Accidents Happen (3 page)

‘Kate?’

Her voice was pleasant and soft, like ripe fruit.

Kate nodded, feeling like a child.

‘I’m Sylvia. Come in.’

‘Thanks.’

Kate walked into an elegant hall, tiled with gold and blue geometric Victorian tiles. ‘Do you want to leave your helmet there?’ Sylvia said, pointing to a mahogany table adorned by a giant vase of lilies.

Kate nodded again, praying the plastic buckles wouldn’t scratch it.

‘I’m so glad you finally managed to come,’ Sylvia said.

Kate looked at the floor.

‘I know. Sorry. Things just kept coming up.’

‘You managed to find someone to look after your son?’ Sylvia said, opening a door off the hall, and guiding Kate through. There was a fragrance of roses.

‘Yes, I did, thanks. His grandparents. My in-laws.’

The sitting room was even more impressive than the hall, furnished with antique tables, bookshelves and over-stuffed chairs and sofas. It smelled of polish. The wallpaper looked original Victorian, too, or at least one of those expensive reproductions Hugo used to buy through specialists. Sage green with an intricate spray of curling dark stems and ruby-red roses.

Sylvia pointed to an armchair.

‘Please, have a seat, Kate.’

But Kate couldn’t.

She stood in front of the chair. She was here now. It was time to start.

Looking Sylvia in the eye, she made herself speak the words. Maybe it was the numbness in her lips from cycling, but the voice didn’t sound like hers. The words came out half-formed and uncertain, as if she had missed off the hard edges and spoken only the soft bits in the middle.

‘I told them I was seeing a woman who wanted to discuss renovating her house.’

Sylvia nodded, as she moved to the sofa.

‘I see. Well, that’s something we can talk about, Kate.’

CHAPTER THREE

There he was. That weirdo again.

Saskia stood second in line at a cash till in Tesco on Cowley Road, watching the student in front put through two microwaveable beefburgers in buns, three tins of hotdogs and a bumper pack of Curly Wurlys.

Yum, she thought, touching a French-polished fingertip on the chilled glass of the sparkling rosé she had placed on the belt. Some lucky girl was going to be wined and dined tonight.

Cautiously, she lifted her eyes, to check he didn’t know she was looking. It was the first time she had seen him up close. It was his height that had originally caught her attention on the pavement a few weeks ago. Not that he was particularly taller than any other tall man she knew. Dad, for instance. His legs just seemed overly long, perhaps due to the shapeless black trousers he wore. His T-shirt was black too, and slightly too short, revealing a white slab of belly each time he moved. Inside Tesco, the student looked even odder. His out-dated spiky, dark blond hair and bad glasses marked him out from the cool indie kids from the poly – or Oxford Brookes University, as it was these days. Not that Hugo had ever let Saskia forget the former identity of her college. Oxford Puniversity, he called it, to wind her up.

Five minutes later she left Tesco with her wine, and found herself behind the student again as they both wound through the back streets of east Oxford. He was doing that strange walk again. Bouncing along on his oddly extended legs, his upper torso bobbing with the motion. It gave him the impression of being both physically awkward and arrogant. His strides were so much longer than Saskia’s that by the time she reached the corner of Walter Street he had disappeared from sight.

Saskia stopped at an estate agent’s window, perusing her reflection for a second. With the early evening sun behind her head, it appeared as if she was wearing a halo, the white-blonde tips of her hair melding into its rays. She flattened down the front of her pale blue summer dress, wondering if Jonathan was missing her at all.

With a sigh, she checked the property values. Hubert Street was holding its own. That was good. Something, at least, for Jack’s sake.

Oh no. Jack.

He would be waiting for her, desperate to know her decision.

On impulse, Saskia dived into the newsagent next door and searched through the boys’ magazines to find one she hadn’t bought him yet. That would distract him till she decided what to do. Because if she did it, Kate would kill her. If she didn’t – well, things were bad enough as it was for her nephew.

At the last minute she grabbed some cough sweets for her presentation at work on Monday morning and headed back outside.

As she set off, popping a cough sweet in her mouth, there was a flash of movement to her right.

Saskia jumped.

What the hell was that?

A large black shape shifted between two cars.

Walking fast, she waited until she was at a safe distance before turning round.

A black-clad backside peeked out from between the cars. She recognized the slice of white flabby skin that lay above it.

The weirdo. He was crouched down between two cars, facing a row of houses across the road.

Why was he behaving so furtively?

Saskia surveyed the house opposite. It looked like a normal residential house. No piles of bikes or posters in the window to suggest students. A well-painted red door. Cream curtains half-closed. Faint classical music drifting out of an open sash window.

A figure crossed the window. A woman in her thirties with a brunette bob.

Saskia heard a little click, and then another.

A camera?

Was he watching someone? A woman?

Oh, that was gross.

Then, before she could help herself, Saskia felt a tickle of cold air at the back of her throat behind the sweet – and coughed.

The student moved. A flag of spiky hair began to rise above the car’s bonnet.

‘No, I’ll get some pizza,’ she exclaimed, walking off and talking into her hand as if it were a phone, realizing too late that a woman with a buggy was coming straight at her, staring at her curiously.

Saskia dropped her hand and continued quickly towards Hubert Street. She had better tell Kate. Although who knew where that would lead – as if they needed any more problems.

Saskia turned into Hubert Street, trying to shake off the sense of unease at what she’d just witnessed. Kate’s semi-detached Edwardian house looked pretty in the evening sunshine, the freshly whitewashed windowsills sparkling, the burnt-orange passionflower that Helen had planted trailing around the front door. Saskia glanced at the house next door, to which Kate’s was attached. It looked like the un-identical twin. Whereas Kate’s frontage was tidy, her bins behind a wooden fence Richard had erected and stained a pale lilac chosen by Helen, the one next door was undoubtedly a student house. It was worn and tired; its windowsills also painted white, but this time, the paint sloshed cheaply over the joins and onto the windowpanes. Bikes lay in heaps, chained together. A wheelie bin was half open, binbags bursting out, the faint smell of rubbish detectable from here.

That was the best thing about living in a Cotswold village. No students. Not for the first time, Saskia wished Mum and Dad had worked harder to persuade Kate not to rush into buying when she moved from London; that they hadn’t been so wary of her bloody moods, that they had made her check who lived next door.

Steeling herself, as she always did on arrival at Hubert Street, Saskia walked up to the door and pressed the bell.

‘Hello,’ a deep voice said behind her. The ‘oh’ was pronounced as ‘aw’, with a long, Scandinavian vowel.

The weirdo was walking in through the gate next door. He regarded her impassively from behind his glasses.

‘Hi,’ she said, as chilly as she could.

Creep.

He’d probably followed her up the road, taking photos of her backside.

To her relief, Jack flung open the door, grinning.

‘Hey, Jackasnory!’ she exclaimed in relief, walking inside and shutting the front door behind her. She held her hands slightly forward, in case he wanted to hug. She was never sure these days. Did boys of nearly eleven hug?

Luckily, her nephew was in the mood. He came straight to her, wrapping himself tightly around her waist. She put her arms round him and moved his body gently from left to right. He stayed there happily. Or was it desperately? She wasn’t sure any more.

‘God, you give the best cuddles. Did you win?’

‘Two–nil,’ Richard shouted from the sitting room. ‘And he’s in the reserves for a junior league team next term.’

‘Oh, are you now? Smartybum.’ Saskia grinned, pushing Jack back to see a beaming, upturned face.

Then the smile disappeared and was replaced with a meaningful stare.

‘What?’

‘Please?’ he mouthed, holding his hands in the prayer position.

‘Oh.’ She glanced through to the kitchen, where Helen was lifting a pot. That was odd. Her mother hadn’t looked up and given her one of her cheery hellos.

‘No. Not now. Later. You’ll get me into trouble, Snores. I’m still thinking about it,’ she whispered, pushing him towards the sitting room. ‘Take this.’ She gave him the magazine. ‘Go and keep Granddad company. Stop him annoying me.’

Jack obeyed, as he always did, thrusting out his lip to make her laugh.

Saskia checked her mother again in the kitchen. She was seemingly unaware that Saskia had arrived. What was different about her? Her shoulders? They were rigid. And even from here her face appeared rosier than normal.

Saskia went to hang her bag on the balustrade.

There was a silver flash above her head.

She blinked, as her mind tried to process what she had just seen.

She looked up again.

As she stood staring, her father walked out of the sitting room and placed his hands on her shoulders.

She turned and saw his jovial face as serious as it had ever been.

‘
What. The. Hell?
’ she mouthed, incredulous, pointing upstairs.

‘Later,’ he murmured, nodding towards the sitting room, where Jack was.

Her dad headed off down the hallway, shoulders hunched, towards her mother, who, Saskia realized, had been crying. It was all she could do not to shout, ‘Kate?’ and run off around Oxford looking for her stupid bloody idiot of a sister-in-law.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was a while until Kate began to talk to Sylvia. They sat in silence, as she knew they might. It was an old-fashioned silence, Kate thought. Inside these thick walls there were none of the normal city sounds. No kids shouting in the street. No sirens. The silence felt thick and upper class and dusty.

She scanned the room. In the centre was an oversized stone fireplace, its heart blackened and empty. A Chinese urn sat on an oak table. This was the type of house a housekeeper used to run, Kate thought. Sylvia still probably had a woman who cleaned every day. She couldn’t see elegant Sylvia kneeling down and scrubbing away coal dust.

Sylvia sat opposite her on a sofa. The fabric was strewn with a faint orange-and-green botanical print. Just the right tone of faded, Hugo would have said.

Above the fireplace was an oil painting of a woman in a wine-coloured velvet dress, with Veronica Lake blonde hair, sitting with her hands in her lap, staring out.

‘That’s amazing,’ Kate said, pointing.

Sylvia smiled. ‘Thank you.’

Kate shifted in her seat. She crossed her legs, then her arms, then tried to uncross them again. That was amateur stuff. Everyone knew that. The defensive move.

Sylvia kept looking at her. She had a face both long and broad, with generous cheekbones. Her lips were painted a pale red. Kate suspected she was a woman who had grown comfortable in her large frame in later years.

She shifted in her seat, trying to find something to say. ‘It reminds me of those horror films when you were a child. Where you move around the room and the eyes in the painting follow you.’

Sylvia nodded.

Kate sighed. This was hopeless.

The ticking of a grandfather clock filled the room like a heavy heartbeat.

Kate looked out the window.

She forced her lips apart. ‘It is going to sound silly.’

‘Why don’t you try?’

Kate placed her elbows on her knees and dropped her face into her hands.

‘OK. Well. It appears . . .’

She heard Sylvia breathing steadily.

‘. . . that I am cursed.’

The word sang out into the old-fashioned room.

Kate gasped. Sitting up abruptly, she covered her mouth. But she was too late. Laughter burst out. ‘Oh God. I’m sorry. That just sounded funny.’ She pointed up. ‘You know, with the painting, and everything.’

Sylvia smiled.

‘Like I’m in a Vincent Price movie, or something . . . You know, “I’m CURSED, I tell you!”’ She rolled the syllables like a comedy horror actor, curling her fingers like talons beside her face.

Sylvia held her gaze.

‘Sorry. I’m nervous,’ Kate said. She stopped fighting her arms and let them wrap around her chest.

Sylvia dropped her head to one side, like a bird.

‘Can you tell me what you mean by cursed, Kate?’

How could she explain this? It sounded so crazy. ‘OK. Well, I mean, that I’m someone to whom bad things happen.’

She lifted her thumb to her mouth and bit the nail. It tasted gritty and the little biting noises seemed to fill the room.

‘What kind of bad things, Kate.’

Out of the blue, a tear pricked at her eye. Damn. Where had that come from? Kate swallowed hard. ‘Uh, it happens all the time. For instance, ten days ago I was burgled. They broke into the back of the house when I was out at a work meeting and stole my laptop and my son’s Wii.’

Sylvia nodded sympathetically. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. But it’s not unusual to be burgled, Kate.’

Kate pushed her hands into her knees. ‘No, but it’s the second time I’ve been burgled in five months. Every time I come home, I’m terrified I’m going to walk in and find there’s been another break-in. Even if there hasn’t been, I keep thinking that things have been taken or moved. I can’t find things I thought I’d left on a table or on a shelf. I’m sure I’ve left a cupboard door shut, then I find it open.’

‘Burglary can be traumatic.’ Sylvia nodded. ‘It can leave you feeling very invaded.’