Something Might Happen (10 page)

Don’t you?

No, I say again, I don’t.

A thought seems to occur to him.

Mick still doesn’t know—that I was there with you?

No, but—

He relaxes. Licks his lips.

It’s fine, Tess, it’s OK.

But—

Just leave it, OK?

No, I tell him. It’s not OK actually and I can’t just leave it. No one’s telling the truth here, not even Mick.

He laughs and makes a face.

You don’t say? Not even Mick.

You know what I mean, I tell him.

It’s not a question of the truth, he says. It’s just that we don’t need to confuse things.

It’s lying, I insist. You’re all lying. So am I.

I haven’t lied, he says and his voice is suddenly pinched and hard.

By omission you have. By not telling the police everything.

Oh for God’s sake, grow up, Tess, Alex says and he snaps off a branch of elder as we turn the corner into Woodley’s Yard.

I’m silent for a moment and then I turn and face him.

Well—I may tell them, I say.

He brushes my cheek with the elder twig. It’s scratchy.

Ow, I say.

What you do is your business.

Exactly, I agree. Yes.

Except that Mick will have to know I was there with you on that night.

I think about this.

It’s fine, I say. He isn’t really very interested. Plus we were just talking. There’s nothing to hide.

Isn’t there?

I look at him and feel a sudden surge of anger.

No, Al. There isn’t.

He stops and takes me by the shoulders. Puts his face near mine. The grip of his fingers is too hard. His nails dig in a little.

How about this then? he says.

He kisses me, hard, on the mouth. He’s trying to do it properly but it doesn’t work. There’s something crazy and awful about
how hard he’s trying. Like he’s trying to cram it in. I taste the tip of his tongue, feel the chin bristles, the sourness,
the sad unwashedness of him.

I push him off. My cheeks are burning.

For God’s sake, Al—what’re you doing?

He smiles stupidly. But his eyes are burning.

Giving you something to hide, he says, smiling as if it’s all a big joke.

I look at him and I’m trembling.

You’re sick, Alex. You’re ill. I mean it. You need some help.

He throws his head back and looks at the sky. Says nothing.

I mean it, I say again. I’m not just saying it, Al. I think you are.

He spreads his arms out like a bird, fingers splayed.

I’m fine, he says. Never better. Don’t give me a hassle, Tess. Don’t be so touchy.

He begins to walk off, away down the lumpy, lush grassy path that gives into Spinner’s Lane.

It’s just a kiss, Tess, he sings back after me. Just a little harmless kiss. What’s a kiss, for Christ’s sake, between old
friends?

I stand there, watching him. In the hedge there are blackberries, clusters of them covered in cobwebs. The sky crackles above
me.

It’s not real, I hear him say, from far away now, none of it’s real. It’s not happening. It’s just another thing on the TV—

I smell the wind from the sea.

A murder mystery, he calls. A suspense thingy—

I taste salt in my mouth like blood.

I love you, Tess! he shouts. You know I do. I always have and I always will. Lennie knew it too.

That’s the last thing he says before he disappears from view behind the hedge.

Lennie knew it too.

It’s not true. I start walking the other way. I am sick with shame.

At home, I look around for Mick and can’t find him anywhere. The kitchen smells of washing powder, coffee, dog.
A pile of tomatoes has rolled off the table onto the floor but fortunately Fletcher hasn’t touched them. He doesn’t like tomatoes.
Nat says they’re poisonous to dogs. He read it in a book of dog facts. The trouble with Nat is, he’ll read all about dogs
but he won’t take Fletcher out for a walk.

I shout for Mick.

Liv is asleep in her rocker on the floor, fat-cheeked and peaceful, lips wet with spit.

The back door is open onto the yard. I can smell cigarettes.

Mick?

He’s out there, standing looking at the bare fence and holding a cigarette carefully between thumb and finger. He sees me
and doesn’t move, just smiles.

You’re smoking, I say.

That’s right, he says. Ten out of ten for observation.

I look at him.

You’ve smoked, he says.

Yes, but—

Well, then.

I stand there for a moment, say nothing.

What’s the matter? he says.

I’m extremely worried about Alex, I tell him at last.

Oh?

Yes—I take a breath—he tried to kiss me just now.

Mick holds the cigarette away from him and tilts his chin and laughs loudly.

Why? When did you see him?

At school. Just now. Coming back.

Ah. Sweet.

No, I say, staring at him. Mick, I mean really kiss. Snog.

Mick laughs again, more coldly.

Was it good?

Mick—

Did you kiss him back?

He flicks his ash onto the scrubby flowerbed where Nat and Rosa like to set fire to blades of grass with a magnifying glass
and where Jordan once grew a sunflower.

Mick, I say, what’s the matter with you? Al’s really weird. He’s in a state. I was shocked. I mean, I don’t know why he’s
doing this—

Oh, come on, says Mick, look at the poor man. Give him a break.

And you—all you want to know is if I kissed him back?

A joke.

Mick screws up his eyes and takes a last drag of his cigarette.

Well it’s not funny. I think he’s cracking up. Seriously, Mick, I’m worried about him.

Well—Mick looks pretty unmoved—I’d leave it. He’ll get over it. He’s very stressed just now.

I stare at him.

You don’t mind?

He shrugs.

I’d mind if it meant anything, of course I would. But it doesn’t. It’s absolutely nothing. Insignificant.

Thanks, I say.

You know what I mean. Poor old Al.

But he was talking in the strangest way, saying odd things.

What sort of things?

Just—I don’t know—stuff. It didn’t make sense.

So, he says, stubbing his cigarette out on the peeling metal garden table, what is it exactly that you want me to do about
this?

Mick, I say, I’m just telling you.

I know.

So—be a bit nicer—

Sorry. I didn’t mean not to be nice.

Couldn’t you talk to him?

And say what?

I don’t know.

We fall into silence. Mick sits on the edge of the table. Fletcher comes padding out, sniffs at the concrete paving.

Maybe you should talk to Lacey about it, Mick says, if you’re really worried.

I couldn’t do that, I say straightaway.

Of course you could. He knows Alex, he’s with him, he knows about this stuff.

No, I say. I just couldn’t. You talk to him.

I think it’s better coming from you—

Well, I can’t, I say, I just can’t. I don’t want to, OK?

OK, says Mick. Well, leave it then.

* * *

At dusk, the High Street changes. It’s taken over by kids in nylon clothes, kids whose parents we don’t know, who live in
the rows of pebble-dashed semis down beyond the marshes, with their scrubby, barren back gardens and kitchens that smell of
frying.

They clutch their cans and hang around the video shop or the Chinese takeaway—or else sit smoking on the swings in the playground,
leaving their empty cigarette packets at the foot of the infants’ slide or kicking up the bark chips with their trainers.

But mostly they just stand at the bus shelter where the odour of cleaning fluid only just masks the smell of piss. The timetables
behind the glass are yellowed and old. There are two buses a day, three on market days. But the kids never get on these buses.
They don’t go anywhere. They just stand and wait.

Popping out to get milk before Somerfield closes, I catch sight of Lacey standing at the bus shelter, talking to a bunch of
them. He is talking and they are listening, awkward, one or two of them kicking with their feet at the wire litter-bin outside
Curdell’s.

Lacey doesn’t see me. I hurry past and down Bank Alley before he has a chance to turn.

Lennie’s dad sits in the big pine chair in our kitchen and tells me how he’s always been planning to come over to visit Lennie
and his grandsons but has never been given a clean enough bill of health to fly.

This time, he says, I thought it might be different. I was
hoping they’d just give me a bunch of pills and say, Get yourself on the first plane, Bob—just look after yourself is all.

While he talks, Bob doesn’t look at me, but plucks away at the sleeve of his jersey. With Al and the boys, he didn’t break
down, not once. Then he came over and stood in the middle of our kitchen and just wept. Because he doesn’t know us, Mick said.
He doesn’t feel he has to be strong.

Bob used to be a lawyer.

In Manhattan. But I’ve been retired for twenty-two years now, you know—twenty-two years!

Twenty-two years is a long time, I tell him.

He explains that he retired young, so he’d have time to do all the good things—the stuff you dream of doing.

He gives a bitter laugh.

What a joke, he says. My wife, Maya, she died a year later. A year almost to the day.

I tell him how sorry I am to hear that.

Anyway, he says, Lennie did make it—she did come over with the boys—what?—six years ago now, maybe seven. Certainly it was
when Connor was still in diapers—

Max remembers it, I tell him, he definitely does, he still talks about America.

Bob brightens. Does he?

Then his face falls.

But the damn doctors, he says. My heart, my blood pressure, all that crap. So I never got to come and see where she lived.
Not till now—

He pauses and his eyes fill up again.

And, you know? It’s such a beautiful place!

It is, I tell him, I know, that’s why we all came here, it is.

For a moment, Bob puts his head in his hands and is silent. The clock on the dresser ticks.

Oh Christ, he whispers. Oh Jesus, oh Christ.

I touch his shoulder.

I wish, I tell him softly, I wish there was something I could do or say.

He takes a breath.

There’s nothing, he says. Just letting me be—just letting me sit here in your lovely home, you know? That’s enough.

I turn around and put the kettle back on.

You’re a lovely person, he says, you know that? A lovely girl.

Not that lovely—

Oh yes, I mean it. If I was a few years younger—

I try to laugh.

You were a good friend to her, he says, I know you were. I could tell, you know, I could—from the things she wrote, the things
she said—

I loved her, I tell him.

She should have gone into the legal profession, he says. Would have made a superb lawyer, she would.

Well, I say, she was a great potter—

She was?

Yes. Always selling her stuff, you know—

Really? Bob says doubtfully. But you make great money in the law, you know.

Yes, I tell him, but it’s a big thing, what she did. You
should be proud. It’s not at all easy—to make a living from art.

You’re an artist? he says.

No, I smile, I’m an osteopath. You know—I fix backs and necks and knees, that sort of thing.

Bob looks forlorn.

I don’t have any trouble with mine, he says.

Well, that’s good.

It’s about the only thing, he says, that doesn’t give me trouble.

You should eat something, you know? I tell him. A piece of fruit? Some cheese?

He shakes his head.

I wish you would.

Bob says nothing. Then he asks me if I realise how fat Lennie was as a baby? So fat that they worried at first, him and Maya,
that something might be wrong with her. But the doctors reassured them that she was healthy and she was.

A sweet, fat baby. Never any trouble to her mother or me, he says. A placid little thing she was, always smiling, always happy.
She was enough for us. We never even thought of having more kids, never even got the idea into our heads. Maybe we should’ve—or
maybe we even did, I forget now—but anyhow the time just went and, well, Len was enough for us. She filled up our time.

Later, when Bob has gone back to Alex’s, Lacey rings.

I have this small problem, he says. Just that Lennie’s dad
needs to stay in the studio and I can’t get a hotel room till tomorrow night.

You can stay here, I say at once before I’ve even thought about it. Hating how my voice sounds twittery. Hating as well the
feeling of not being able to breathe.

He pauses. He sounds nervous.

Look, he says, you’re not just saying it? You’ve really got room?

It’s fine. The boys can shuffle up.

Thank you, he says. You really are sure?

Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t offer otherwise.

Well, thanks very much. It’s just for the one night, OK?

Don’t worry about it, it’s fine.

We ought to make Nat move out and put Lacey in there, but frankly Nat’s room is too much of a mess.

Nat’s room’s stinky, says Rosa without looking up from her drawing. I mean it. It really smells.

Yeah, says Jordan, of farting. It smells of all the farting he does.

Shut up, says Nat.

That’s enough, I tell him.

Make him clear it up, says Mick. He ought to anyway.

No, I say. It’s too much hassle. It’s a week’s work, anyway. Lacey can go in with Jordan.

In the bunk bed? asks Rosa. Really?

With me! shrieks Jordan immediately. I’m not having police in my bed.

But as he says it he thinks about it and his face changes.

Actually, he says, cool. I’ll do it.

You’re doing it anyway, I tell him, whether you think it’s cool or not.

He can go on the bottom. He can’t touch anything though, Jordan says, thinking of his Warhammer stuff.

Nat sniggers. What’s he going to want to touch of yours, poo-head?

Nat, says Mick, shut up. That’s enough.

I think he’s nice, says Rosa, still concentrating on her sketch pad. I do. I really like him. Connor says he’s going to live
with them.