Accidents Happen Read online

  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.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It was Monday morning, a school day. Normally, Jack would be tucked up under the duvet, buried in the deep hormonal slumber of a pre-teenager.

  But things weren’t normal. For an hour now, he had lain awake, ignoring the growing pressure in his bladder.

  He rolled over to face the wall and picked at the Blu-tack behind his Arsenal poster. Rows of red-shirted players stood shoulder to shoulder, the goalkeepers in yellow perched above them. Thoughtfully, he stretched his feet towards the bottom of the bed, pushing his arms in the other direction. Nana had said he was ‘about the same’ height as Dad when he was ten and three-quarters, but that wasn’t strictly true. On the back of the airing cupboard door at her house, he’d discovered the names ‘Hugo’ and ‘Saskia’ written against little black marks measured in inches that climbed up the door like a ladder. He had run his finger along a faded date in 1984 to his father’s name. Dad had already been three inches taller.

  Jack rested a hand on his stomach. The warmth helped with the cramps.

  His eyes drifted to the old fitted wardrobe beside the fireplace. The doors were still firmly closed, as he had left it last night. His electric guitar was still propped up against it to hold the doors in place, now that the metal catch had stopped working properly. The bright red instrument leaned a little to the left, like a drunken sentry. ‘What would his friends say about him being scared of sinister men in his wardrobe?’ he’d heard Nana say last night through the stripped floorboards, as he’d lain flat, wondering why she was talking in a strange voice. As if he was ever going to tell Gabe and Damon that?

  His stomach cramped extra hard.

  He reached up and took down the little snowdome from his shelf and shook it. Glitter exploded above a miniature plastic mountain. He waited, then shook it again.

  Finally, he heard the noise he had been dreading since seven o’clock this morning.

  His mother’s bedroom door opening. A pad of bare feet towards the stairs.

  He rolled onto his back, stuffing his fingers in his ears.

  ‘Jack,’ she called gently. ‘Are you up? We’ve slept in.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he replied, removing his fingers a fraction.

  ‘You’ll have to get dressed quickly. What do you want for breakfast?’

  His stomach gurgled.

  ‘Nothing. I’m not hungry.’

  ‘You need something. Do you want a bagel?’

  There was a click. He stuck his fingers back in his ears so hard, his nails scraped the skin inside. But it was too late. He had heard it.

  ‘OK,’ he shouted, willing her to go away.

  She was opening the gate. Trying to do it so he wouldn’t hear. Trying to pretend she hadn’t locked it again with that padlock he’d seen in her shopping bag on Saturday. Even though he’d heard Nana tell her not to on Friday night.

  Jack looked up at the plastic stars Aunt Sass had stuck on his ceiling when they moved here from London when he was six. Blood thumped inside his barricaded ears. Boom, boom, boom. He shut his eyes and imagined he was swimming under the ocean among those shoals of baby rays he’d seen at the aquarium in London with Nana and Granddad, the muscles in his stomach stretched out and eased by the warm water.

  When the biggest cramp came, he focused hard on the poster and imagined saving a penalty shoot-out for Arsenal in the FA Cup. Six foot two, Dad had been. Still smallish for a professional goalie but possible. He needed to eat more to try to catch Dad up.

  The faint aroma of toasted bagel floated into his bedroom.

  With a grunt, Jack pulled himself out of bed and swept his hair out of his face. He took off his pyjamas, found his school uniform things in his drawers, and pulled them on. He removed the guitar and opened the wardrobe hesitantly.

  A rail of clothes appeared, above two shelves that Granddad had built. Checking quickly that Mum wasn’t behind him, Jack swept a hand behind the clothes, touching the wall to check no one was there. He went to pick up his trainers for PE from the bottom shelf, then stopped.

  They had moved again.

  He was sure of it.

  He had chucked them in the other day, and now they sat neatly, pointing outwards.

  Jack grabbed them by the laces and stood up. Had Mum tidied them up when she was putting away his clean laundry?