Accidents Happen (7 page)

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?

He rubbed his stomach hard, hunched his shoulders and went to open his bedroom door, knowing he couldn’t ask her. She’d just start going on again about someone eating the casserole and look even more worried.

The bars of the cage glinted in the morning sun. They were as flat and wide as his school ruler, embedded into a long bracket on the ceiling above. The door had been pushed back quietly into its hook in the wall, leaving the entrance open to the top of the stairs.

Jack ran to the bathroom, peed and washed, then walked through the open gate quickly, trying not to look at it.

‘What do you want on it?’ his mother shouted, as he came downstairs.

‘Peanut butter, please,’ he replied, walking towards the kitchen. He would make himself eat it. Perhaps, when he measured himself again secretly on Nana’s door this Saturday, there would be a difference. Sometimes he measured himself two or three times on the same day, just to be sure.

Kate turned, unsmiling, to butter Jack’s bagel, as he sat at the table and watched her. Her shoulder blades were showing even more clearly than before through the worn cream silk of the nightie Dad had given her, like two L-shapes, back to back. He looked down at her legs. White string with knots in.

Jack sipped the tea she’d made for him and tried to think about something else.

‘When’s the new laptop getting delivered, Mum?’

She groaned as she placed his bagel on the table. ‘This week, I hope. They tried to say they’d delivered it on Tuesday when I was in London – you know, when I went up to see Patricia, our old neighbour in Highgate,’ she added swiftly. Her eyes slid off to the left again, Jack noted. ‘I knew it was coming,’ his mum continued, ‘but I didn’t have time to rearrange the delivery, so I thought they’d just take it back to the depot and I could get it the next day. Anyway, they’re saying they did deliver it on Tuesday, but obviously they didn’t. So it’s their fault, and now they’re sending another laptop on Friday.’ His mum shook her head. ‘I should have just gone to the bloody shop. I’ve got to get some figures off to David in London by next weekend for a sealed bid auction.’

She frowned and returned to the sink. Jack took a reluctant bite of his bagel, thinking. If he got Gabe to invite him round after school, they could use his mum’s computer and see if Aunt Sass had done what she’d promised.

He looked up and saw Kate watching him from the sink.

‘Jack, you’re not getting one. Please don’t ask again. There are reasons that ten is too early.’

He shrugged. ‘I know. There are weird people looking at the internet. They told us at school.’

‘Good.’ She came over and sat down with a cup and no food. He could smell the hot raspberry from her tea. He saw her take an uncertain pause.

‘I like your hair like that,’ she said. ‘Bet the girls do, too.’

‘No,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘They like Gabe. He’s taller than me.’

Her forehead immediately creased again with worry. He sighed inwardly.

‘It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it, Mum.’

Jack took another bite of the bagel, pushing his teeth hard through the tough dough. Just chewing it made his stomach tighten painfully again.

Why was
she
frowning? Being small was his problem, not hers.

He chewed even harder.

Out of nowhere, Jack suddenly felt very, very cross.

She had locked that stupid, embarrassing gate again last night, even though Nana had told her not to. She had completely lied to Nana. Done the opposite of what she’d promised. And now he knew that she’d lied, and Nana didn’t, and if Nana asked him when he went to stay this weekend, and he told her the truth, Mum would be cross.

He glanced at his mum, but her eyes were lost again, somewhere off in her secret place.

Why did she always have to make everybody so worried?

Why could he never tell her he was scared of the strange noises he heard in the wardrobe at night? Or of the cramps in his stomach, which he suspected might be caused by the same disease that boy had on Children in Need? Or of the Year Eight boys who were making him and Gabe a bit nervous?

Why could he not tell Mum any of this without her stealing his worries and turning them into her own, making it worse, not better?

Jack sat back.

A second wave of anger engulfed him.

A thought took him by surprise. Right now, this minute, he
hated
her. He wasn’t just cross. He actually hated her.

Jack leaned forwards at the table, chewing harder, savouring this new, strange feeling, glancing at Kate as she stared out of the kitchen window into the garden, sipping her tea with a little hissing noise.

Thoughts began to pile into his head, one after the other. Yes – he
hated
her. Hated her stupid nightie that she wore all the time even though it had little holes in it like wounds. Hated the way she never listened to him and always made his worries her worries. Hated the way she kept talking about people breaking into their house and other bad things that made him lie awake at night, seeing shadows and hearing creaks. Hated the way she lied to Nana and was allowed to make their house grey and quiet all the time, just because she was the adult.

Jack put down his bagel and watched his mother chewing her lip.

The hate suddenly made him feel brave.

‘Mum?’

‘Hmm?’

‘I want to go to secondary school with Gabe and everyone else.’

Kate stirred her tea even though she hadn’t put any sugar in it. The bags under her eyes were even darker than usual, he noticed.

‘I don’t want to go to that private school.’

He waited for her reaction.

Kate sighed. ‘Well, you don’t have to.’

‘Really?’ He bit his bagel again, his appetite returning a little.

‘No.’ She took a sip of tea. ‘Jack, listen, I made a decision this weekend. You know we moved to Oxford so Nana and Granddad could help me after Daddy?’

He nodded.

‘Well, I think we’re better now.’

He stopped mid-chew. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, I think it might be a good time for us to go back to London.’

Jack tried to swallow the lumpen, soggy dough but it seemed to swell up and lodge in his throat. He tried again, but it stuck there, refusing to move forwards or backwards. In a panic, he took a mouthful of tea and gulped as hard as he could. The hot liquid forced the soggy mass down his throat, hurting it.

Perhaps it was because he was gasping to clear his mouth, that when he spoke it came out in a panicked rush.

‘NO!’ he yelled.

The sides of his mother’s face drew back like curtains.

‘Jack?’

His voice came out so loud it shocked him, too. But there was something about the shout that felt good. Before he could help it, he knew he wanted to do it again.

He jumped up. ‘NO!’ he cried.

‘Jack?’ There was a bewildered expression on her face. ‘Why are you shouting?’

He didn’t know. He just knew it felt good. He tried the new voice again.

‘Because I’m sick of you always making me do what you want to do!’

Her eyes were round and wide, cold amber glass. Jack realized that he wanted to smash that glass, and make her eyes move. Make them move like Nana’s. Make them
do something
.

‘Jack!’ She sounded scared. ‘What’s got into you? Why are you speaking like this? Has Nana said something?’

Tears were seeping into her eyes.

Oh, not
again
.

The little boy slammed both his hands down.

‘NO!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t cry. You always do that! I’m not looking at you any more!’

His mother opened her eyes wide. ‘Jack. I’m not crying! I try very hard not to cry.’

He spun round, with no idea where he was going. He just knew he wasn’t doing this. Clenching his fists, he stalked out of the kitchen into the hallway. He sat on the stairs, pulled on his school shoes without undoing them and grabbed his bookbag.

‘Where are you going?’ Kate asked, following him. She was gulping hard, like she was swallowing horrible medicine.

‘SCHOOL!’

‘But it’s only eight o’clock. Gabe won’t be ready to walk to school with you yet.’

He could hear the panic in her voice. ‘I don’t care. I’m going on my own. Everyone else does. Everyone else’s mum doesn’t think they’re going to get KILLED BY A CAR OR A MURDERER!’

She looked dismayed. He didn’t care. His voice was gaining new volume with every sentence. Every time he did it, it felt like he was blowing things up.

Pow! Pow!

The power was exhilarating.

There was a loud sniff from his mother’s direction. He glowered, looking for his trainers. He didn’t care if she was upset. She never helped him. The truth was sometimes he felt a bit scared about the idea of walking to school on his own, but she should be making him feel
better
about it, not more worried. Helping him.