Something Might Happen (21 page)

Why?

She’s silent, concentrating on the insect. I can see every single light-blonde hair all the way up the nape of her neck, the
faint beginning of colour where her cheeks curve, the swirl of baby hair that turns into a cowlick at her temple and is charming
now but will probably annoy her when she’s older and vainer.

You don’t want to see her, Rosa says.

It’s not a question. She has the insect on her thumb, watching as it crawls over her grubby thumbnail. Tilting her head, careful
not to lose sight of it.

I do, I tell her, but I hear my voice—adult, tired, without conviction.

No, Mummy, she says. Let’s face it. You don’t.

I smile.

You’ve got your mind on other things, she says. All the time. You’re always looking out for something else.

She takes her eyes off the ladybird for one single second to look at me with narrowed eyes.

Am I? I ask her, surprised.

Mmm, she says.

Something?

My heart bumps.

Or someone, she says and she turns and smiles at me with eyes I don’t recognise.

The ladybird flies off—a black frizz and whirr of wings. Rosa tuts.

Oh look, she says. Look what you made me do.

Mawhinney says I needn’t worry about Darren. He says the knife has been ruled out anyway by forensics. It’s not connected
with the murder, he says. It’s just a knife. A coincidence. So that’s that.

I try to make him understand that I’m not worrying, that I just want him to know that it wasn’t even Darren’s knife to start
with. How I know he found it—how Jordan and I ran into him just after he’d found something, that day when we were walking
Fletcher at Blackshore.

What I mean, I tell Mawhinney carefully, is Darren wouldn’t even own a knife.

Mawhinney looks at me and laughs.

Rosa and I walk down Fieldstile Road, turn right onto North Parade and then head down onto the beach.

No one’s there, not a single person, not even a dog. I sit hunched on the windy shingle while Rosa mooches up and down at
the water’s edge, head down, looking at pebbles.

Every now and then she squats—legs bending easily beneath her—and picks up a stone, turning it over, but mostly leaving it.
Or else stands and hurls it so it skims the dark water, bouncing along the way Nat must have taught her. When that happens
she glances back to see if I’ve seen. I raise my hand and wave to show her that I have.

The sun moves in and out of the clouds, drawing long black shadows across the beach, throwing light at everything, then snatching
it all back up again.

Rosa comes crunching up the shingle, holding something up to the light.

Amber?

No.

I take the pale brown stone from her. The wet makes it pretty but as soon as I wipe it on my jeans it dulls.

Too heavy, I tell her, you know that. Amber’s light.

Amber’s a type of plastic, Rosa says.

Right.

My kids are obsessed with finding amber on this beach. Not that they’ve ever found any. The only person who has is Mick. Mick,
who rarely looks, yet once casually picked up a honey-coloured, translucent lump the size of a 10p piece—only to lose it again
through the hole in his coat pocket. The children have never forgiven him.

Rosa holds her brown stone up to the light. Weighs it in her hand.

It’s quite light, she says hopefully.

The sea is dull. Then sun comes out, glitter rushes across its surface and everything turns yellow. Then back to dirty as
the shadows fall.

The shadows on the beach get longer, colder. I pick up my bag.

Look, I warn her, you mustn’t go telling people about this. Not Bob for instance. It might upset him. And the boys—you won’t
tell Max and Con, will you?

Oh, Con knows, Rosa says quickly. Con’s seen her too.

Oh Rosa, I say, come on—

He has! Rosa wails. Oh, how can I get you to believe me?

As a baby, Rosa was the quiet one. She’d lie in her cot and fix on something motionless like the curtains or the sun coming
through the blinds and just stare and stare. Then suddenly she’d chuckle, as if she’d just seen something extraordinarily
funny that none of the rest of us could see.

Now she’s crying, from frustration and anger.

She’s not here, I tell her as gently as I can. She’s gone, Rose. You know that. Lennie isn’t coming back, not ever.

She doesn’t look at me but she doesn’t argue either.

It’s not fair, she says, still feeling the weight of her stone.

That’s right, I agree. It’s not.

She chucks the stone away so it lands with a plick in the shingle, immediately indistinguishable from all the others.

LACEY PULLS UP BESIDE ME OUTSIDE PARSONS’ TEA ROOMS
, in full view of most of the High Street. He winds down the window. He looks tired and cross and his hair is all sticking
up.

Can you come for a drive? he says.

What, now?

Yes, he says, I really need to get out of this place.

It’s a cold and blustery day. I know that Alison Curdell is watching us, standing on the steps of the post office and twiddling
her hair. Next to her the sign saying Antiques & Curios blows over, caught by the wind.

I’ll have to phone Mick, I tell him.

He passes me his mobile as I get in and clunk the door shut. The car has dark red leather seats and smells of sherbet
or something acid and familiar like that. There’s a white paper bag of sweets open on the dashboard.

I didn’t know you had a car, I say. I mean here with you in town—

It’s not my car, he says.

Oh.

Mawhinney arranged for me to borrow it.

What shall I tell Mick? I say.

I don’t know, he says without looking at me. Don’t ask me. Tell him whatever the fuck you like.

I bite my lips and look at all the numbers and symbols on the phone. What shall I tell Mick? Suddenly it seems like a question
I’ve been asking myself all my life.

The answerphone is on. I tell him a lie—to do with Maggie Farr and Polly Dawson and some tins of something.

I ask Lacey how to turn the phone off and he takes a hand off the wheel and does it for me. A click. I watch his fingers,
long and quick. I know how to turn a phone off. I just wanted to see him do it.

What? he says.

Nothing.

Why are you upset? I ask him.

I’m not.

You are. I can tell you are.

Oh, he says, I’m just a bit fed up that’s all. It doesn’t matter.

As we drive up to the A12, I watch the hedges speeding past the window, the skeletal cow parsley, the flattened leathery dead
thing in the road. Brownish fur, bit of dark
red blood. Once an animal, now a part of the surface you drive over.

So, Lacey says, the funeral’s on Friday.

That’s right, I agree. But you know, I’d rather talk about something else.

On a table by the road someone has made a sign saying Fresh Veg. There’s a bunch of carrots and a marrow. Also some purplish-pink
chrysanthemums in a black bucket.

Fair enough, he says.

I think he seems angry with me. Then I think if he was, he wouldn’t be asking me to come out with him. Then I think, this
is madness, what am I doing, coming out with him?

At the crossroads, Lacey waits to give way and then turns a sharp left. Lorries shoot past on the other side, heading for
Lowestoft or Yarmouth. On my left the marshes stretch, black and wet, and from the right comes the sweet pong of Blythburgh
pig. Put British pork on your fork, the signs say. Signs that reduced Jordan to tears of disgust the first time he saw them.

I hear they’re bringing in new staff, Lacey says. On the investigation. An attachment from the task force.

What’s that mean, then? I ask him and he shrugs.

It doesn’t mean anything really—just some fresh blood. But anyway, I think Mawhinney is a bit pissed off.

Really?

Yeah. He takes things personally. I think he genuinely thought he had something on Darren Sims.

But he doesn’t?

No, Lacey says, Darren’s not involved in this.

You’re sure? I ask him and he flicks me a look.

Are you? he says.

Yes, I say. Yes. Of course I am.

At the turning to Blythburgh, Lacey stops and puts his hand on the indicator.

Which way? Left or right?

I’m in charge?

Yes.

Left, then.

He turns so sharply that the wheels make a noise on the verge. A van behind hoots to complain.

Where are you taking me? he asks.

I laugh. You’ll see.

Where?

Just a place I know. A funny place. You’ll like it.

But then before I can say anything else, he pulls in at the side of the road by the sign for Toby’s Walks and stops the car.

I know this place. Two centuries ago or something, a young girl was murdered here. It’s in the guidebooks—long enough ago
for people to find it exotic, exciting. Now though it’s a nature reserve, with walks mapped out and little signs for where
the marshes are, and benches for picnicking. A lot of birdwatchers come here. They say in spring you can hear the first nightingales
if you’re lucky.

I stare ahead at the vast black conifers and bracken. If you listen hard there’s always a gentle tick-ticking. I don’t
know what it is—just the sound that the forest makes, the forest floor.

Why have we stopped? I ask Lacey.

He doesn’t look at me.

I don’t know, he says, I’m sorry.

I laugh, but only because I’m nervous and I don’t know what else to do.

I’m lost, he says. He says it with a serious face but when I dare to glance over at him, he says, No, not like that. I mean,
lost in other ways.

You know what I mean, he says after a pause.

Don’t say things like that, I tell him.

What do you want me to say then? he asks me. I mean it. What do you want to talk about, Tess?

I don’t know, I say.

The truth is I can think of nothing to say that would be right.

He says, Do you want to talk about how much I like you?

I take a breath.

About how I can’t sleep or work or think or do anything that isn’t about finding out how I can next see you?

No, I whisper, not that.

He doesn’t smile.

Well, what then?

I don’t know. But not that.

I look at him—at his face with its pale skin and dark eyes, the sharpish nose, the arrangement of features that
aren’t anything much at first glance, but for some reason get better the more you look at them.

He shrugs.

I’m only doing what you said, he tells me.

What?

What you said you had to do. Spending time and waiting for it to wear off.

Oh.

Except it won’t, he says. You know that. My feeling for you isn’t like that. It won’t just go.

Oh God, I tell him, I shouldn’t have come.

He puts both hands on the steering wheel.

I would have made you.

Would you?

Yes, I would.

I keep thinking he might touch me but he doesn’t. He just keeps both of his hands on the wheel.

I don’t know anything, I tell him. I mean, what to do, what to think—

You’re in a difficult position, he says quietly, because you want to please everyone.

I think about this.

Is that what you think?

I don’t know, he says. I’m finding it hard to know what I think either.

He winds down the window. There are pops, creaks and rustles in the bracken. Animal sounds. A magpie flashes black and white
in the clearing ahead.

A girl was murdered here once, I tell him.

Is that what they say?

Centuries ago. It’s supposed to be haunted or something.

Oh, he says. Haunted by what?

I don’t know, I say. A ghostly girl in white?

Lacey laughs and after a moment so do I.

As we drive up into Westleton, he has to slow for a brown pheasant which picks its jerky way across the road and into the
hedge. A sign by the side of the road says, Apples And Kindling For Sale, £1.20 a Bucket.

I decide to tell him about Rosa and Jordan and Connor and how they say they’ve been seeing Lennie.

Yes, he says slowly, Alex told me that.

Don’t you think it’s weird?

He rubs his eyes and then smiles.

I think it’s that daughter of yours. She has a big imagination—

You think so?

Huge.

I think about this—about Rosa. The Rosa-ness of her.

It’s funny, I say. When you first have kids, you think you know what their limits will be, how they’ll turn out.

Do you? he says.

I mean, you know they aren’t you, that they’re their own people. But you don’t really believe they’ll have all this energy
and thought that is nothing to do with you.

He smiles.

Your Rosa certainly has that.

What?

Energy.

I look at him.

Yes, I say, she does, doesn’t she? And it’s nothing to do with Mick or me. Sometimes we can’t control it at all. It’s a force
of its own.

An alien force, says Lacey, and smiles again.

Yes, I say quite seriously, an alien force.

After a moment or two he says, She had a big thing about Lennie, didn’t she?

It’s raining slightly and the road ahead of us turns dull.

Yes, I say. She did.

The bookshop is in an old chapel with a corrugated roof and dense thickets of nettles and brambles growing on either side.
Opposite is a post office and general store combined, where you can buy shampoo or stamps, painkillers or home-made coffee
& walnut cake.

In the shop window, among all the ads for Bed & Breakfast and babysitters and stuff for sale, is a Suffolk Constabulary poster
with Lennie’s face on. I don’t have to look at it, I already know what it says. It gives details of what Lennie was wearing
and carrying on that night. I know these details now by heart: jeans, a red satin shirt, a silver bracelet, a soft, dark red
leather clutch bag with a yellow smiley face sticker (stuck on by Con and never removed) on it.

Unlike the post office, the bookshop is always open. Always open and always deadly quiet except for the twitter of the starlings
that nest in the roof. Inside, old books are piled everywhere and in all directions—on the floor, up to the
ceiling and up each and every wall, some of the piles so high you feel they might curl right up over the arched ceiling and
come creeping down the opposite wall.