Something Might Happen (27 page)

Come on, he says.

I thought you’d gone, I say. Aren’t you going? Out again?

In a minute, he says.

He stands there.

Tess, he says and his face is terrible, dark with grief.

What?

I need to know, are you going to leave me?

I stare at him.

What?

Am I losing you?

Why? I say. I am thinking of Rosa and unable to follow what he’s saying.

Just tell me. Please. Is that what’s happening?

I lay my head in my arms which are spread on the table.

I lost her, I say. It’s my fault.

I did, he says. I had her. She was with me. I lost her.

No, I tell him. It was me. I didn’t think—I wasn’t paying attention. I was out, I was with—

He shuts his eyes.

You don’t have to tell me, he says. I don’t want to know what you’ve been doing.

So—

I just want to know about you and me, if we’ll go on—

What do you mean, go on?

As a family, you and me.

I begin to cry, hard deep sobs.

Do we have to talk about this now? I say. Is this really the moment?

His face changes.

But Tess, he says, there are no other moments—we don’t get any of these moments. Tell me, when are they? When do we get to
talk?

After a moment or two, he sits and he says, I’m sorry. But it’s not just you, you know.

What do you mean, I ask him, confused, not just me?

He looks at me.

What I said—it’s not just you.

What?

There have been times, he says, when I wanted to do something, too.

Something? I say. What do you mean? What sort of thing?

He shrugs in a horrible, hard way.

Something bad, he says. Something to cause—damage—to our relationship.

I look at him and taste fear in my mouth.

But—why? I ask him.

He shrugs. His eyes are cold.

Just to see.

See what?

His face is hard and tight.

See if our marriage survives it.

But, I say, you wouldn’t do that—

Wouldn’t I?

I mean, what about the children?

He looks at the table.

What about them?

I stare at his face and don’t recognise him, the look on it, the look of a stranger.

If you want the truth, he says, there have been times when I didn’t really think very much about the children.

Oh.

Does that shock you?

I don’t know, I say.

Seconds pass. I’d have thought it would be impossible to think, but it’s not. Just that each thought I have comes wrapped
around a picture of Rosa.

When Lennie died, I tell him, feeling around carefully for words that seem true, I felt—well, I suppose—a little mad.

We all did, he says flatly.

I take a breath and look at him.

But—

No, he says, I mean it. You aren’t the only one, Tess. All this time—it hasn’t just been you—

I don’t listen to this.

I had to find out, I tell him, I had to see whether I could be different without you. It’s been so long and—

He waits.

We are so much a part of each other. Or we were—until Lennie had this—thing—done to her—

He seems to think about this for a moment. I hold my breath. He waits.

And were you? he says, a little coldly. Were you different without me?

I can’t lie. I think of Lacey. His hands on my head, on my body.

A little, I say and I don’t look at him. Yes, a little, yes I was.

And how did that feel?

It felt—oh—

I look at him and feel afraid—afraid of Mick, of my husband.

Good. It felt quite good.

A tear slips down. Outside the bells have changed and are making a different sound.

I thought it might be the answer, I tell him.

To what? he says. The answer to what?

I don’t know. To—all this.

He doesn’t ask what all this is. He sighs and pushes his hands through his sleeked hair. Still he says nothing. He just looks
at me.

I love you, I tell him. I haven’t ever not loved you.

I hold out my hand for him but he doesn’t take it, he doesn’t move. I’m sorry, I tell him after a moment or two.

What for?

That I’ve been so bad to you.

Have you? he says. Have you been bad?

Yes, I say. Yes, Mick, I have.

The bells are still ringing. Above the sound, seagulls wheeling and screaming in the sky. Jordan comes in. He’s changed and
put on his corduroy trousers, the only ones he has that aren’t jeans or tracksuit bottoms, that are half smart. And a T-shirt
with Homer Simpson on. Toothpaste splashes on it.

I want to go to the church, he says, looking from Mick to me and back again. Why can’t we?

Nat stands behind him with his hands in his pockets and looks at us as well. I sense a rare moment of cooperation between
them. You can tell by their organised faces that they’ve been talking upstairs.

Aren’t we going? he says.

Mick hesitates.

Let’s go, I say to him suddenly.

What? he says.

To the church—please, Mick, let’s just go there.

She might be there, says Jordan, unblinking. Nat says nothing, looks at the floor.

I look at him. I know Mick knows—that I am thinking the things that Jordan is saying. That they are useless things to think.
That she won’t be there, she couldn’t, she can’t possibly be.

But he doesn’t say that. He looks at me and says, We’d better be quick, then.

St Margaret’s is packed. There are even people standing at the back. Almost the whole of our town is in that church.

We sit at the front on the left-hand side with Alex and the boys. When Alex sees us, he shakes his head at us and then hugs
us both. Tears on his face. Some people try to smile at us, others are careful not to look.

Bob, hair combed, face tight and rigid, is next to Patsy. After the service he says he’s going straight out to look for Rosa
again. Patsy has done as suggested and dressed in red—red shoes and bag, the lot. She stays very still, facing front. There
aren’t many other bright outfits, but one or two are scattered, like petals among the black.

There are some press in the church but no cameras apparently, as respectfully requested by Canon Cleve. And the burial is
not to be filmed or photographed.

In front of us, on a plinth, is Lennie’s coffin. Alex didn’t want it draped in anything. He wanted the beauty of the wood
to show. So there it is, naked, gleaming, huge. Jordan stares at it. He knows not to ask me if she’s in there.

In fact, our children are perfectly still, perfectly quiet. I had thought they might be restless but they’re not. Even Liv
stays quiet in Mick’s arms, a string of saliva hanging from her soft, bunched-up mouth. Jordan sits with his small feet on
the kneeler. He only glances around him when someone coughs or sneezes.

Alex holds both his sons’ hands tight and stares straight ahead. I can tell that Connor has been crying, but he’s OK now.
He seems to be in a dream, or else he’s tired, or both. I don’t look at Mick. Instead I look up, at the tall, plain, light-filled
windows through which you can always see sky, blueish cloud, tops of trees. Then I shut my eyes and for the first time ever
in my life I pray.

Canon Cleve says that Lennie touched so many people. That was her gift. She will be remembered for her humour and generosity
and her zest for life. When he makes a joke about her, a few people laugh. The laugh cracks the silence, lets everyone shift
in their seats.

He says he hopes and prays that Alex and his family will be given strength to rebuild their lives, that they’ll become a stronger
family, bound together in love and grief by this tragedy.

Then he says, Let us pray.

A sudden memory comes to me, of Lennie making dough for all our kids in the kitchen and, when pieces of it got trampled all
over the floor and the sofa and carpet, laughing and saying it didn’t matter. Her face as she says it:
It’s only furniture. Her fingers and the wrists of her jumper covered in flour. When she pushes the hair out of her face,
she has to do it with her arm, awkward, laughing.

I feel myself trembling all over. Mick turns to me and mouths, Are you OK?

I nod.

Jordan’s kneeler is embroidered with beach huts—one red, one yellow, one blue. He traces their shapes with a finger, round
and round, up and down, over and over.

I rest my head in my arms on the hard polished wood of the pew and now the sea comes into view—wobbling and sparkling on a
far-off day—and Rosa is hurrying up the beach, bringing me endless brown pebbles and demanding to know if they’re amber. And
I wish that just one of those times, one pebble could be honey-gold and light as plastic and I could just say, Yes.

Let us stand, says Cleve.

Oh no, I hear myself mutter to Mick, I can’t do this.

It’s the hymn Alex and Lennie had at their wedding. Patsy is weeping silently.

Mick leans his mouth to my ear.

Do you want to go out?

I shake my head.

I’m fine, I tell him.

He does not sing—Mick never sings—but stares up at the carving on the choir stalls. The minutes pass and I won’t allow myself
to think or look behind me. And then eventually I do, I look down at the grey flagstones and then I turn my head and see Lacey.
He’s right back against the far wall
on the left, standing there with a couple of uniformed officers and he’s looking straight at me. His face doesn’t change,
but he doesn’t take his eyes away either. They are the last thing I see before Cleve asks everyone to kneel for the final
prayers and Lennie’s floury hands fly back at me again just as the cold grey floor comes up to smack me in the face.

The grave is almost three metres deep. That’s what Nat tells me in the wide, cold porch as Sue Peach brings me a glass of
water and someone else holds a wad of Kleenex to the cut on my head.

You got blood all over the floor, Jordan tells me as people shuffle past and try not to look.

You might need a stitch on that, says Sue but I grab hold of the Kleenex myself and I look at it and say no. I can tell I’ll
have a hell of a bruise tomorrow but the bleeding has already almost stopped.

I’m fine, I tell them and no one disagrees. Mick takes the children out to the graveside and tells me to stay sitting for
a moment. I tell him I’m coming.

As the last mourners leave the church, Lacey is behind them. Up close his black suit is actually dark grey, his tie crumpled.

He squats down next to where I’m sitting on the cold stone bench and asks me if I’m OK and I just look at him. That’s all.
I just gaze and gaze at his kind face.

The burial is just family, but this of course includes us. We are all family. The rest of the town stands out there on
Bartholomew’s Green and watches as the coffin is lowered down on its ropes and put in the ground. Max can’t stop himself leaning
forward a little way to see it go in. Con begins to cry loudly. Patsy puts her arms around him, hugs him close.

In a pocket of deep silence, Alex takes some earth from the undertaker’s trowel and lets it fall and then, more slowly, Bob
does the same. In the church, he was weeping and weeping as if he’d never stop, but now he’s calm, dry-eyed. Max takes some
earth and lets it fall, but Con won’t do it, he refuses.

When the trowel is held out to him, he turns and pushes his face into Alex’s clothes and Alex staggers back a second, caught
off balance, and then takes his hand and holds him close. Patsy shakes her head. Tears start to come down Max’s face. Alex
gathers him close as well.

It’s over, I can see him saying. It’s OK, it’s over.

This, I think, this is the moment. I glance hurriedly around the graveyard, at the rows of stones leaning back like teeth.
Nothing. No sign of anything. Just gravel and shadows and stone.

Then Patsy leads Alex and the boys away from the grave and out through the little gate that leads to the playground. It’s
a funny way to leave the cemetery but there’s no other, not today, not if they want to avoid the crowd. We watch them take
the long route through the playground, past the swings and the slide and the big tyre with the bark chippings strewn underneath,
past the rough-mown lumpy meadow where on so many taken-for-granted summer evenings Lennie
and I stood in the warm wind with mugs of tea in our hands and nothing on our feet, just shouting and shouting for our five
suddenly deaf kids to come in for baths, or tea or bed.

A cold late lunch is served at Alex’s, but we skip it. No one expects us to go. Even Alex has to be begged not to abandon
it after half an hour and rush off to join in the search.

And then, just after five, Mawhinney comes round with a piece of news. He says that Darren Sims of all people has reported
seeing someone looking very like Rosa standing right on the groynes down beyond Gun Hill. Yesterday evening, just before dusk.

What? I cry. Standing actually on the groynes?

Mawhinney folds his arms and looks me in the eye.

He says she was shouting at the sea.

Christ, says Mick and he looks at me.

Mawhinney says that Darren said it looked like she was perfectly happy and talking to someone.

Talking? To someone in the sea?

That’s what it looked like.

But, for Christ’s sake, Mick says, who?

Half an hour later, Darren is brought round to see us. He looks bothered, pink. His sweatshirt is muddy and on inside out.

I couldn’t see anyone out there swimming or nothing, he says. I’m not being funny, but it looked like she was talking to the
sea.

He tells us that he yelled at her to get down off the groynes because everyone knows you don’t go on them, that they’re dangerous.

You were that close? Mick says and his face is pale and slicked with sweat. You could call to her?

Oh yes, Darren says. But she didn’t hear a word of it. Or at least she turned round once but didn’t do nothing, just looked
at me and turned straight back again.

I sit. My head is bursting.

Ten minutes later, Darren’s mum rings us. She sounds very upset. She explains to Mick that Darren did go home and tell her
what he’d seen but she didn’t believe him. She told him not to be daft and sent him off to pick up the two bags that needed
collecting from the launderette.