Something Might Happen (11 page)

Mick laughs.

Of course he’s not, I tell her gently, poor man. He has a home and family of his own in London.

Rosa looks up, interested.

Does he? Has he got kids?

I look at her and realise I have no idea. I know nothing about Lacey except that he comes from London and is on transfer or
whatever they call it.

He can’t have, Nat says, or he couldn’t be away from them this long.

He could, says Rosa. Some dads go away to work. Don’t they, Dad?

Yes, says Mick and I know what he’s thinking. He’s thinking: yes and some dads even work.

He looks too young to have kids, I tell them, but he might do. We should ask him maybe.

* * *

At the clinic, I tear a hole in the rough blue paper on the bed so that June Sedgely can put her face in the gap.

Are you cold? I ask June, who says she’s sixty but I guess is closer to seventy-five.

Not really, says June in her thin, polite voice. I pull the string to turn on the electric wall heater. My fingers are freezing.

I’m sorry, I tell June, my hands are awfully cold.

June laughs agreement as I touch her.

I work my fingers up and down June’s spine.

There’s a little inflammation, I tell her. The connective tissue doesn’t feel right—

You can tell all that, June says, just by feeling?

I smile.

Not always, I tell her. I can’t always feel it. But I can today.

How’s that baby of yours? June asks me. She has kids of her own but none of them have produced a grandchild for her. It’s
a sore point. We’ve discussed it.

Big and heavy, I tell her. She’s growing fat.

She’s a good feeder?

I’ll say.

June tries to nod her head and I feel the movement up and down her spine. A spring, a tremor.

And that poor man, June says. How’s he coping?

Alex? He’s doing OK.

Not what I’ve heard, June says, her voice muffled by the blue paper. I’ve heard he’s gone a bit crazy. Insisting on making
her coffin all by himself.

My fingers stop.

Really?

It’s what I’ve heard. Jan Curdell told me. She heard it from the woman at the farm shop. I don’t know how she knows—

I’m sure it’s not true, I tell her.

You haven’t heard it?

No, I say firmly.

Oh well, says June, and you’d know.

She sighs.

Those poor kids, she says. It’s unthinkable.

Yes, I tell her, it is.

Lacey’s already there when I get home, sitting in the kitchen with Mick while he peels potatoes for supper. Each of them has
a glass of red wine and on the table is an open bag of crisps. Mick has on his thickest jersey with the zip front and no socks.
Lacey has loosened his tie and taken his jacket off—the first time I’ve seen him without it. His hair sticks up as if he’s
been running his hands through it. I don’t know what they’re talking about but when I come in they stop. From upstairs you
can hear the kids—pounding of feet, the frequent shrieks of complaint.

Livvy’s lying on her mat on the floor, gazing at the back of the sofa. I kick off my shoes, pull her onto my lap. Kiss her
four times on the soft, wide moon of her forehead—four fast kisses to make her laugh.

She does. She squeaks.

In the quick pocket of silence that follows, I can feel
Lacey watching her, the way people watch babies when they’re embarrassed or tired or don’t know what to say. I don’t look
at him. I hold her away from me, hold her up under her sweet, fat arms, and then zoom her back for another four kisses. Up
and in, up and back. She does her cartoon giggle. He watches her, watches me.

Mick grabs a handful of crisps.

So, he goes, how was work?

Oh, I reply, OK.

You sound fed up.

No, I say, I don’t think so. Not fed up. Just tired.

I look at Lacey and he smiles at me. I think what a nice smile he has—expectant, careful, kind. And then the kids come down.

What’s for tea? asks Jordan, sniffing the air.

Rosa eyes the crisps while holding her kitten nuzzled against her shoulder.

Maria peed on the beanbag, she says. It wasn’t her fault.

Get everyone to wash their hands, Mick says.

Can I have a crisp? says Rosa.

No, says Mick. Wash your hands.

From now on, Nat says, the little ones are banned from PlayStation. I mean it.

I wish he wouldn’t say that! We’re not little! screams Rosa.

The kitten wriggles away and jumps to the floor. The cat flap bangs and before anyone can grab his collar, Fletcher rushes
at it with a great long skid across the floor, barking loudly.

Why can’t I? says Rosa, back on the crisps. Can’t I even have one?

Crisps are for grown-ups, I tell her.

Oh great! she says. I get it—and kids are just minor beings, right?

Rosa slams out of the room. Mick yells at her to come right back. Nat hits Jordan and he bursts into tears.

Mick throws a tea towel onto the table.

Still glad you came? he says to Lacey.

After supper, the kids go to bed and we sit and watch the news. Lennie isn’t on it any more. Now it’s just about the government
and war and tax. Mick seems to have run out of talking. He half does the crossword, half throws a tennis ball for Fletch.
Each time he chucks it, the dog bounces off to fetch it, drops it at his feet, then sinks down, chin on paws, eyes on Mick’s
face. If Mick doesn’t throw it again within five seconds, he barks.

That dog doesn’t give up, does he? Lacey remarks at one point and I think Mick laughs.

When Lacey yawns and excuses himself, I go upstairs with him to show him where to go and give him towels and stuff. The landing
is dark and messy, with Mick’s papers strewn on the floor and washing hanging on the airer. The sound of breathing comes from
Jordan’s room.

He doesn’t exactly snore, I tell Lacey, but he’s a bit of a heavy breather. I hope he doesn’t keep you awake.

Lacey smiles.

I can sleep through anything, he says.

Lucky you.

I know. It’s a skill I was born with.

I laugh and so does he.

We stand on the landing together in the half-darkness and I hand him a big towel and a small one, both fat and crunchy from
the outside washing line.

There’s hot water, I tell him, if you want a bath.

Thanks, he says, but I’m OK. All I want to do is sleep.

He looks at me. We stand there a moment, with only the mess and the darkness between us.

It’s very good of you, he says.

Don’t be silly, I say.

Well, it is.

He hesitates.

What? I say.

Mick told me, he says. About Al—what he did.

I feel the heat rush to my face.

He did?

You shouldn’t worry about it, you know.

I’m not—I mean, I’m not worried about that. It’s just, I’m worried about him.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing, Lacey says, not just now.

I say nothing.

He’s barely able to think straight.

OK, I say. You’re right, I know.

I smile.

What?

Mick wasn’t supposed to tell you—

Oh? I’m sorry.

It’s OK.

We stand there a moment on the landing and then we say goodnight.

Rosa asked me something, I say suddenly.

Oh?

Yes. She asked me if you had kids.

He looks at me.

And I didn’t know the answer. We hardly know anything about you.

He looks at me and my heart thumps.

Or—your life, I say.

My life?

Yes, I say in a whisper.

There’s nothing to know, he says.

Oh?

I mean, I don’t. No kids, no wife—

Nobody?

Just a girlfriend.

I blink.

Natasha, he says.

Ah, I say. In London?

In London, yes.

Oh, I say.

Tess, he says softly, look—

Yes?

I’d like to talk to you—about all of this—about Alex. Are you around? Maybe tomorrow? Or the day after?

I almost laugh.

I’m around, I say, all the time. You know I am.

He smiles.

I’ll find you then?

Yes, I tell him. Find me.

BUT IT’S NOT JUST LACEY WHO WANTS TO TALK. MAWHIN
ney wants to interview me again. Alone, he says, without Mick.

An incident room has been set up in the back of the Dolphin Diner on the pier, in the storerooms, where catering boxes of
ketchup and salad cream, and bumper-sized tins of peeled plum tomatoes and baked beans, are piled to the ceiling. Orange plastic
stacking chairs and Formica tables have been borrowed from the school and the murder squad have brought in filing cabinets
and phones and a couple of computers. Each window contains a smooth grey square of sea. When the weather’s bad, the walls
moan and shudder and waves heave and smash against the windows.

Mick’s already been in there. He says that even with the
big doors shut, you can still smell the frying and hear the clatter of cups and hiss of steam from the Ramirez brothers in
the Dolphin Diner. Normally the brothers would be thinking of shutting down now for the winter, but not this year. It’s their
busiest October ever. They’ve never taken so much out of season.

Taped to the wall of the incident room is a map of the town blown up big, with yellow Post-it notes all over it and the car
park and pier area outlined in pink DayGlo marker. Other significant spots such as Alex and Lennie’s cottage and the area
around the school are also marked in colours.

Looking at this map, I can’t believe how the distance between all those familiar places is skewed and unlikely. The detailed
hugeness of it turns our neat and cosy town into this great big alarming place full of alleyways and twisty streets and endless
nooks and crannies. Places where a murder could happen. Places where a murderer could quite easily slink away and hide.

Mawhinney asks me to go in and see him at two, but at five past he’s still not there.

It’s lunch, says a man sitting at a desk eating a burger. He said he had some stuff to do.

When I tell him Mawhinney was expecting me, he shrugs.

I can call him on his mobile if you like?

He picks up a biro and uses it to stir his coffee.

No, I say, it’s OK. I’ll go for a walk, shall I?

Ten minutes, says the man. Give him at least ten.

* * *

I have Liv in her sling, so I decide to go down on the beach, something I can’t easily do with the buggy. The wide concrete
steps are gritty with sand, the public toilets are shut for the winter. So is the coastguard’s red and yellow hut, padlocked
up.

The tide is right in and brown water crashes against the groynes and against the pairs of legs of the pier which stretch a
long way out to sea. Rosa always says it looks like a big long creature, crawling slowly away from the shore.

I shut my eyes for a second, feel sun squeezing through the clouds and onto my face. The wind blows my hair and ruffles Livvy’s
too, but she’s deep asleep, head wedged against the strap of the sling. A seagull swoops down over us and for a second its
shadow wobbles on the sand. Then away. When the sun goes in, all the shingle turns dark blue.

Far off there’s a young man with fair hair walking along the beach with a carrier bag. If I look the other way, I can just
see the car park, but I won’t look, not today. Sometimes, in a bad winter, that part of the prom is sandbagged up and the
beach huts beyond the pier are dragged into the car park and stood there on bricks, since on a rough night the sea can come
crashing over the low wall. If that had been the case this year, then Lennie couldn’t have parked there.

I walk a little bit further along, away from the pier, but the sling is killing my shoulders and anyway when I turn around
I see someone I think is Mawhinney going in, so I go back.

* * *

He says he’s sorry, that he got waylaid. He seems more tired than when I last saw him. His clothes smell of smoke, his jacket’s
creased, his tie’s pulled undone.

How’s that baby of yours, then? he asks me, peering at Liv’s dark head in the sling. Got the feeding sorted yet?

Not really, I say.

Our first was the worst, he says. The second was a dream after that.

Better that way round, I tell him.

But we stopped there, he says. And you’ve got four? I don’t know how you do it, how you manage.

We don’t always, I tell him, though I know it’s not true, not really. And also that Mick would never tell anyone that. Mick
would never even feel it. He may not have wanted Livvy, not really, but once the deed is done, he’s loyal. That’s Mick for
you.

OK, Mawhinney says and he pulls out a bunch of files from behind him then puts them down again. What I wanted to ask you is,
do you know a boy named Darren Sims?

Yes, I tell him, surprised. Of course. Everyone knows Darren. Why?

Mawhinney looks at me and hesitates.

Works at the farm shop in Blythford?

That’s right, I say. Now and then he does, anyway. I think he just helps out. Why?

He’s been in already, of course, to talk to us—all those young blokes have—funny lad is he?

He has a few problems, I tell Mawhinney carefully. Educationally, I mean. But he’s OK. He means well.

Yes, Mawhinney says slowly. That’s about what I thought.

Why do you want to know about him? I ask.

Mawhinney hesitates.

Despite the dumpy warmth of Livvy against me, I shiver. Outside you can hear the sea slamming at the creeping legs of the
pier. I wait for him to answer. Instead he goes off on another tack.

You and Mrs Daniels—Lennie—were good friends? he says. Close friends, you know, intimate?

Yes, I tell him, slightly impatient. Yes, you know we were.

Mawhinney spreads his fingers out on the table. He takes a breath and looks at them as if they were something interesting
and new.

The thing is, he says, and this is very difficult, you must forgive me, I know how this must sound—would she have told you
if she was involved with Darren in any way?