Accidents Happen (36 page)

As Kate stood gasping, the Spanish girl dropped the phone and, without looking back, the two girls raced off along the unlit path, frantically sobbing.

Kate fell back into the shadows.

What had she done?

She had to get out of here. She scrambled out onto the path, and hurried in the opposite direction to the girls, till, minutes later, the large patch of moonlit sky opened up ahead of her, telling her she was nearing the cricket field.

Tears started to form in her eyes at the sound of the girls’ cries.

As she approached at a jog, she saw the distant movement of the bat-watchers and dropped again behind a tree. They were gathered in larger groups and heading back towards the hut. Checking there were no suspicious rangers walking around with torches to see where the scream had come from, she crept behind the cricket scoreboard and crouched down, waiting for Jago.

Nettles stung her ankle, but she didn’t care.

She sat in the dark, heart thumping, incredulous.

Where the hell had that come from?

A hand suddenly appeared round the back of the scoreboard and grabbed her, making her gasp.

‘Quick,’ Jago whispered. ‘They’re going to do a head count.’

Jumping up, she followed him around the perimeter hedge of the cafe towards the rangers’ hut.

‘Did you hear the scream?’ she whispered as they crept along.

Jago shrugged. ‘It sounded as if it came from the road. Nobody took much notice.’

They reached the dark mass of the group, keeping their faces hidden inside their hoodies and looking at the ground as a ranger shone a torch over the tops of their heads, and counted.

‘Twenty?’ he said.

‘Yup. Twenty,’ the other ranger agreed.

Kate felt Jago grip her hand firmly as the rangers began to lead the group back to Onslow Gate, one in front, and one behind. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe what she’d done.

Sickened by her own behaviour.

Surreptitiously, she kept looking for the girls, knowing, however, that they would be lost now, far over the side of the woods, about to be locked in for the night, with no torch, the Spanish girl’s phone lying on the ground where she had dropped it.

The other girl might have a phone, she told herself. And if she doesn’t, they can listen out for the traffic and find their way to the fence. Climb over.

She gripped Jago’s hand as they moved through the woods, a terrible sense of guilt descending on her, fighting the urge to go back for the girls and explain.

‘What’s up, J?’ Gabe yelled, arriving back.

Jack was standing on the trampoline, desperately grabbing his sleeping bag and bed roll.

‘What?’ Gabe said, his nerves finally showing. ‘I saw something. Over there. Someone watching us.’

‘Where?’ Damon shouted, coming up behind him.

Jack pointed, trying not to cry. ‘Someone over there. Behind the fence.’

‘Where?’

Gabe peered over. ‘I can’t see anything.’

Jack stood up. ‘There is someone there!’ he shouted at them. ‘Stop telling me I’m LYING!’

The boys both looked at him, stunned.

They’d never heard him shout before.

‘There,’ Jack said dropping his voice.

He turned at pointed at the fence, his sleeping bag in his hand.

But the eyes had gone.

‘You’re just imagining it, Jack,’ Gabe said, anxiety entering his own voice.

‘Come on,’ Damon said, sitting down and picking up his cards. ‘Ignore him. Want us to call your mummy?’ He sniggered. ‘Oh no. That’s right. You can’t. She’s in London with her boyfriend.’

‘Shut up, Damon,’ Gabe said, looking at Jack.

‘Sorry,’ Damon said in a stupid voice.

‘Come on, J, it’s all right,’ Gabe said quietly. ‘Look, there’s nothing there.’

Jack shook his head. He put his sleeping bag back down and picked up his cards, knowing they were wrong and he was right.

‘Jack – look!’ Gabe said again.

He grabbed Jack’s shoulder and made him turn round.

The eyes were gone. And now nobody would believe him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Magnus arrived back from Gabe’s garden at 10.30 p.m., took off his jacket, and sat on the bed, satisfied.

The woman was in London and wouldn’t be back till late.

The boy was on the trampoline for the night.

Lifting Kate’s laptop up from the floor, Magnus climbed into Jack’s bed, put the laptop on his knee, turned on the small reading lamp beside Jack’s bed that no one could see from outside, and stuffed into his mouth a flapjack that he’d taken from the kitchen.

This was his third. He’d also had a spoonful of half a lasagne he’d found in the fridge.

As he finished the flapjack he gave a loud burp, then settled back down.

Right, it was time.

Magnus pulled up a blank document and thought for a long time what to call it. It had to be something the woman wouldn’t notice, that could sit among the documents on her computer, unseen by her.

He thought of the perfect phrase in his own language, then translated it to the best word he could think of in English.

‘Brr brr, brr,’ he sang.

Then he carried on typing, carefully looking at each word, checking back on the handwritten note he’d brought from next door to make sure he had the English words right.

When he’d finished he sat back with a sigh, contented. He saved the document, and hid it among her folder called ‘accounts’. The last time she’d looked in there was when she did her tax return in January.

Magnus lay back, shut the laptop and closed his eyes for a moment on Jack’s bed.

He preferred Kate’s room. It smelt of that nice vanilla hand-cream.

But after the blonde woman had nearly caught him in the house last Saturday night, he was going to stay in the boy’s room, with the main lights off this evening, just in case she turned up again, sticking her little pointy noise into his business. It was nice and cosy here. He might just stay here for a while and think through whether there was anything else to do before he wrapped this up for good.

With a tinge of sadness he suddenly realized that tonight would be his last night in the woman’s house.

He’d nearly done what he came here to do.

Magnus shut his eyes, just for a moment, saving himself for the last.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Apart from a few cars heading back from a night out in London, the M40 was quiet by the time Kate and Jago reached it, most people having already travelled to where they needed to be by Saturday night. The motorway stretched ahead into the black night, with just the odd glow of rear lights flitting by like fireflies.

Kate and Jago drove in silence for thirty miles. It was when they reached the hill that dipped steeply down, overlooking Chinnor and the lights of farms and villages spread for miles across the valley, that Kate realized she was looking forward to going home.

And by that, for the first time in four years, she realized with surprise that she meant Oxford.

Jago drove slowly, his arm on the armrest, watching ahead thoughtfully.

A lorry with Spanish number plates overtook them, making good use of the empty night road to deliver its goods north of London.

‘Madrid’, it said on the side.

Kate looked away, ashamed.

‘What?’ Jago said.

She moved her eyes across the valley. There was no way she could tell him what she’d done to the girls’ hair. She couldn’t believe it herself right now. ‘Nothing.’

‘Kate, are you sure? Did something happen . . .?’

‘No.’

‘Kate, listen. Don’t worry. It was a harmless prank.’

She watched the lorry disappear into the dark, its brake lights flashing back at her like dragon’s eyes. Kate rubbed at a raindrop on the outside of the window, even though she knew she couldn’t wipe it away.

She looked at Jago, his finger in his mouth thoughtfully as he drove with one hand. What would he think if she told him what she’d done?

And then she knew, she could never tell anyone.

What had come over her?

Jago turned and saw her face.

‘Kate! Cheer up! They’ll be fine. As far as they’re concerned, they just got lost from the ranger. Their English wasn’t very good – when they try to explain to people what happened, that’s probably what they’ll think happened too: that they just got lost, panicked, then freaked themselves out.’ He touched her leg. ‘Listen. This was about you, not them. Don’t worry. It’s not as if you hurt them.’

Kate looked up at the black sky. In the daytime, she knew red kites hovered over it, searching for prey, wings held aloft, menacingly.

The light caress of his finger on her leg sent an intense shiver through her.

‘But it was interesting, huh?’ Jago asked. ‘Being a predator.’ He growled when he said the word. His hand now rested on her leg, squeezed it tighter.

She kept her gaze on the dark sky, trying to ignore the effect his touch had on her. ‘I don’t know.’

The thing was, she had hurt those girls. She hadn’t stabbed them or punched them, but for the rest of their lives, they would find themselves wondering who had touched them that night. She shut her eyes, running through the implications.

They might never go out at night again alone.

They might even give up their dream of living in London.

She thought back to the intense hatred she’d felt in Highgate Woods towards those men who killed Hugo. What had she let those feelings do to her? The preyed-upon becomes predator. The bullied becomes the bully. In some ways, she was as bad as those men.

Jago turned the CD player on. American alternative folk music drifted into the car.

‘Anyway,’ Jago said, ‘I think we’re probably pushing our luck now. Let’s call it a day next weekend. One more step to finish off. And I’ll make it a fun one, I promise. No more scaring people or breaking the law.’

She drew her finger down a whole line of raindrops.

‘I can’t do something like that again, Jago. Involving other people. They looked like sweet, nice girls.’

‘Kate,’ he said, lifting away his hand from her leg, to indicate to overtake a minibus. ‘We won’t, I promise. And remember, bad things happen to nice girls, as you well know. Seriously, don’t worry about it. They’ll be fine and you’ve proved a point to yourself.’

She lifted her head. ‘Hmm, well, I don’t feel like a very nice girl tonight.’

She wanted him to put his hand back on her leg. It felt cold where he’d taken it away.

As he pulled back into the slow lane, he reached out instead and stroked the bare flesh of her arm lightly. She turned and met the long look he gave her. ‘Good,’ he murmured, smiling.

She turned away, embarrassed at the intense waves even the lightest touch or suggestion from him sent throughout her body. He continued to stroke her arm, slowly. She didn’t want him to stop, yet wondered how much longer she could bear it. Forgotten sensations drifted over her, unsettling her. Sensations she thought she would never want again with anyone but Hugo.

But
more intense than she remembered
.

What was happening to her?

Had she ever felt out of control like this with Hugo?

As Jago casually lengthened his caress, from her upper arm down to her elbow, Kate struggled to maintain her composure, knowing she was close to throwing away her dignity and asking a man she had only known a short time to pull off the M40 right now, and take her down a dark country lane to a layby where nobody could see them.

She shook her head, astonished. What was happening to her? What had being in the woods done to her?

For the first time Kate wondered if the person she was becoming was actually that much better than the person she was leaving behind.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

It was the screeching call of an alarm that woke him.

At first Magnus thought he was back in the prison cell, lying above Jan, a fellow burglar, and that it was the brutal early morning wake-up call.

Beep beep beep
.

Magnus tossed and turned in Jack’s bed. It was warm. He didn’t want to get up.

‘Do you want a drink?’ he heard a woman’s voice say.

Magnus sat upright in the pitch black.

Where was he? He put out a hand and felt the edges of a small bed.

A light came on downstairs in the hall, illuminating a corner of the Arsenal poster beside his head through a crack in the door.

The boy’s room!

He’d fallen asleep.

‘Have you got a whisky, by any chance?’ he heard a man say in a Scottish voice.

Magnus froze. The skinny woman Kate was downstairs and not alone.

It felt so strange to see Jago in her house.

Kate dropped her bag on the kitchen table, horribly self-conscious of everything she saw as she looked around. Jack’s football boots by the door, the pile of ironing in the kitchen, the photo Hugo had taken of Jack watching her plane, on the wall. She saw Jago look at it.

‘Great picture. Great house, Kate.’ He turned around. ‘It’s beautiful.’

She took off her coat. ‘Thanks.’

What would happen if Jago became part of her life? she thought, turning to find two glasses in the kitchen cupboard. Would she have to remove the photos of Hugo? Take away his Georgian furniture? His CDs? How would Jack even start to understand?

As if he sensed she was lost in thought, Jago came up behind her. She felt his hands on her shoulders.

He leaned his face on her shoulder and inhaled deeply.

‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ he said.

She paused with her hands in mid-air. ‘Hmm?’

‘I saw Marla in London on Wednesday night.’

Kate tensed. No, please, she thought.

‘She came on the Eurostar from Paris, and I met her in a bar at Waterloo.’

Jago stroked Kate’s shoulder. ‘She was in a state, talking about getting back together again and . . .’

He turned Kate round in his arms. She kept her eyes on his chest, unable to look into his eyes in case what she dreaded was present there. ‘And I told her that I was seeing someone. And that I wouldn’t be coming to North Carolina in August now, and I’d get a mate at the university to pick up my stuff from hers and get it shipped back here.’