Accidents Happen (45 page)

‘It’s OK, Sass, it’s not your fault,’ Kate said, pulling her into a hug, knowing it was what Hugo would want her to do. They held each other tight.

When Saskia left, Kate went upstairs and found Jack sitting on his bed, playing on the laptop.

She sat down, and smoothed down his hair.

‘I have something to tell you.’

He waited.

‘Well, I think we’ve had a really horrible time, you and me, Jack, and I think it’s time now for us to put it behind us, and think about what we’re going to do next. Think about the future. So I’ve arranged for all Dad’s furniture to be picked up tomorrow to be put in storage for you for when you’re older, and then you can decide what to do with it. And then we’re going to turn the dining room into a games room with a pool table so you can have your friends over.’

Jack grinned. ‘Really?’

‘Uhuh.’

Then his smile disappeared. ‘But wouldn’t Dad be sad?’

‘No. Absolutely not. And if you wanted to sell that furniture when you’re an adult to pay for something you’d love to do, I promise you, he’d be delighted. Your dad was such a happy person. It’s what people loved about him. He loved life, and he’d want us to get on with ours, too and enjoy them. Starting now.’

Jack watched her with his big green eyes.

‘So, the other thing is, at the end of term, you and me are going to Spain for a month to stay in David’s house. On our own. And, guess what, there’s a sailing school there, apparently, and I thought we could try it together.’

‘Woo-hoo!’ Jack shouted, like Homer.

She laughed and leaned forwards to kiss him. She stayed there for a second, resting her lips against his cheek, as if he was a toddler, and to her joy, he let her. Just for a second.

‘Mum?’ he said pulling back.

‘Hmm?’

‘Are you going to go parachuting again?’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘Well, I’m going to think about it.’

‘What was it like?’

She laughed, ‘Jack. You’ve asked me that a hundred times now.’

‘But that man died doing it.’

‘Well, we think he might have done that on purpose. And if not, he was just very, very unlucky, Jack. And I think you and I have had our fair share of bad luck for now, don’t you? But, you know what, it might be over now.’

Jack appraised her, then turned over to go to sleep.

She went over to the wardrobe and peered inside.

‘Checking for monsters?’ Jack asked.

She turned and smiled.

‘There’s no such thing, Jack.’

Acknowledgements

Thanks to my editor Trisha Jackson for her enthusiasm and support for
Accidents Happen
, and to Natasha Harding, Harriet Sanders, Liz Johnson, Jon Mitchell and the rest of the team at Pan Macmillan. Also to Lizzy Kremer at David Higham Associates for her expert guidance, and to Laura West and Harriet Moore.

A special debt of gratitude to Sarah B, who steered me through the world of statistics and probability, and to Phillip Lloyd of Lloyd Projects, for help with period property restoration. And to Skydive Headcorn parachute school for a fantastic morning learning the safe way to parachute (I will be back to jump, I hope!). I am responsible for the use of all information in this fictional context, and for any mistakes.

Further thanks to Linda Thomas, Jon Hird, Tracey Smith, Laura, Su Butcher, Kim Mansfield-Davies, Mandy Cohen, Francesca Hillier, Bridget and Sita Brahmachari. And to my family, especially my mum, Tim, and my own real-life lovely in-laws, Hazel and David.

I gathered my statistics as Kate would have done: randomly from internet sites, some British, some American. While I have stayed faithful to the layout of central Oxford, I have taken licence with the waterways, along with my fictional account of the fantastic bat-watch run by the real and very committed rangers of Highgate Woods!

I borrowed the story of the amazing Frano Selak from real life. He famously became known as ‘the world’s luckiest man’, after cheating death seven times, then winning £600,000 on the lottery – which he then gave away . . .

If you enjoyed reading
Accidents Happen
, here is a taster of
Louise Millar’s incredible debut novel

The Playdate

LOUISE MILLAR

ISBN: 978-0-330-54500-6

You leave your child with a friend.
Everyone does it. Until the day it goes wrong.

Sound designer Callie Roberts is a single mother. And she’s come to rely heavily on her best friend and neighbour, Suzy. Over the past few lonely years, Suzy has been good to Callie and her rather frail daughter, Rae, and she’s welcomed them into her large, apparently happy family.

But Callie knows that Suzy’s life is not quite as perfect as it seems. It’s time she pulled away – and she needs to get back to work. So why does she keep putting off telling Suzy? And who will care for Rae? In the anonymous city street, the houses each hide a very different family, each with their own secrets. Callie’s increased sense of alienation leads her to try and befriend a new resident, Debs. But she’s odd – you certainly wouldn’t trust her with your child – especially if you knew anything about her past . . .

A brilliant and chilling evocation of modern life, in which friendships might be longstanding but remain superficial.

‘I started reading and couldn’t stop . . . a must-read that will tap into every mother’s primal fears’

Sophie Hannah

FRIDAY

Chapter One

Callie

The water is cold. I knew it would be, despite the disco ball of early summer sun that twirls through the willow trees onto the dark green, velvety pond. I pull my foot out quickly and rub its soft, icy edges. A small yellow leaf sticks to my ankle. I’m not sure I am up for this.

‘There’s something slimy in there,’ I say.

Suzy adopts the pout she uses when she’s trying to get Henry to eat broccoli. ‘Come on – it’s yummy.’ We both laugh.

She stands up, towering above me at her full five foot ten. With one swift movement, she pulls her grey towelling dress over her head and kicks off her flip-flops. She stands at the water’s edge in a black bikini and looks out. An elderly lady glides towards her with smooth, long strokes, a blue rubber hat perched on wire-wool hair. Suzy smiles and waits patiently for her to pass.

I sit back on my elbows. There are about twenty women on the grass, in various small groups or alone. Some are reading, some talking. Two are lying close together, laughing, their legs entwined. I look back at Suzy, who is still waiting for the old lady to move safely out of her path. It takes me a minute to realize I am staring at her body. It’s not that I haven’t seen it a hundred times before, marching naked round the swimming baths’ changing room after the kids, or whipping off her top in her kitchen when she gets gravy on it. No, what is strange is to see her body unfettered by children. In the two and a half years I have known Suzy, there has almost always been a child attached to it: feeding at a breast, astride a hip, wriggling under an arm.

Suddenly I notice how young she is. It’s amazing how well her body has recovered from three children. She has a thick waist, and a flat stomach with no hint of the soft pouch of flesh that Rae has left on mine. Her substantial bust sits high, politely accepting the support of the bikini, but not really needing it. Her skin is creamy and smooth, her frame strong and athletic. Taking a deep breath, she lifts her arms with the confidence of a girl who’s spent her childhood lake-swimming in the Colorado mountains, and dives into Hampstead Ladies’ Pond, ejecting a startled duck.

I lie back and try to concentrate on where we are. A fly buzzes at my nose. There is an air of calm around the pond. A hidden world behind the trees of Hampstead Heath, where women swim and stretch and smile; far from the company of men. Perhaps this is what the inner sanctum of a harem feels like.

Yes, I think. What could be better than this? Sitting in the early summer sun on a Friday afternoon with no kids and no work to worry about.

Yet that is not really how I feel at all.

The hot sun pricks my face a little unpleasantly. I try to focus on the sounds around me to relax. I used to collect interesting sounds, storing mentally the tiniest hum or echo, or whisper of wind that I heard and liked, in case one day I might need them. Today there is birdsong from a warbler, the soft swish of Suzy’s strokes, the crack of a squirrel on a twig.

It is no use. However much I stretch my legs out, the tension that makes my buttocks and thighs clench won’t release. My mind is racing. I need to tell Suzy. I can’t keep this secret from her. There is enough I hide from Suzy already. I sit up again and check where she is. She’s travelled to one side of the pond and is working her way back.

Oh, what the hell. I am here now. I stand up and walk over to the ladder, and begin gingerly to climb into the murky water. The noticeboard says there are terrapins and crayfish in here.

‘Good girl!’ Suzy calls across, clapping to encourage me.

I roll my eyes to show her I am not convinced. The water is cold and earthy as I lower myself into it, shivering. Bit by bit, the icy ring moves up my body until I am almost immersed.

‘Just swim,’ calls Suzy. Her bright American tone echoes out across the pond and the female lifeguard looks over.

I launch myself off the edge. I am not a good swimmer. Suzy approaches me.

‘This is so great,’ she says, turning on her back and looking up at the clear sky and treetops. ‘Next week, I’m going to book us a day at that spa you told me about in Covent Garden.’

My legs dip, and water goes in my mouth. I splutter, kicking hard. I can’t touch the bottom.

‘Hey, you OK?’ she says, holding my arm. ‘Let’s swim to the middle then turn back.’

I take a breath, clear my nose and follow her.

‘Suze,’ I say, ‘I can’t spend money on stuff like that at the moment.’

‘Don’t be silly, hon, I’ll get it,’ she replies. I know she means it. Money is never an issue in the Howard house. Jez’s business is thriving even in these uncertain times. For Suzy, money does not have the emotion attached to it that it does for me. It doesn’t hang around her house like a critical mother, interfering in every decision she makes, squashing dreams, telling her ‘maybe next year’.

Satisfied that I am OK, Suzy leaves me to swim alone. I wonder which direction to take across the pond. It is a strange sensation swimming in a natural pool, with no tiled edges to aim for, just gentle slopes of black earth veined with slippery tree roots. There is no rectangular structure to measure my lengths. It is lovely, Suzy is right. It’s just that right now my mind aches for corners and edges, for beginnings and ends.

I hear a splash and turn round. The old lady is climbing the steps out of the pond. Stunned, I realize she is about ninety. Tanned, loose flesh hangs like draped curtains from strong old bones. I think of my own grandmother, sitting for twenty years after my granddad died, watching telly and waiting for the end. How does that happen? That one old lady watches telly and another walks to an open-air pond on a summer’s day and floats around among water lilies and kingfishers?

The woman’s lack of self-consciousness about her body gives her an air of confidence as she walks past two young women gossiping animatedly, eyes hidden behind overlarge designer sunglasses, thin limbs spray-tanned the same dulled bronze. Probably business wives from Hampstead. I decide the woman could be an old suffragette or a famous botanist who spent her younger years travelling round remote South America on a donkey, finding new plants. Whatever, I sense she has no time for young women like them. And me. She’s probably earned the right to spend her days doing such wonderful things. She knows someone else is paying for ours.

This is not right. This has to end. Taking a deep breath through my nose, I swim as fast as I can back to the steps and reach up to the railings with dripping hands. Pulling myself from the water, my body feels oddly heavy. Heavy, I suspect, with the weight of my own guilt.

I have to find the words to tell Suzy. I can’t do this any more.

It became apparent at Easter that Suzy had a lot of plans for her and me. She has never had a daylight hour without children, she claims, since she moved to London. Even when Jez is home, he says he can’t manage all three of them together, so she always has one, whatever she does.

So since Peter and Otto both started private nursery in May, and Henry and Rae are now reaching the end of their first year at primary school, Suzy finally has the chance to do the things on the list she has been compiling from
Time Out
magazine and her London guidebook. All through June, we have been out most days. She knows I have no money, so we have done free things. We have rollerbladed in Regent’s Park, ignoring the sign that says ‘No skating’. ‘They’ll have to catch us first,’ said Suzy furiously when she saw it. She has waited too long to take long, gliding strokes through the flat paths of the rose garden unhindered by our children’s buggies and scooters. I don’t like breaking rules, but I go along with it.

Another day, we ate sandwiches in Trafalgar Square after a visit to the National Gallery to see Botticellis and Rembrandts. We’ve peered through the railings at No. 10 Downing Street and seen Big Ben up close. Suzy even made me come with her to the Tower of London, insisting on paying the entrance fee. As I stood waiting among German tourists to see the Crown Jewels, I had to smile to myself. These are not the things I did with friends in London before I had Rae, but I remind myself that Suzy is from America and not Lincolnshire, like me, and that she wants to do the touristy stuff in the way that I wanted to climb the Empire State Building when Tom and I spent that one precious weekend in New York.

And today it has been Hampstead Ladies’ Pond. ‘We should come here every day,’ Suzy says, as we get ourselves dressed. ‘People do.’

Sometimes when she says these things I feel like I did in the pond today. I flail around, trying to find something solid and familiar to hold on to, but there is nothing.