Free Accidents Happen by Louise Millar Page A

he was starting to forget, would return from behind those amber glass eyes. He had to do it for Dad, in case Dad was watching, counting on him to look after Mum, counting on him to be there waiting if she ever came back.
    So Jack stayed there, still, inside Kate’s embrace, trying to stay hopeful that she was still somewhere inside.
    It was after nine by the time Kate had cleaned Jack up and she could drop him at primary school, nervously gauging his Year Six teacher’s expression through the window as he entered the classroom. Kate left before Ms Corrigan could call her back. She knew that, under scrutiny, her eyes would expose the lie about the skateboard.
    She drove home and ran upstairs to her office, sat at her desk and looked out at the rich green leaves of the magnolia tree that had months before shed its pink flowers onto the lawn. She sat there for an hour, doodling tight-knit webs and teetering towers onto white paper, then for another hour.
    Jack’s face haunted her vision. Blood dripping from his forehead. The angry voice that sounded as if it had emerged from a long tunnel, thickened by echoes. His glance of disgust when she asked him not to tell Nana what had happened.
    Social Services. That was what Helen had said on Friday.
    Kate bit her thumbnail. The skin around it was raw and wet.
    From nowhere, a forgotten memory of her mother-in-law returned. A memory from fourteen years ago that Kate thought she had long put to rest. It had been the first time, she had met Richard and Helen. She and Hugo had arrived at their house for Sunday lunch, trying to shake off the hangover from a student party in London the night before. Helen had come behind Richard down the hallway, drying her hands on a tea towel. Kate had smiled nervously as she went to hold out a hand.
    ‘Ah, my precious boy,’ Helen had said, ignoring her, instead reaching up to Hugo’s face. She touched his cheeks tenderly, while Kate stood to the side, feeling awkward. Hugo had given her a flutter of a wink over his mother’s head.
    ‘How are you, my darling?’ Helen asked.
    Hugo took her hands in his own, physically turning her to the left. ‘Good! Mum! This is Kate.’
    Kate knew from the emphasis he placed on her name that he was introducing her to Helen as someone significant. Someone he and his mother had already discussed. But, as Helen turned her pale watery green eyes on Kate, Kate suspected, already, that she’d failed. Right there, hungover, in her studenty jeans and scuffed boots, with her Shropshire accent and her state school education, she knew that everything Helen, in her grand riverside house, had been hoping for had not appeared this morning.
    ‘Hi,’ Kate said, holding out a hand. ‘Nice to meet you.’
    ‘Hello, Kate,’ Helen said, taking it. She displayed a modest smile. The smile stretched as she turned back to Hugo, only to find him watching Kate, mesmerized.
    Later, Kate would wonder if that was when Helen decided that whatever concerns she had about Kate’s suitability for her ‘precious boy’ were to be packed away immediately. That the glow in her son’s eyes as he looked at Kate told her that this was deadly serious. There was no going back for him.
    Certainly, Helen had never treated her like that again, to the point where Kate had convinced herself that she had imagined that first encounter. Blamed it on her hangover.
    Till now.
    She looked out of the window as the sun disappeared around the back of the garden. What if that malevolent undercurrent she’d glimpsed in Helen on their first meeting did exist? Had always existed, but been hidden for Hugo’s sake, then Jack’s?
    On impulse, Kate sat back and opened a drawer in her desk, to take out a photo.
    She hesitated, her fingers outstretched in mid-air.
    The photo was turned on its front, not face-up as she had left it on top of her work diary.
    Her heart pounding, Kate glanced round her office. Had she been burgled again?
    Helen’s irritated words flew