averted their gaze. Helen raised her watery pale eyes to meet Kate’s, and Kate knew in that minute that Helen, her sweet, chirpy mother-in-law, was now a serious foe.

Her cheeks burning hot, she stood up and walked out of the room and began to climb the stairs.

At the top, she walked through the door of the new ceiling-high steel cage that ran fifteen feet along the length of the upstairs landing, took the key from the door that locked her and Jack safely behind it at night, and brought it slowly back downstairs.





The child crept outside the house after breakfast. It was easy to do. Father had been distracted in the kitchen. He had asked about school, but his mind was clearly elsewhere as he cut bread in large, uneven chunks with a sharp knife, narrowly missing his knuckles. His face was still unshaven and he smelled yeasty as he leaned over to place the toast on the table.

Mother was still sleeping, her door firmly shut.

At one point the child thought of telling Father about the snake on the wall. But would that make it better or worse?

Better to check if anyone else had seen it first.

The child pulled on a jumper against the cold and tiptoed around the side of the house, disappearing behind the stilts that supported the front balcony. A morning frost hung on the trees on the hill opposite; the sky looked like a pane of glass that someone had breathed on. The miniature shape of a distant car moved along the top of the hill, where the woods met the road.

The child turned the corner of the house, looked up, and gasped.

The snake was so big. There was no chance Mother wouldn’t see it.

It was slithering right across the wall, its body thick and grey.

Gripped by foreboding, the child looked around for the ladder and placed it against the wall.

The feet of the ladder did not feel particularly safe, wobbling on the rubble below, but the child persevered, climbing gingerly up six or seven rungs.

There was a crunching noise behind.

‘What the hell are you doing?’

The child turned. Father was standing crossly, hands on hips.

His eyes moved up to the snake.

There was sound. A moan. Followed by a word that children shouldn’t hear.

The child turned back to the snake, hypnotized by its writhing grey body.

‘Get down,’ Father whispered sternly. ‘Go on.’ The bones of his face looked like they were about to burst through the skin.

‘ You do not say a word to her,’ he said, as the child reached the bottom.

His breath smelt metallic. ‘Do you understand?’

The child nodded as Father spun around and ran for the car, glancing fearfully up at the windows of the house.