Something Might Happen (8 page)

By the time Mick gets back I’ve got Jordan into the bath. Then climbed the stairs to watch the sun go down over the creek
from Nat’s shambles of a room at the top of the house.

It’s a violent, chemical sunset—smouldering as if something poisonous has been chucked across it. The colours are sharp and
exhausting—or is that three glasses of wine on an empty stomach? Just watching it takes the breath out of me. I watch for
a long time. It feels like the first time I’ve looked properly at anything since Lennie’s death.

After that I sit down and try to feed Liv, but she’s in a wriggly, fed-up mood. Maybe I shouldn’t have had the wine. And soon
after, there’s the sound of the front door, keys dropped on the shelf. My heart sinks.

He comes in bringing with him the smell of outside, plumps heavily down in a chair with his jacket still on.

Well, he says.

I wait and he looks at me.

Well?

He was wrong.

Who was?

Him. The guy who phoned.

Oh.

Yeah. I mean her face was clean, but—

I feel the blood creep down my body.

But what—?

Yeah.

He takes a breath, pauses, blinks hard.

Oh darling, I say.

He is not exactly crying. He takes a breath, a gulp, covers his eyes.

What he omitted to tell me, he says in a strangled voice, is that the top of her head is fucking well gone.

No—

He doesn’t look at me.

There’s nothing there, Tess.

You could see?

Mick shuts his eyes and the blood rushes to my head.

There was a sheet over it, he says, but yes, you could see.

Liv begins to cry. I try to put her back on the nipple, teasing her mouth open with my fingers. But a curdled lump of milk
slides out of her mouth and down into my bra, making everything wet and cheesy.

I grab the cloth.

I’m sorry, I tell him.

What do you mean? It’s not your fault.

Look, I begin.

He pushes both fists into his eyes.

Don’t always try to make things better, he says, I mean it, Tess. Leave it, OK?

OK.

We sit in silence for a moment. The room swerves. My bra is cold and damp against my skin. I feel a little sick.

Have a drink, I tell him. I did.

I did, I think, and it worked.

Clearly, he says.

We watched a whole Bond film, I tell him, Jordan and me, all the way through.

You’re drunk, he points out.

Yes, I agree—and I hold my baby tight and close my eyes and the room whistles brightly and then just fades away.

OUR TOWN IS SURROUNDED ON THREE SIDES BY
marshes—Bulcamp Marshes, Angel Marshes, Tinker’s and Woodsend and Buss Creek. Now they’re beauty spots where birdwatchers
go, but a long time ago, people drowned there. There are all sorts of stories.

Ellen Bloom aged 20 months, beloved daughter of Chad and Susannah, stumbling down the mud flats after dark. Rosa once found
Ellen’s little stone, strangled by ivy and splattered with lichen, in the graveyard at St Margaret’s.

Or, the young man who forced himself on a local girl and then tied a brick around his foot and drowned out of shame. Or the
girl who, rushing to see her secret lover, took a fatal wrong turn and was sucked down like a leaf. Two seconds of bad luck
and your life closes over your head.

The most recent is poor Anne Edmondson’s son Brian. Many in the town still remember him. A clever lad and keen sailor, all
set to read engineering at Leeds University. The plaque’s inside the church. Brian John Edmondson aged 17 years and a good
swimmer. Departed this life August 10th, 1958. No one knows why he just went out there one still summer night and drowned.

People say that if you drive down the old Dunwich Road at night and dare to stop the car and turn off the engine, you’ll hear
things.

Oh yeah? Alex and Mick say when Lennie and I come home and tell them this. You mean the fucking owls and wind in the trees.

I used to laugh too. Until Roger Farmiloe who pumps the petrol at Wade’s garage told me he’d heard crying out there. So had
his dad. And his uncle Peter too—fifteen years in the Merchant Navy and would laugh in your face if you said you believed
in ghosts, Roger said. And yet.

In fact many brewery workers and darts players, farmhands and van drivers, people who you’d think might scoff or know better,
have wound down their windows on dark nights and been so scared that they’ve driven back into town in a blazing hurry and
refused to go back, not even if you paid them, or so they’ve all said.

Yes, says Mick, but after how many pints at The Anchor?

None, I reply. Roger said his uncle Peter was stone-cold sober.

This cracks him up.

That’s harder to believe than all the fucking ghost stories put together, he says, laughing.

Lennie’s death is good for trade, with both police and reporters in town. Both hotels are immediately full and the coffee
shops, delis and snack bars have queues forming outside at lunchtime. Linny’s The Outfitters even considers opening up the
room at the back and laying on some kind of cold, takeaway food, something it has not thought of doing since back during the
summer of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in seventy-six.

Even Somerfield runs out of bread and meat halfway through the week and has to be restocked. And The Griddle stays open till
seven each evening serving its famous cream teas and exotic ice creams, instead of closing as it normally does at half past
five, though Ann Slaughter is heard to complain that Mei Yuen’s next door starts frying at five and the smell puts people
off their tea.

The photo that I gave to Lacey appears on TV as well as on the front page of the papers. I think Mick took it on holiday in
France a couple of years ago when we all went away together and liked it so much we thought we’d always do it except we didn’t,
we never did it again.

In it she is wearing a striped pinkish T-shirt and she’s smiling and screwing her eyes up against the bright sunshine and
her hair is that little bit longer, strands of it caught in the wind across her face. She’s not tanned—Lennie was too fair
to tan—but she looks well and happy, standing
there next to her boys. Of course the papers cut Max and Con off—they wanted just Lennie. So there she is, oblivious, alone
and smiling.

And suddenly, there she is, all around us, even in Curdell’s newsagent’s on the High Street. It’s too much for some people,
to see her beaming out at them like that from the racks. Too close up and personal. One or two get all shaky or have a little
cry when they go in to buy cigarettes or their lottery ticket. Some mums won’t even take their kids in the shop but leave
them outside instead, by the fishing nets and buckets and spades and windmills, next to the Wall’s Ice Cream sign that flaps
in the wind in the place where people usually tie their dogs.

On the Friday I go back in to work. Though everyone understands why I’ve been postponing appointments, I can’t leave the clinic
shut for long. I have a number of older patients who rely on me.

It smells cold in there—we have a constant problem, with the damp. I turn on the heating and water the plants, stuff some
towels in the washing machine and turn on the computer to look up the appointments. As it crackles into life, I realise that
Lennie’s e-mails from just a few days ago will still be on it. Not wanting to see them, I go straight into the diary.

I’ve been there about twenty minutes when there’s a knock on the door at the front. It’s not the door we use. Patients come
in through a side door in the alleyway they call
Dene Walk. I lift the front blinds and see that it’s Lacey. Surprised, I indicate to him to go round to the side.

Sorry, he says when I open the door in my white coat, jeans and clogs with my woolly jacket still on top, I should have phoned—

No, no, I say. It’s OK.

Have you got a moment?

He looks past me into the room. I step aside to let him in.

As I apologise for the cold and explain that the heating system’s old and takes a while to get going, I feel myself blushing.
If he notices, he doesn’t show it.

You work alone here?

I’ve done less since the baby. There used to be a partner. But he left and went back to London. Making tons more money there.

You’re busy?

I shrug.

There’s enough to keep me going.

No, he says, I meant—today.

Oh, I say, colouring furiously again. No one’s in till this afternoon—I mean, I cancelled all the earlier appointments this
week. It’s the first time I’ve been in—since—

He nods.

I just came in to get things—organised.

I offer him a chair and he sits, looks around him.

What’s the smell? he asks me.

I frown and sniff.

Oh. I don’t know. Lavender? I use a lot of oils.

He looks at me.

Do you? What for?

Massage, I tell him. Soft-tissue work.

He seems to think about this. And then, I’m sorry, he says. About the other day. The morgue.

Oh, I say, it wasn’t your fault.

Was he OK?

Just upset, I tell him. What about Al? I haven’t seen him.

Lacey looks at me.

Eucalyptus, he says.

I feel myself smile.

The smell—

Yes. Quite probably.

Just then Liv gives a gasp from under the desk. I normally put her down on a small mattress on the floor behind the filing
cabinets.

Lacey laughs in surprise.

You’ve got the baby down there?

I laugh back and squat down to pull her up against me. She smells hot and fusty, of sleep and piss.

She gazes at Lacey and then she smiles. So does he.

You’re honoured, I tell him. Mostly she cries when she sees strangers.

Am I a stranger?

Well—

She’s seen me before, he points out.

OK. But not very much.

He stands up then and I’m thinking several things—how hard he is to talk to, how awkward and how this awkwardness
makes me shy. And also that he seems to be about to go and I don’t even know why he came, what he came to say.

Look, he says abruptly, do you want some coffee or something?

Coffee?

Yes.

He coughs a little cough of embarrassment and my heart races. I glance down at Liv and flush again.

We have coffee here, I say.

No, he says. No—I mean out somewhere.

I laugh.

I haven’t got long.

Come on.

All right, I tell him, OK, fine.

Outside it has turned into an OK day. Warmish and lightish, almost not like autumn at all, but late, lingering summer, the
last dregs of brightness.

I put Liv in the buggy, tuck the blanket in around her and clip her in. Her small white fingers flutter a moment on my wrist
and I feel almost happy.

So, he says as we wheel up the High Street. Where to?

No idea, I say.

Come on, he says, you know this place.

OK, I go. Follow me.

We head for the front, the prom. Up past Curdell’s and the grocer’s and The King’s Head and John Empson’s and Somerfield.
Across the marketplace, wheels joggling on the
cobbles. He doesn’t speak. I glance at his reflection in the dark windows of Pam’s Florist’s. I feel him beside me but I don’t
look.

The Whole Loaf Deli has its shades down as if it’s lunch. Hard to tell if they’re open or not. Outside there are two people
with large woven shopping baskets.

Do you know, I ask him since he has already brought it up, how soon they’ll release her—the body, I mean?

You mean for a funeral? he says and I nod.

He hesitates, pushing his hands through his hair.

No, he says, not really. It could take a while.

We’ve reached the Sailors’ Reading Room. He glances uncertainly down the steep and narrow steps to the prom. The metal handrail
is splashed in places with birdshit. One or two pink poppies still bloom in the gorse.

Can you help me lift it? I ask him.

What, all the way down there? That’s where we’re going?

It’s worth it, you’ll see.

He takes the other side of the buggy and helps me down, me in front and him behind.

You know, he says once we reach the concrete esplanade at the bottom and put the buggy down, how Alex feels? About her heart?

I flush with surprise.

What? What about it?

Getting it back, I mean.

I stop the buggy and turn to stare at him properly. The wind drops and my head feels suddenly warm and light.

No, I say, I don’t. What do you mean?

That he doesn’t want to bury her without it?

Oh, I say. He hasn’t said that to me.

Oh, well I’m sorry. I thought he might have.

No.

Lacey seems flustered. Again he pushes his hair back from his head—a pointless thing to do since it springs straight back.

I think, he says slowly, hesitating, I mean, I don’t know how to put this, but I think Alex may have unrealistic ideas about
what I can do—

You?

With regard to bringing it back I mean. Finding it.

I take a breath.

Well, you can’t can you? I say.

He looks at me again.

Look, he says. Do you mind me talking to you like this?

No, I say without even thinking.

Despite this, he seems to hesitate.

It’s just—I can understand it—he doesn’t want to bury her without it.

But he’ll have to?

He looks away from me, at the beach, the sea.

I think so. Yes.

I press my fingers on my mouth, stopping a rush of tears from coming.

Have you said that to him? I ask Lacey.

What?

That he’ll have to.

No, he says and I turn my face away into the wind. I don’t want to cry in front of him.

I’m sorry, I tell him as we continue on along the prom, it’s just that I can’t really think about it for very long, any of
it—

I know, he says. It’s OK. You don’t have to.

I’m sorry, I tell him.

Don’t be silly, he says.

I look away from him and try to think. The tide is out—a distant frill of brown—and the shingle shines all over with smallish
creeks. I love the beach best like this.