Free Accidents Happen by Louise Millar Page B

back to her about the casserole. ‘It had not gone .’
    Kate stopped.
    ‘Must have been Jack,’ she reassured herself out loud.
    She removed the photo, propped it on the desk, then lifted her eyes to meet Hugo’s. It was a good photo. Saskia had taken it secretly through the kitchen window of their Highgate house five years ago. Unaware, Kate was lying back on Hugo’s chest, his hand casually lying across the breast of her shirt. She was wearing a headscarf from painting Jack’s room. Her face was tilted up, laughing. He was trying not to smile at her bad joke. Behind them was the magnolia tree, just a baby then, in a pot, its first pink blossoms yet to burst through.
    Kate shook her head, the irony of it, painful.
    ‘Don’t laugh at me,’ Hugo had been saying, putting on his hurt voice.
    His fingers played on her rib below her bra, slowly, with no intent, while he used his other hand to write on a pad placed on the garden table.
    ‘But how can I help it? You’re so funny. See? I can’t stop laughing at you . . .’ Kate opened her mouth as if to laugh – then froze. ‘Oh wait – yes I can.’
    ‘Fuck off.’ He pinched her skin through her top, and carried on writing.
    She lay back on the garden bench, looking at the baby magnolia tree.
    ‘What are you writing?’ she asked.
    ‘Instructions for your assassination.’
    ‘No, really.’
    ‘Instructions for your assassination.’
    ‘That’s a nice thing to say to your poor wife whose parents were killed,’ she said in a whiny voice, screwing up her eyes and laughing silently at her own mean joke. They both knew he was cornered.
    He sighed loudly, and she grinned with satisfaction, feeling his chest reverberate under her.
    ‘Some notes for the refurb on Algon Terrace,’ he grunted.
    She sat up sideways to see one of his neat sketches of a room dominated by a Georgian fireplace.
    She lay back again, wondering where to plant the magnolia. If they put it just to the right, it would grow under Jack’s bedroom. By the time he was eight or nine, the blooms would reach his window.
    ‘It’s not that I think you shouldn’t do it . . .’ Hugo started.
    ‘But . . .’
    ‘Well, I just don’t want you to do it.’
    ‘Hugo,’ she groaned, hitting his chest. ‘Honestly. Don’t start. It’s what I want for my thirtieth. You can’t say no.’
    ‘What about Jack?’ he said, grabbing her hand and playing with it.
    ‘What do you think’s going to happen?’ she asked, running his fingers through her own. ‘I thought you wanted me to get back to normal again. Have some fun?’
    ‘You are back to normal.’ He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. ‘Normal for a weirdo, anyway.’
    She dug her elbow into his rib.
    He shifted his weight to release it. ‘Really. I just don’t think it’s a good idea.’
    Kate tried to sit up. ‘You’re not serious?’ she asked.
    He shrugged, sipping his beer and continuing to write. ‘I’ve just got a bad feeling about it.’
    She threw her hands up. ‘Says the man who’s bought a car that looks like a penis.’
    He pinched her harder, and carried on sketching.
    ‘What do you think about all this, Sass?’ she said, as her sister-in-law wandered outside to the garden from the kitchen, waving a camera.
    Saskia settled herself on Kate’s thighs gently, and leaned back.
    ‘Don’t know, don’t care. Look. . .’
    Hugo and Kate peered forward to see the image of themselves, with Kate laughing at her own joke, and Hugo trying to hide his grin.
    ‘ You were laugh-ing! ’ Kate sang childishly.
    ‘Right. That’s it. Both of you, off,’ Hugo grunted, pushing off the combined weight of his wife and sister. ‘I’m not sitting here being harassed. What time is your film?’
    ‘Half eight?’ Kate and Saskia said in unison, checking with each other.
    ‘Right. I’m going for a quick drive in my penis car then.’
    That had been the summer, five years into their marriage, when she had finally emerged from the