Something Might Happen (23 page)

NEXT MORNING, LENNIE’S BODY IS BROUGHT TO HALES
-worth. It is brought in an ambulance and put in the coffin that has been waiting for days now at Sharman’s. Alex is there
alone when they bring her. He won’t have Mick, he won’t have Lacey. He doesn’t invite Bob either. Instead Bob comes over to
us early. He does this a lot—he likes to see our kids before they go off to school. Especially Rosa.

Passing through the hall, I hear this:

Why do dogs always look like they’re about to cry? Rosa is asking Bob.

You’re right, I hear him say, I guess they do look kind of tragic.

Tragic, yes, Rosa agrees, as if they’re about to cry. Do your dogs at home look like that?

I’ve almost forgotten, he says, what they look like at all.

It hasn’t been that long—

Well, it’s been a while.

But you’ll go home soon, right? After tomorrow you can go any time?

I guess so, he says.

There’s a pause and then:

I don’t really want you to go, Rosa says.

Silence.

I’ve got used to you being here.

So what’s that you’re drawing? Bob says then. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for school.

Not yet, Rosa says. In a minute. Fletcher—it’s Fletcher, can’t you see—?

I can almost hear Rosa bite her lip and hold her breath. The big dark slope of her silence as she concentrates.

It’s great, I hear Bob say then, a great picture. The eyebrows especially—you’ve got them exactly right.

Sad eyebrows, Rosa says, sad everything.

That’s right.

I could draw your dogs if you like, Rosa says. If I ever get to meet them, that is.

That would be nice, Bob says. A special portrait. Maybe I should invite you over.

Yes, Rosa says, please do. Well, just ask my mum and send me a ticket. Or if you want, just the money.

I hear Bob almost laugh.

He’s got a big tongue, that dog, Bob says.

No, Rosa says a little impatiently, that’s not a tongue,
that’s a heart—Lennie’s big heart in his mouth. Can’t you see? Don’t worry, he’s not going to eat it—

In the hallway, I hold my breath. Fortunately Bob is laughing.

You’re a funny little girl, he says.

Well, and you’re a funny man, Rosa says. Do you want to sit together? At the funeral?

Another chunk of silence.

If we’re allowed, Rosa adds. We might not be allowed.

That afternoon—Thursday afternoon—turns suddenly beautiful. The sky, which was inky with threatening storm, clears and bright
white sunshine soars across it. The sea sparkles. It isn’t warm exactly, but you couldn’t say it’s cold either. No-coat weather,
definitely.

I’ve done a morning at the clinic, but my last patient cancelled. I go home early to find Mick still barely dressed, padding
around the house in slippers and cardigan, like an old man. He hasn’t even shaved.

Are you OK? I ask him.

Fine, he says.

Really? You don’t look at all fine.

He shrugs and doesn’t answer but I catch him frowning once or twice. I don’t know if it’s me, or just his own thoughts unwinding
in his head.

He says he’ll walk Fletcher after lunch and go on to get the kids from school.

Are you sure? I say. Normally when I haven’t got clinic in the afternoon, I do it.

Stop being guilty all the time, he says. Would I offer if I didn’t mean it?

Liv is in her cradle seat in a corner of the sitting room. The seat has a row of blue, mauve and orange plastic beads strung
in front of it, but Liv is much more taken up with watching Rosa’s kitten who’s batting a piece of scrunched-up paper across
the floor.

She keeps her eyes on the kitten, both fists pushed in her mouth. Kicking her feet sharply every time the kitten jumps.

I pick up the kitten in one hand and in the other the piece of paper which, I see, is covered in Rosa’s neat meticulous drawings,
her handwriting. All her drawings are like this—sturdy, detailed and repetitive and packed with information. She’s like a
cave painter, her art teacher at school says.

I open up the scrunched paper and the kitten yowls. I drop her.

On the paper are a succession of pink crayoned hearts and the words, A Map Of Where To Find It—followed by Rosa’s initials
and her age. Underneath are piles of long wavy blue lines and a picture of a woman standing on top. A person standing on the
waves. At the bottom, Rosa has written: Keep Out.

I put the paper back on the table and pick Liv up. She smiles and almost laughs when I bundle her into the buggy. It’s like
she knows where we’re going. It’s like she does, even if I don’t.

* * *

We go down the High Street, in the direction of Gun Hill. It’s still bright but very windy. Things falling over, bins and
signs banging. Outside the grocer’s a woman is yelling and yelling at her child to get into the car. In the road is a pile
of manure left by the brewery drays. By the post box, an old man with a stick stands very still and bent over and further
on an even older woman travels down the street in a little electric disabled car with a flag on it. She waves to a boy who
comes out of Somerfield and picks up cardboard boxes and takes them back into the shop.

I want Liv to fall asleep but she doesn’t. She sits up as straight as her almost five-month-old back will allow, straining
and following everything that’s going on.

We go past the Marie Curie shop, where Maggie is possibly sorting black bags of stuff in the back, and the butcher’s. No one
in there at all. At Suzanne Hair Fashions, Sue Peach can be glimpsed through the glass, foils in her hair, holding a cup of
something.

At the foot of Gun Hill I hesitate, as if going up there is really an option. Then, after thinking about it for a second or
two, I turn the buggy and head along North Parade towards the pier.

Though I don’t know that’s where I’m going till I get there. Or maybe that’s wrong. Maybe I do know.

It’s really not cold but still the wind along the front stings your cheeks and makes your eyes water.

I feel happy and excited for the first time in a very long
time. Because it is a weird day, a mad, glittery day, uncanny and unseasonable. Because the sea has a million different colours
slipping over its surface and my heart just nearly explodes when I see it—all that water and the pier, with its tangled mass
of metal. And because Rosa may well be right. From where I stand it could just be a huge spidery animal crawling, belly slung
low, into all that water.

He’s perched on a filing cabinet over by the window, drinking something from a polystyrene cup. Tipping his head back, watching
the sea.

I stare at him.

Why are you here? I ask him.

He turns and looks happy and pleased and careful.

Why are you? he says.

I really don’t know, I say because it’s the truth, and I go bright red and take a step back. He laughs. From the other side
of the room Mawhinney’s watching us. Mawhinney and a thousand others. The whole room buzzing—more police than I’ve ever seen
in there.

Good news actually, he says. They think they might have something. The National Police Computer, a profile that fits. It’s
something, anyway.

My heart contracts.

They’ve found a man?

A suspect. A better one than Darren Sims, anyway. Mawhinney’s over the moon.

My God, I say.

I know, he says. It’s a shock isn’t it.

Look, I say, do you need to stay here?

He looks at me.

What, now?

Yes, now.

No, he says, not really. They’re finished with me. Though I’ll have to see Alex later.

Come for a swim then, I say.

He looks at me as if I’m mad.

A what?

Over by one of the computers, Mawhinney is talking to a blonde woman in uniform.

A swim? I say. Or if you want, a paddle.

He chucks his cup in the bin and folds his arms and laughs.

OK, he says.

OK?

He glances over at Mawhinney, who is bent over the computer now as the woman scrolls along the screen.

Yes, crazy woman, Lacey says. Come on then, yes, let’s go.

Maybe I do really mean it about the swim. Or maybe it’s only a way of getting him inside The Polecat with me. Whichever it
is, as I dig the key out and put it in the lock and turn and yank it open, my hand is trembling. He lifts the buggy up the
two wooden steps and we’re in.

Sand underfoot. The grit sound of sand on wood.

The curtains in the hut have bold oranges and lemons
on them—leftovers from the sixties, from someone’s mother. I tug them now along the little stretchy curtain wires and light
falls in. The windows are dirty but the light outside is bright. A spider has spun its web across one of the corners and in
pulling at the curtain I break it. It falls and hangs for a moment on a thin string—a tiny, balled-up, bouncing dark red thing—before
dropping to the wooden floor where sand, dust and, I suppose, old sandwich crumbs combine.

My little hut, I tell him.

Lacey looks around.

It’s a mess, I know.

This is it? he says. Where you come?

I haven’t been here in a while, I tell him and I can’t tell what he’s thinking. Not properly since—

We take a step back from each other. Suddenly I’m embarrassed.

It’s tiny isn’t it? I say almost in a whisper, because it is, the walls are coming closer every minute. I used to think it
was big, I add, when I first got it.

Bigger than you think, he says, from the outside.

Some are much better than this, I tell him. Some have—oh, I don’t know, some go back further.

He looks at me. I touch my hair, my face.

The ones towards Blackshore are bigger, I tell him.

He says nothing.

We’ve been meaning to do it up, I say.

Have you?

Yes.

I look at his eyes. My chest and knees have gone hot. Will he kiss me?

Livvy sneezes—once, twice—and the moment breaks.

It needs a paint and a clear-out, I continue, moving an old broken table football game of Nat’s out of the way.

What do I wear, he asks me then, for this swim of yours?

Over there—I indicate the endless stiffened costumes hanging over on the wire coat hangers—take your pick.

He looks at them.

Unless you don’t want to.

Are you going to? he asks me.

Of course I am, I tell him and I pull up my shirt to show I’m ready underneath, costume on.

He grabs the trunks nearest to him, old and baggy, Mick’s from about five summers ago. His face is impossible to read.

Shut your eyes, he says.

The sun’s still out, but there’s no one around, only an elderly couple throwing a piece of wood for their dog and, further
down towards Blackshore, a couple of guys dragging a dinghy with flapping orange and pink sails out of the water.

We crunch down over the shingle and I spread a blanket with a towel on top and put Livvy on it. I try to put two other towels
on either side of her, but she immediately starts fussing, wanting to get onto her front.

My swimsuit is way too small—it’s from back before Jordan was born—and I had forgotten how it’s all shiny and baggy and wearing
out at the sides. Also how the legs
keep riding up so I have to pull them down all the time. Driving me insane. It seemed OK when I put it on, but I never go
swimming with anyone but the kids. Now I realise I must look terrible in it with my bottom hanging out and my thighs all cheesy
white and marked with tiny dark veins.

I hope he isn’t looking at me. He’s not. He’s frowning at the sea. So I look at him. He’s good without his clothes, just fine—pale
but kind of streamlined and purposeful. A pencil sketch of a man. I like him. As I knew I would.

He turns to me and laughs.

Are we really going to do this? he says.

I don’t know, I admit because part of me is losing heart. My arms are goose-pimply, though the air is actually surprisingly
warm.

But he wades straight in.

You think I’m just a city boy, he calls over his shoulder without stopping, still going in.

I laugh.

I never said that.

You think it, though. You think I can’t get wet.

I don’t, I swear I don’t.

Come on then, he says. He is in up to his knees. He grabs little palmfuls of water and rubs them on his thighs, his waist,
his chest. Shudders and laughs.

I wade slowly towards where he stands. The first moment of putting my feet in is a shock but at least the waves are gentle,
little washy, slappy ones, tipping their icy weight over my knees but never higher.

He holds out his hand.

This is mad, I say.

I glance back at Livvy who has rolled right onto her front but seems happy enough, lifting her head to wink at the sun. I
take it. I take his hand.

He squeezes my fingers.

It was your idea, he says as I gasp at the cold, I’m just reminding you of that.

I don’t know what got into me, I tell him. I’ve never in my life swum in November.

Suddenly he lets go of my hand and dives off under the water. Comes up gasping a little way away. Head all slicked blackly
down and smiling.

I can’t do that, I tell him, laughing. Don’t expect me to do that.

He swims off away from me, a steady crawl with his head right down. Meanwhile I move myself along, feeling the shingle shift
and roll under my feet. Occasionally a pebble drifts across the top of my foot, lifted and pulled by the motion of the water.
I try not to think of what’s down there—the pincers and tentacles creeping over the cold and eerie sea bed.

Now the water is up to my waist almost. I can feel it, the brown swollen weight of the water all around me. Back on the shore,
Livvy is suddenly small. The sun slides under a cloud and in a second the whole sea looks dark and achingly cold. The loneliest
place in the world.

I turn. I can’t see Lacey.

Where are you? I call.

I can’t see him anywhere.

Hey! I shout. Hey!

Then, under the water, a hand is on my waist and he comes up beside me. Water falling off him.