Accidents Happen (16 page)

‘Well, I’m not convinced about that,’ she said. ‘Don’t laugh, but sometimes I think I’m cursed. I think I am that person at the end of the statistical calculations. I am the person who gets struck by lightning seven times. I mean, it has to be someone, doesn’t it?’

‘You?’

She knew how crazy her words sounded.

He made a
pff
noise then put out a hand and touched her arm fleetingly. ‘Well, I’ll tell you, that’s nonsense, Kate. Being cursed is for fairytales. Not for kind souls, which I know you are.’

There was a note of paternal kindness in his voice that reminded her of a Scottish dentist she had seen as a child. Unexpectedly, it brought a bittersweet tug of memory of her father.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

There was a long pause. The branches of the willow danced in the breeze. After a while, Jago cleared his throat. ‘Kate, I’m just wondering.’

‘Hmm?’

‘Well, obviously I was joking about this being a guerrilla experiment. But, seriously, I’m curious . . .’

‘What?’

He frowned. ‘I just wonder . . .’

She sat up. ‘What?’

He ripped some more grass away. ‘Would you mind if I spoke to my publisher about what you’ve told me? See what the psychologist he told me about is doing in the States on this kind of anxiety?’

He was offering to
help
. ‘I suppose it would be interesting. But why would you do that?’

‘I don’t know yet. I’m interested from an academic perspective, I suppose. That’s my thing, doing interdisciplinary work with other departments. So, partly because of the involvement of probability, but also because I . . .’

There was a rustling past Kate’s ear. She sat up. A rabbit lolloped past the pond and up onto the unlit lawn beside the house.

‘Fuck,’ she heard Jago mutter.

There was a sharp
click
and a huge sensor light abruptly illuminated the whole lawn and the pond. Kate and Jago’s faces were caught blinking in its beam.

‘Go!’ called Jago, jumping up and grabbing her hand.

There was no time to think. Kate let him pull her blindly across the lawn and back towards the hedge. Somewhere behind her she heard a door opening, spreading a slice of light onto the hedge.

‘Quickly,’ Kate gasped as Jago reached the gate and stood back to let her go first. He put a strong hand on the small of her back to help her climb up. To her amazement, she heard a chuckle behind her.

‘I can’t believe you’re laughing,’ she spat as she hauled herself up over the gates, her legs trembling, and waited for him to follow.

‘Go!’ he shouted, pointing at the bikes.

Kate grabbed her head. ‘My helmet!’ she yelped. ‘I’ve left it on the lawn.’

‘No time – go!’

Gritting her teeth, she jumped on her bike and waited for Jago to get over the gate and grab his, then followed him up the dark lane, wobbling so much she nearly tumbled in a pothole. She could hear him up ahead, as he crossed back through the gate, still laughing. Despite her heart pounding at the fear of being caught, she couldn’t stop a reluctant grin breaking on her own face.

When they hit the towpath, Jago didn’t stop, but sped back to Oxford, checking occasionally that she was behind him. She pedalled hard, trying to keep up with him, feeling her thighs protesting at being asked to work so hard when the adrenalin was still pumping through her body.

Without the helmet, her hair flew away from her face and flicked around her eyes. It made her feel as if she were cycling at seventy miles an hour; that the ground was disappearing beneath her in the dark.

In fact, she thought, it didn’t even feel as if she was cycling. Perhaps it was the two glasses of wine, but she felt as if she’d lifted off the ground and was speeding above it.

Like she was flying.

Kate lifted her chin into the wind, spitting bugs from her mouth. A real swarm, not a number swarm. The night-time breeze caressed her skin. An image popped into her head of the man with the jester’s hat on Cowley Road yesterday. Was this how he felt? She imagined her features set like his, bemused eyes, whistling lips.

And before she could help it, Kate did something extraordinary.

She lifted her hands off the handlebars. Just for a second, ignoring the water beside her. The bike sailed, just for a moment, effortlessly onwards.

‘Oh!’ she gasped, as the bike began to wobble.

‘Woo-hoo!’ came a shout.

She looked ahead to see Jago looking back, pedalling slowly, waiting for her to catch up. Seconds later she reached him, and he sped up again. She fell in behind him, into his slipstream. Their legs began to move in tandem, in a shared rhythm.

They were flying together through the dark.

Together. She was together, with someone. Connected. Talking. Not just physically sharing the same space with another adult, like Saskia or her Oxford neighbours or the parents of Jack’s friend’s, yet feeling a million miles away from them. She had forgotten what it felt like.

Kate shut her eyes, just for a second. Another sensation flooded back to her as she cycled along, from long ago. Of falling, and falling, and falling. Of floating into nothing, her body relaxed completely, not tense and rigid like it was now. Of tumbling at speed into a beautiful void but not being scared. Free from worry and physical restraint. Of having no choice but to let everything letting go and . . .

Crack!

Kate’s front tyre hit a stone, sending her bike to the left an inch.

She yelped. Her eyes jerked open, and she pulled hard on the handlebars to remain upright.

The bike wobbled, then steadied. Alarmed, Kate peered around.

How had that happened? They were nearly back at the pub.

Houses and lights emerged on their right. She saw Jago duck under the bridge, and followed him. Seconds later, they swerved back up the alleyway. Jago stopped at the pub. Kate pulled up beside him, panting.

He got off his saddle, straddling his bike frame, and grinned. ‘OK?’

Kate spluttered to a stop. ‘Just about. I can’t believe you made me do that,’ she gasped. ‘What was that place?’

He touched his nose. ‘Ahah. The less you know, the less you’ll try to predict.’

She tried to draw breath. ‘No. It was fun.’

She blinked, surprised at her own words. But it was true. Unbelievably, she’d actually had fun.

Jago sat back on his saddle. ‘Thank God. I was starting to think the extent of my social life in Oxford was going to be talking to Gunther from Austria about algorithms in the bar.’ He wiped an insect from his brow. ‘Right, are you all right from here, Kate, or do you want me to cycle you home?’

Kate shook her head, touched by the gesture. It was the type of thing Hugo had offered to do when they first met at university in London, even though she’d lived north of the river, and he’d lived south.

‘Listen,’ Jago said, checking his new tyre. ‘Thanks for telling me what was going on. It wouldn’t be the first time a woman’s run off on me half an hour into the evening.’

Somehow Kate didn’t believe it.

Then Jago slapped his forehead. He opened his bag and searched inside it. ‘Shit, I forgot to bring you that book.’

Kate wavered, remembering Jago’s promise. She tried not to show her disappointment.

‘You know what, though,’ Jago said. ‘Perhaps we could call this Step Two of our guerrilla experiment. Step Two:
Binning the Numbers
. See if you can do without it.’

Kate stood there uncertainly, thinking of the airline statistics she needed desperately if she was going to book tickets for Mallorca. ‘What was Step One?’ she asked.

Jago put his finger on his lip, as if thinking. ‘Step One:
Not Thinking about it: Riding off into the Night with a Weird Scottish Bloke and Doing a Bit of Breaking and Entering
.’ He watched her closely. ‘Could you do it? Cope without the book?’

‘Um, OK . . .’ She knew her struggle to agree was etched on her face.

Jago shot her a sympathetic look. ‘OK, well, what if I promise to keep one for you in my bag at all times in case you change your mind?’

She nodded, grateful at his understanding.

‘Brilliant.’ Jago gave her a grin. ‘Kate, listen. This was the most fun I’ve had in, well, a while. Can we do this again?’

‘I’d like that.’

‘Good. I’ll give you a ring? Tomorrow?’

Then, without warning, Jago leaned forward and kissed her cheek. ‘Right . . .’ The warmth of his skin on hers stunned her. ‘Better go. OK.’

‘OK.’

‘See you,’ Jago called. He stood up on his pedals and cycled to the junction, turning left towards central Oxford.

Kate stood paralysed, waiting for him to disappear. She lifted a finger to touch her hot cheek, which was stinging slightly from the brush of faint stubble on his chin. It had been so long since she’d felt the touch of a man’s face against hers. The smell of soap from his skin mixed with the damp saltiness of his T-shirt lingered for a second.

She shook herself. What was she thinking? It was dark and she needed to get home. She cycled to the junction, and looked. Iffley Road lay in front of her. The turn for Hubert Street was a few hundred yards away on the right.

The brief sense of elation she had from riding along the river-bank lingered. Could she do it, while she was on a roll?

On the road? No helmet?

She looked left, then right. When she was confident there was no traffic in either direction, she stood up on her pedals and pushed hard out into the empty road, gripping the handlebars.

As soon as she did it she knew it was a mistake. Out of nowhere a car came speeding round a bend and up behind her.

‘Oh no,’ Kate groaned, starting to wobble. A bassline thumped through open windows as the car swerved around her.

What was she doing? Idiot! Cycling on a main road without a helmet! Kate waited for the impact. The number she’d read on a website about bike accidents flew into her head.

• 85% of bike casualties are not wearing helmets.

The car shot past her, leaving three feet of room – but it was enough to force her, gasping, onto the pavement. She pushed her bike over the kerb.

‘I just don’t think about it,’ Jago had said.

Just don’t think about it.

Desperately, she tried to push the numbers away but they wouldn’t leave her. No. She wasn’t quite ready for this yet.

But tonight something had changed.

She had taken a step forward. Tiny, but still a step.

She’d had
fun.

By the time she reached home, five minutes later, the lights were out. Saskia and Jack must be in bed. Kate crept in, feeling guilty.

She locked the inner doors downstairs, turned on the alarm and tiptoed upstairs. At the top, she saw the cage door. It stood wide open. She walked through it, ignoring the impulse to run to the garden and find the padlock.

Again, she heard Jago’s voice in her head.

Just don’t think about it.

She passed the front spare room where Saskia slept and then Jack’s room, to reach the bathroom.

She was about to turn off the upper hall light when a noise stopped her. It was a heavy scraping noise that seemed to be coming from Jack’s room.

That was odd.

His door was half open. Kate peeked in and tried to focus in the dark. A heavy breathing from the bed told her that Jack was asleep.

The noise started again, like something substantial being pushed along the floor.

It was coming from his wardrobe.

Kate’s stomach did a somersault. Jack was right. This was not imagined.

Nervously, she crept towards the wardrobe door, and carefully picked up Jack’s guitar. She grasped its neck with her right hand like a bat, and with her heart thumping hard, ready to scream out to wake up Saskia, began to open the door . . .

‘What are you doing?’

Kate jumped.

Jack was sitting up in bed, staring at his guitar in the shaft of light from the hall outside.

‘Oh, hi! Nothing,’ she barked, sharper than she intended. ‘I was just . . . um . . . putting away your washing. Sorry.’

She opened both wardrobe doors wide, hoping Jack wouldn’t spot the absence of laundry, and surreptitiously swept the back of the wardrobe to check no one was there.

‘Did you hear that funny noise?’ Jack asked.

Kate berated herself. What was she doing? Exactly what Helen had warned her about: transferring her anxiety to Jack.

‘Uhuh, and it’s nothing to worry about,’ she replied brightly. ‘It’s just someone next door moving something around in their room. The walls in this house are so thin. I hear noises sometimes, too – from the bedroom next to me.’

Not as loud as that weird scraping, she could have added, but didn’t.

His voice came back uncertain in the dark. ‘Oh, OK.’

‘You OK? Sure?’ She tried to sound reassuring.

‘Yeah.’ He turned over in his bed. ‘Night, Mum.’

‘Night, Jack.’

Kate tiptoed to the bathroom, trying to ignore the uneasy feeling that had crept back over her. She brushed her teeth and washed, replaying each scene from the cycle ride in her head to distract herself. Soon lost in thought, she crossed quietly to her bedroom, turning off the hall light. She shut the door, turned on her beside lamp, and took off her T-shirt. It smelt of the grass from the walled garden. She picked up her moisturizer, and did a double take in the mirror. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright. She sat on the bed and smoothed the cream onto her skin.

What the hell had she just done? With a complete stranger?

She lay on the bed, running the evening’s events back through her head.

That feeling she’d had, as she’d climbed the gate. That tension in her stomach. What was it? It hadn’t been fear. She knew that. It was different. It had arrived as she climbed up to the top of the gate, and saw the dark garden beyond. A kind of tension she hadn’t felt for a very long time. A kind of . . .

And then she knew.

Excitement.

Intrigued, Kate changed for bed. She climbed in between the sheets, and looked at the pile of unread books Saskia kept giving her from her village book club. Poor Sass. She was only trying to help. Her nervous blink had been back tonight. It wasn’t as if her little sister-in-law’s life had turned out the way she’d planned it, either.