Something Might Happen (16 page)

She stands for a moment and sings to herself.

So, she says, is he unhappy about the coffin?

I look up, surprised.

What do you know about that?

Well, Con told me. How Alex is being really mean about it and all that.

He said that?

Mmm, Rosa sits down next to Fletcher who opens his eyes and lifts his head towards her.

Why? What did he say? In what way mean?

Well—Rosa rubs Fletcher’s tummy with small brisk hands—he says they’re each allowed to do a design, Con and Max, right?

I come over and sit by Rosa.

What? I say. What do you mean, a design?

You know! she says impatiently. They can each design a picture or some writing or something—it doesn’t have to be a picture—to
be carved on the side of it—

You mean actually on it? On the coffin?

Yeah. Only Con doesn’t want to do either, not a drawing or some writing—he doesn’t like drawing because he’s no good at it,
so he wants to stick some stickers and pictures on. Or something that he’s got anyway. And he won’t let him.

What, Alex won’t let him?

No and I think it’s really unfair.

I think it’s unfair too. In fact, I think everything’s unfair. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not the person I used
to be. I can’t focus on anything. Mick finds me standing at night in the garden in a black cold wind without a jumper on.

What are you doing? he calls from the porch. You’ll freeze to death. Aren’t you cold?

No, I say, enjoying the feel of my skin turning itself inside out, I’m not. I’m not anything.

What I am is numb, deliciously cut off and numb and unsettled. Mick would never understand—it’s beyond anything he believes
in. All the things that used to please me, that were a part of my good, blameless, ordinary life, are gone. I’m so impatient.
Each normal thing—each school run, each family meal—has lost its sweetness and its shine and is just something to be got through.
Until I can get away and be alone with these feelings.

And this isn’t about Lennie, it wouldn’t be right to claim that. This isn’t shock or delayed grief or anything with a reasonable
name. It’s just, I feel I have the power to predict which way things might go. And the knowledge that just now only one thing
keeps me going. The possibility, always there, that I might see him.

But I am rushing down Bank Alley having cut through Tibby’s Green, late for my first appointment, my mind so filled up with
him that when he materialises right bang there in front of me, I am for a second or two stunned.

Oh, he says. Hello, Tess.

I’m hot and tired and I haven’t put on make-up or brushed my hair.

Oh, I say. Hello.

Hello, he says again.

You’re still here then?

Yes.

His hands are in his pockets and he tilts his head back a little as he looks at me.

No baby?

It takes me a moment to realise what he’s talking about.

At home, I tell him. She’s with Mick. I left her. I’m—going to work.

He stands there absolutely still, frowning slightly.

So what’s going on? he says. Where’ve you been?

Where have I been? I say, surprised.

Yes. After you phoned me, you disappeared. I’ve been looking all over for you.

But I’ve been—here, I tell him, flushing.

Where?

Here. At home, at the clinic—everywhere.

He smiles.

Outside the butcher’s, there is sawdust on the pavement. In the window fake grass, brightest green—a foil for the pink and
red of the meat.

Are you OK? he asks me.

Yes, I tell him. I push my hair out of my face and my heart swerves. No, not really, I’m late.

And I turn and do something I didn’t think I could do. I run up the High Street, past Butlers, past Parsons’ Tea Rooms and
Sheila Fashions. Past Mei Yuen’s and the dry-cleaner’s and up to the spot where I can see the safe wooden sign for Empson’s
Books rocking gently in the wind.

By the time I reach the clinic, I’m already missing him. But I had no choice. I suddenly knew that if I let myself stand there
on that pavement with him a moment longer, things might not remain the same. Your whole life can be changed in a single moment
if you let it.

I park the car on North Road just next to the boating lake, about fifty or maybe a hundred metres from the place where Lennie
died. The lake is closed for the winter, a large heavy chain and padlock draped across its wrought-iron gates. Some paddle
boats are pulled up on the side of the grey, wind-rippled square of water, under the tarpaulins—the rest have probably gone
to be spruced up and repaired for next year.

In front of me is the cream concrete face of the Dolphin Diner and, beyond, the long wind-lashed expanse of the pier. It
has a fitness centre on it now, except that no one goes to it as far as I can tell. And next to that, the arcade with its
money machines.

I sit in the car and look at the pier and think of Mawhinney and all those others slaving away to catch someone who Vic Munro
thinks will never be caught.

I look at the pier for a long time, till my hands no longer know where they are or whether they’re still on the steering wheel
or on my lap, till I no longer remember where I am or what I’m doing or why.

I wonder if I’ll see Mawhinney come out, but I don’t. I see no one. I wait for a long time, till the windscreen is specked
with rain, and still no one emerges from that pale concrete building.

After that, I leave the car where it is and walk along the front as far as my hut. The Polecat. It is almost dark, the sky
greenish with dark, but I know the walk so well I don’t need light.

It’s spotting harder now with rain and because I haven’t been here since that night—haven’t been able to bring myself to come—I
can feel the nervy pulse of my blood in my tongue, my throat, in the hotness of the hair behind my ears.

The sea is crashing down. You can tell by the sound of it that the waves are pretty huge.

At the end of the concrete ramp, a couple of kids are
forlornly skateboarding, but otherwise no one’s around, just the waves making a tearing sound as they hit the groynes. Soon
their darkness will join up and melt into the dark of the sky. I love that moment when you can’t see what’s what any more
and sea and sky are one.

The key to The Polecat is in my pocket. It’s a normal key, small and steel, the type that would open a shed or cupboard. I
put my foot on the second wooden step of the hut and shove the key into the lock and at first it won’t turn but then I push
a little harder and it does, it gives.

The door falls open. I stand there in my hut and breathe in hard, enjoy its familiar smell of slightly damp curtains, wood
preservative and the faintest, blueish whiff of gas.

Later, back home, I climb the stairs and I look at Livvy, asleep in her cot. I stand there and wonder what I’m doing. Panic
builds in me. I don’t recognise the person I’ve become. I stand there and I hold my fingers up to my eyes, ready to wipe the
tears before they even come.

The hanging of the Annual Art Circle Exhibition at the old school gym is something that Lennie usually organises. It’s not
really about the art—tepid purplish watercolours of the area, the ferry, the fat silhouette of Blythburgh church, the creek
at dawn—but about the spirit of community. There are some dedicated amateur painters in our town. All the paintings and drawings
are for sale, with a percentage of the proceeds going to charity. Harriman’s always donates the wine for the private view.

Everyone has agreed that this year the exhibition will be dedicated to her memory. Some people considered that it should
actually be cancelled, but Polly and Maggie insisted that Lennie would have wanted them to go ahead. They say they intend
to make it the best yet. They’re roping in everyone they can find to help with the hanging.

I call Mick and tell him I’m dropping Liv back after work so I can go and help.

At the gym? he says. But I thought you were going to get out of it?

I was, I tell him, but I’ve thought about it and it wouldn’t be right.

I put down the phone and breathe in the silence.

I don’t go there. I hurry instead down Stradbroke Road, where a man is smoking a cigarette with one hand and sweeping crab
apples into the gutter with the other. Further on, by the lighthouse, some oldish women are standing on the corner with their
PVC shoppers. One of them, Mrs McGowan, is a patient. She waves and I wave back.

I turn quickly onto St James’s Green. It’s dusk and a brisk wind ruffles the surface of the sea. Alan the greengrocer is just
closing, pulling in his awning, dragging in the crates and buckets, folding the cloth that looks like bright green grass.
A brightly coloured poster in his window announces that he stocks fireworks. It will probably stay there till Christmas—everything
does in this town. As I pass, Alan looks up and raises a hand to me. I do the same and hurry on.

IN THE HOTEL RECEPTION, A GIRL WITH FIERCELY PULLED
-back hair is chatting on the phone, pretending she hasn’t seen me waiting there. I ask her if Lacey is in. She shrugs.

No idea, she says. I haven’t seen him go out.

So he’s in?

Unless I wasn’t looking at the time.

I ask her if she’d mind calling him. She asks rudely for my name and I tell her.

He says to go on up, says the girl, with no expression at all on her face. Straightaway picking up the other phone to carry
on talking. I start up the wide, hushed staircase then have to come back because I don’t know his room number.

Four, the girl snaps.

Up on the first floor, a chambermaid is hoovering the
landing. I think I recognise her. She may have babysat for one of us. She moves the hoover out of the way as I knock on his
door.

He doesn’t have a jacket on. Just a kind of dark shirt with a blueish T-shirt under. He hasn’t shaved either.

Hello, he says.

Hello.

I can’t look at him. I hold on to my handbag and touch the buttons on my coat and look at the room.

What a surprise, he says.

He offers me the only chair, pulling it out from the girlish, glass-topped dressing table. I sit. Next to me are small careful
piles of his loose change.

This is awful of me, I say.

He looks at me with relaxed interest.

Why?

I mean, just barging in like this.

Barge in any time, he says with a bit of a smile.

Yes, I say, but unannounced.

They rang me, he says, from reception.

Oh look, I tell him, you know what I mean.

He has nothing to say to that. He asks me if I want a drink.

I look at my watch. Though I know what time it is.

OK, I say.

He opens the minibar.

Gin, whisky or vodka?

Vodka.

He pours it carefully, hands me a glass.

I take a sip. The taste is blue, metallic.

Do you want something in it?

He passes me a tonic.

Thanks. I pull back the tab and tip it in, watching the quick fizz.

I can smell cooking and bar smells from downstairs. He holds up his drink and looks at me. Far away a phone rings. He keeps
looking as if he’s about to laugh.

Well—cheers, he says.

I smile. And dare to look around. The place is very neat. You wouldn’t think a person was even staying in it. As well as the
change piled on the table, there’s a wad of folded notes. A large notebook, a couple of pens. A laptop computer. A jacket,
his one, flung on a chair. And a towel. A pair of boots pushed carefully under the TV. And a faint, enticing smell in the
air—a smell of him.

He moves a newspaper and sits there on the neat, oatmeal corner of the bed and looks at me. He doesn’t seem to feel any need
to speak. The silence spills over between us and terrifies me.

You like your room? I ask him.

It’s OK, he says. Apart from the noise of the bloody barrels.

What?

First thing in the morning. They start trundling them around, or unloading them or something. You should hear it. Before six
it starts, the noise is incredible—

It’s the brewery, I point out.

Yes, he says, looking at me.

I sip my drink, feel it pounce into my heart.

Tell me about Natasha, I say then, surprising myself.

He looks up quickly.

Natasha?

Yes, I say. Tell me what she’s like.

I feel my cheeks get hot.

You’re blushing, Tess, he says.

I laugh. For once I don’t care.

I always blush, I tell him, with you. You know that. You should be used to it by now.

He bites his lip.

I can’t get used to anything about you, he says quietly.

No? I hold my breath.

No.

Well, I say softly, I don’t know. Is that good?

I don’t know either, he says to me. It might be. It might not.

For a moment we’re both silent. He puts down his drink.

There’s not much to say about Natasha, he says. I mean, I don’t know what you want to know. We go right back, I’ve known her
years.

What does she do?

He looks at me.

She’s a solicitor.

In London?

In London, yes. She does other things as well. She works with children, as a volunteer. Counselling and stuff.

She does a lot, I say.

Yes, he agrees. She does.

She sounds nice.

She is, yes.

He looks at me, waiting. We both wait and say nothing. I wonder what she looks like. How old she is. Whether he’s spoken to
her today. What he said.

So, I ask him, do you like it here?

This town?

I nod.

Not much, he says.

Really? Why not?

He shrugs.

It puts me on edge, he says. Too much water, too much sky.

But I love that! I tell him straightaway before I can stop myself.

Well, I know you do, he says, obviously. That’s why you moved here. But I’m a city boy. I like buildings, people, mess, dirt.

I used to like that, too, I tell him.

But not any more?