Something Might Happen (15 page)

Who’s throwing ink at you, Rose? I ask her. Someone’s flicking it at you, aren’t they?

It’s my cartridge, she says flatly. It leaks.

All over your back?

She makes an ugly face at me.

And the spots—I wonder if they’re flea bites. We must get Maria a flea collar, I say.

It’s not Maria, Rosa almost shouts. Maria’s fine. You leave my kitten out of this!

Well, what’s biting you, Rosa?

I don’t know, she says. Mosquitoes, maybe?

In November?

Leave me alone, she says. I’m fine, OK?

What is it? I ask her when she bursts into sudden tears. What’s the matter, darling?

But she won’t talk to me, just stomps upstairs. Half an hour later I find her asleep on her bed with the kitten purring on
her chest.

And then there’s Nat. I’ll ask him to do a simple thing like empty the dishwasher or tidy his room or eat an egg on toast
or remove his school blazer from where he just lets it drop in the hall and he’ll immediately attack me.

Why do you insist on making my life hell? he screams.

I’m surprised at how much I want to hit him—I, who’ve never laid a finger on my kids. How can Nat—once the sunniest, easiest
boy (far easier in many ways than the other two)—have turned into this monster? He sits in his room with the curtains shut
and something electronic in his hand. He slouches around the house complaining. And then there’s the food thing.

OK, I say as he pushes his plate away, why aren’t you eating? It had better be good.

You—know—I—hate—scrambled—eggs.

I don’t know that at all.

I told you. Last time. I hate the skin on them.

What skin? There isn’t a skin—

There is, look. And he pokes with the edge of his fork.

Eat them, boy, Mick advises softly from behind his paper.

Oh God! Nat wails, letting his head sink into his hands. I’ll throw up, I’ll be sick.

Don’t you dare be sick! I warn him.

All this organic crap, he mutters.

It’s not organic, I shriek at him. These eggs are not organic!

Whatever they bloody well are, Nat says, I don’t like them.

Swear again, says Mick, and you’ll get no pocket money this weekend.

But, I say, my anger mounting, you don’t like anything. You don’t like porridge, or baked beans, or toast, or fried, poached
or boiled eggs or anything except fucking processed cereal with sugar on it.

She’s swearing, Nat tells his father. You don’t say anything to her.

Mick ignores him.

I push Nat roughly out of the way so I can wipe the table.

Ow, he says.

What? I say.

That hurt.

I didn’t touch you.

That’s a lie. You did.

I look at him. My heart pounds. I would like to hurt him.

I can’t eat, he says flatly.

Why not? I ask him in a calmer voice. Why can’t you eat?

I have a full feeling.

And you didn’t have this full feeling when you ate a whole pack of citrus Polos yesterday?

Nope, he grins. That’s because Polos are nice.

And eggs aren’t?

No.

He is smiling at me.

It’s not funny, I say.

I’m not laughing, he says. And laughs.

Leave him, Mick says. He’ll eat later. Won’t you, Nat?

Nat says nothing. He doesn’t say yes.

No, I say, I won’t leave him and he won’t eat later, he’ll eat now and he’ll eat what I’ve cooked for him even if I have to
feed him like a baby.

Nat shoves the plate away again, defiant, waiting. I feel a tear, a ripping inside me. I step forward and slap him hard on
the face. Hard as I can. A flat noise—a satisfying gasp from him.

He stares at me for a dazed moment then begins to cry.

Good.

Trembling, I chuck the whole plate of eggs in the sink. Then, not wanting to waste it, I scoop up what I can and put it in
Fletcher’s bowl. The dog, alert to the sound of food, rushes up and eats it in two swift gollops.

I wish I was dead, Nat says.

Don’t you ever say that.

I do. I want to be dead. It would be a relief. I really really hate you.

Go to your room, says Mick quietly.

He gets up but I don’t let him go. I grab him by the shoulders.

Never say that, I yell, shaking him hard, do you hear me? Never, ever fucking well say you want to be dead!

With each word I shake him harder. He is sobbing but he does not resist. The whole thing takes only a few seconds but it feels
like much longer. There is time for me to understand that he no longer feels like my child, my flesh. There’s time to understand
what I could do.

He’s crying but he’s far too shocked to hit back. If he was not so shocked, he might, he would. He’s getting so big he could
hurt me, I know that.

Go, I tell him. And when he doesn’t move, I scream the word again.

Two pale strings of snot hang and wobble from his nose. He runs from the room. He is humiliated. So am I. I sit and I shake.
I won’t look at Mick. I don’t have to look at him to know he isn’t on my side.

Lennie’s Pay & Display machine, the one where it happened, has been removed by the police. But there’s another, closer to
the pier itself, which is where they’ve put all the bouquets. Except that now most of these are dead and brown and battered
by the wind—each bloom reduced to a colourless mush, each stem and frond black and dead.

Someone should remove them, I say to Mick as we stand there and look at them.

He says nothing. I glance at him, his profile, stern and tight and shut off from me in the wind. Unguessable.

How will we go on living here? I ask him.

He takes my hand. His jacket is zipped to his chin, against the wind. There’s a strong breeze today. Everything that can move
is moving. The sign with the boating-lake opening times on it, the grey tarpaulins pulled over the big boats, the conifers
next to the phone box on Pier Avenue.

Bad things have happened nearly everywhere, he says. All the time—think about it, they must have. It’s just that you don’t
know about them.

I say nothing.

He squeezes my hand, then puts an arm around me, pulls me to him.

Other things will happen, he says.

Will they? What things?

All sorts of things, he says. You’ll see. Good things.

In her buggy, Liv is concentrating so hard on her transparent teether that her toes are curling and uncurling with the effort
of it.

Don’t get like this, Tess, Mick says suddenly.

I look at him, surprised by his tone of voice.

What do you mean? Like what?

He sighs.

Like this. Don’t go all helpless on me—

Christ, I say, I was only being honest.

That’s what you call it?

Yes. It is what I call it.

Do you think I don’t feel as you do? How do you think I’m coping? We have to move on from this. We all have to. Think about
the kids.

I do, I tell him as the tears creep up on me, I do think of the kids.

So, OK, he says, be serious. What are you saying? That we should leave this place? Just pack up and leave, just like that?

Not just like that—

Well, then.

I don’t know, I tell him, but it’s a possibility. Isn’t it?

He looks away from me, his face grim.

Not for me, he says, no, it isn’t.

But why not? You haven’t even got a job—you’ve got least of all to lose, I point out.

Thanks, he says. Thanks for rubbing that one in.

I didn’t mean that. I meant you’re free.

Yeah? No freer than you.

I don’t feel free, I say.

Livvy flings her arms up in the air and makes a noise of total happiness.

She’s lost a sock, Mick says.

I glance back along the way we’ve come but I can’t see it anywhere. It must have dropped off somewhere along North Parade.

OK, so you don’t feel free. But you feel free enough to leave? Mick says.

I think about this.

If it’s the right thing, then yes, I do.

Vic Munro, Dave Munro’s father, comes out of the Dolphin Diner. He walks over, lighting a cigarette, hands cupped against
the wind.

Terrible things happen everywhere, Mick says before he reaches us. Running from here won’t solve anything. It’s not the place,
Tess—

What is it, then?

All right? says Vic. Mick says something back. Vic’s nails are thick and yellow-grey. I look past him, past his stained down
jacket and long oily hair, out at the grey and swollen chop of water that stretches beyond Covehithe. A small boat bobs out
there, some way off.

They got anything yet? Vic asks us.

People still talk about Lennie’s death as if it’s the only subject.

Mick shrugs.

You know as much as I do.

They did house to house, or door to door, whatever, on the first day, says Vic. Everyone I know has been seen.

Mick nods.

But they won’t get him now, Vic says. Not if he’s gone this long they won’t.

He gives a mirthless little laugh and sucks so hard on his cigarette that his cheeks cave in. His skin is a mass of tiny wrinkles,
the sort of skin that would make Rosa stare in amazement. Vic was a fisherman once long ago—he even worked on the lifeboats.
But then he had some kind of nervous breakdown and now he doesn’t do much of anything at all except bet on the dogs or the
horses and sit all day in the Dolphin Diner and drink tea with the Ramirez brothers.

He once tried to set himself up as a painter and decorator, but did such a terrible job of Barbara Anscombe’s hallway that
the two of them are still locked in a legal dispute over it.

Where you off to then? Vic asks, turning to me this time.

School, I say. To see our son’s teacher.

Again, says Mick.

Vic grins, He’s been a bad boy then?

He stubs his cigarette out on the white metal railing.

Dave was always being hauled up, you know, he says. Whole of his time in that place. I was in and out of there
like a bloody jack-in-the-box. I expect they were glad to see the back of him, the bugger. Him and Darren Sims, the pair of
them.

Oh I’m sure they weren’t that bad, says Mick.

Oh, they were, Vic says cheerily.

Just then I catch sight of a figure on the beach—tall and straight and walking ever so slowly along the wet part of the sand
where the tide licks it.

Lacey.

Quickly I look the other way, out to sea. The brown sailing dinghy has moved a long way, almost out of view towards Covehithe.

We should go, I tell Mick as I glance once more at the figure on the beach.

We say goodbye to Vic and move off up Hotson Road towards the school. I hold Mick’s arm as he pushes the buggy.

You think Lennie would want us to run away? Mick says.

I don’t know, I reply. I’ve no idea what Lennie would want.

We’ve been happy here.

Yes, I agree. We have.

Bob is picking at the sandwich I’ve made him and telling me about Alex.

He says he wants to make it himself. The coffin. That’s what he’s saying now.

Oh, I say. Someone else told me that as well. A patient of mine.

Well, says Bob, how the hell would a patient know? I shrug.

It’s a small place. Things get around.

Bob sighs.

Anyway, he says, I’m surprised he hasn’t told you anything about it.

He doesn’t tell me everything.

Bob sighs again.

Well you know, I tell him, maybe it’s a good idea. I mean if he wants to. It’s what he does for a living after all—he knows
about wood. It does make a kind of sense.

You think so? Bob says.

Yes, I think, I do.

In fact, if I shut my eyes I can almost see him doing it. Choosing the wood and bringing it back to his barn, handling it,
touching it. Sawing and mitring and glueing and machining.

Bob sighs again and looks at his sandwich. He hasn’t eaten a mouthful.

He has all the necessary tools, I guess. He said something about wanting to use American red oak. I don’t know that wood—do
you?

He looks at me and his mouth turns down and his eyes fill up.

Oh Bob, I say, you’re not keen on this idea are you?

He doesn’t answer, only feels around in his jacket pocket for his pills and then, when he finds them, takes them out and stares
at them.

Did I take one of these things already this morning?

You took one at eleven.

He continues to stare at the pills. His lips are shut in a tight straight line.

It’s just, I was going to go along and look into it myself, you know. I never paid much towards the wedding—she had to go
ahead and do it all so quickly and Maya was really so ill by then and—

I reach out and put my hand on his wrist.

I ought not to feel this way, he says.

Don’t be silly, I tell him.

She’s still my child, he says.

When Bob’s gone off to have a rest, Rosa—who is supposed to be off school poorly—bounces in.

Hey, you look better, I tell her.

She seems to think about this.

I’m not better, she says slowly and carefully, I’m just trying to be nice that’s all.

But your tummy’s OK?

Kind of. It’s gone into my head now.

I look hard at her, wish I could understand the ups and downs of her. She turns away from me.

What’s the matter with Bob? she says.

Things are very hard for him right now, I tell her and she frowns.

If my child had been killed by a bad man, I’d hunt him down and shoot him or something. I’d want revenge.

Well, I pick Livvy’s rattle up off the floor where she has
flung it, life isn’t like that, Rosa. Not real life. You can’t just go round killing people.

I know, I know.

Rosa sighs and blows out a puff of air so her fringe goes up. She watches the effect in the big mirror on the other side of
the room and, seeming to like it, does it again. Fletcher is lying dead-dog style on the floor. He likes the cool of the lino,
even in winter.

Rosa places one bare foot on him.

Hey, I say. Careful.

Rosa ignores me.

Don’t put your weight on him—

He likes it, she insists, still watching herself in the mirror, He’s my own personal fur rug.