Something Might Happen (7 page)

I take a breath and catch Lacey’s eye. He holds my gaze then looks away.

Mick lowers himself into a chair, his face bloodless.

But how can they possibly be so specific? he wants to know.

The angle and depth of the cut, says Alex simply. He looks at us and shrugs and his voice doesn’t wobble or falter. It just
stays exactly the same.

Meanwhile other things have come to light. We know now that her underclothes were partially pulled off. That she wasn’t sexually
assaulted. That the bludgeoning to her head was so frenzied that large fragments of her skull lodged in her brain causing
extensive haemorrhaging. Which means her assailant would have been covered in blood. It would be impossible, the police say,
to inflict those kinds of injuries and on that scale and remain unbloodied.

He probably left in a car. Police say they want to trace
the owner of a silver Fiat Uno that was seen on the junction of Hotson Road and North Parade around the time of Lennie’s death.
Anyone who knows anything at all should come forward. They appeal again and again for help from anyone who was in the pier
end of town on that night.

You wanted my mummy to die, Connor tells Rosa as they sit together on the low, flinty wall at the end of Spinner’s Lane.

Rosa is shocked. She calls him a liar. He calls her a bitch and throws a handful of gravel at her. She throws a handful back
and then runs sobbing all the way home, leaving her anorak behind on the wall.

You know he didn’t mean it, I tell her.

He did! Rosa sobs. He did, he did! He called me a bitch!

I know better than to try to hug Rosa, but I touch the biscuity top of her head.

Poor Connor, I say.

He called me a bitch! Don’t you even care?

Rosa—

She pushes me off.

Leave me alone, she says. Get your hands off me. If you’re going to side with him. You only care about him.

I never know what to do with Rosa—she has all of Mick’s surly cleverness combined with the pouchy beginnings of breasts already
(and she’s only eleven) plus a frighteningly clear idea of what she expects from the world. Mostly it lets her down.

Sometimes I think we would be closer now if I’d never
had Liv. Having another baby made me go down in her estimation. It’s true—she despises me for it.

It’s an alien, she told me when she saw how the baby’s fast-growing body turned my navel inside out. You’ve been taken over.

It’s just all a bit much when you’re her age, Lennie suggested. She’s too young and too old for it. She can’t see what’s in
it for her.

I laughed. There were times back then when I couldn’t see what was in it for me either. But Lennie was right. She was better
at working Rosa out than anyone else. Poor Rosa. Just as she was learning to do cartwheels and handstands and to make her
own body bright and ruthless and elastic, there I was, slow and large and weighed down.

When Liv was born, Lennie gave Rosa a kitten. She named it Maria. She said it was the best present anyone had ever given her.

All I have left of Lennie, Rosa says now as Maria’s warm white weight spills through her fingers.

I tell her that Connor must be very mixed up right now.

Just think of how he must be feeling, I say.

Well, he should think of my feelings, she replies.

You don’t really think that, Rose.

I didn’t want Lennie to die, she says.

Baby, no one thinks you did.

He does. He thinks so—

No, listen darling, that’s what I’m saying. Connor’s eight years old and he’s lost his mum.

Almost nine, says Rosa.

What?

He’s almost nine. And I’ve lost my—friend.

OK. Nine, I say, but that’s a terrible thing to have happen to you. Think of how awful you’re feeling. Then multiply it by
a thousand.

Rosa stops crying then and grows still and silent. After some minutes she takes my hand and feels my fingers, my two rings,
the soft, fleshy pads under my nails. She asks me where Lennie is right now.

The question takes me by surprise.

You mean where’s her body?

Yes.

Well, it’s in a morgue, I tell her carefully. That’s the place near the hospital in Ipswich where they look at her to see
how she died.

But they know how she died—

More or less, yes.

Rosa frowns.

So—what—aren’t they going to bury her then?

Eventually, yes of course they are. Or cremate her.

Rosa slips one of the rings off my finger and puts it on her own. This is a favourite thing of hers to do. The ring sits lopsidedly
on her thin little finger. She spins it absently round.

Who’ll decide? she says.

It’ll be up to Alex.

Rosa shudders.

I wouldn’t want to be underground, she says. But I wouldn’t want to be burnt either.

You mustn’t think of it like that, I tell her, taking back the ring and easing it onto my own finger. You’re not you when
it happens.

No, but—what? Just a body?

That’s right.

Oh, well, I wouldn’t want my body to be burnt or underground then. It’s the same.

It won’t be your body. Because you won’t be you.

But I will be me! Rosa insists. My body is still me—

Not in that sense, not in the feeling sense.

It will be for me, she says firmly.

You can’t possibly know that.

But I do!

No you don’t, I tell her as gently as I can.

Rosa says nothing. Then, Yes I do, she whispers.

I take her in my arms and hold her tight enough to feel the fizz of her heart. She doesn’t fight me this time.

Now Nat knows things. He knows about Lennie’s heart, and he knows she wasn’t shot. He’s heard stuff. At school, in the street.
Kids of twelve read the papers. Details are going round. Mick calls him downstairs and shuts the door.

We’re talking about a very, very disturbed person, he says, looking him all the while unflinchingly in the eye as he always
does when he’s telling something serious to the kids. A sick person. Someone badly in need of help.

A psycho? Nat asks a little too eagerly.

Well, psycho’s a silly word they use in the movies, Nat. Real life is mostly a lot more boring and nasty and banal. But if
by psycho you mean someone who is so inadequate that they get some kind of kick out of killing someone in this terrible way,
then yes I suppose so, a psycho.

Will he get life? Nat asks. Swallowing.

If they catch him, Mick says, yes, I’m pretty sure he will.

I bet Alex wishes there was the death penalty, Nat says, and his eyes bunch up in sympathy. I bet he wishes this was in America.

Mick looks at him patiently.

Not for a sick person, Nat, he says. It’s not right to kill a sick person.

It’s never OK to kill, right? says Nat and this time he looks at me.

Never, I agree.

Nat pauses and fiddles with a rubber band he’s picked up off the table.

But what if they don’t catch him? he asks, stretching the band between his fingers.

This time Mick looks at me.

They’re going to try very hard to catch him, I say.

Do you think he’s upset? I ask Mick, once we hear his feet thudding back up the stairs.

No, he says, getting himself a drink out of the fridge.

What? Not at all?

Not especially, I don’t think so, no.

He roots around for a beer. They’re all at the back. When he has it, he grabs the bottle opener, rubs it on his jeans, looks
at me.

I think he’s just put it away.

Oh.

Don’t worry, he adds. It’s perfectly healthy.

Is it?

Not everything has to be talked about, Tess.

He tilts his head back and sips as if nothing was wrong. I look at him.

Really? I say, I’m surprised. You never used to think that.

Didn’t I?

No.

Are you sure you know what I used to think? I mean, you always assume you know what I’m thinking, he says more gently.

Do I?

I bite my lip.

I don’t mean to—assume things, I begin, then I backtrack. Anyway, don’t you assume you know things?

I don’t think so.

You don’t? Of course you do.

Mick shrugs, puts the beer down on the table.

I don’t know. I don’t give it much thought. I mean, I don’t think like that. I get on with life instead.

He says it like that, as if it’s perfectly normal and true, but there is a kind of pain and tension in his face as he says
it and it occurs to me that, for perhaps the first time ever, there is pain between us, too. Why? I don’t think it’s about
Lennie, not really, I don’t think you can blame that. No. I actually think it’s about us—him and me and how we are together.

Later, when I let it back into my head, the idea shocks me. I decide it cannot be true. It must just be that all the grief
and shock has got mixed up and seeped into our feelings about each other. If someone you care about dies violently, it infects
everything. Anyone would agree with that.

I know what Lennie would say about this. Don’t be stupid, she’d say. You’re going through a difficult time, that’s all. Don’t
generalise or say or do things you’ll regret. Just hang on in there and wait for it to pass. Because it will. It’ll pass.

A man rings from the coroner’s office. For a chat, he says. He apologises for disturbing us, but explains that he is supposed
to take Mick through what will happen that afternoon at the morgue—how much he’ll see, what it will be like, etc.

Mick takes the phone and walks slowly into his study and shuts the door. He’s in there for a few minutes. When he reappears,
he looks tired. He tells me that the man said that only Lennie’s face will be visible, that the rest will be covered by a
sheet.

There aren’t any marks on her face, he says. Nothing visible apparently, not even any bruising.

He stands there and looks at me and scratches at his arms.

Was it supposed to make me feel better, do you think? he says.

I don’t know, I say.

I mean, couldn’t Lacey have told me all that?

Would you have asked him?

He sighs.

I don’t know. I mean, maybe not.

Later, when he’s gone, I take the chance to cut Rosa’s toenails. She makes such a fuss that I am forced to bribe her with
a bag of Doritos.

What do you want to do, Rosa yowls as I grab her slim, white foot and prop it on my knee, torture me?

Yes, I say to shut her up.

Even though it’s only five—way too early to drink—I pour myself a glass of wine, a big one.

You never cut the boys’ nails, Rosa complains as she crams her mouth with Doritos.

How do they get shorter then? Tell me that.

Rosa giggles.

What d’you think happens? You think they just drop off?

It’s discrimination, she says happily. You just want to get me.

I smile and drink my wine in big, quick gulps, feel my edges soften. Rosa wipes bright orange Dorito dust from her mouth and
onto her jeans. She sneaks a glance at me as she does it. Normally I would shriek at her, but I don’t, I barely notice. I
feel strangely untouchable, as if I’ve slid sideways
into someone else’s life. It’s a good feeling. After some moments, I leave the room and walk upstairs.

I put Liv down and curl up on the sagging, Marmite-stained kids’ sofa with Jordan. We watch
Tomorrow Never Dies
and I let him zap forward to the action bits, even though this is something he’s not normally allowed to do. You either watch
the whole of something, Mick always tells the kids, and watch it properly, or you do something else useful instead.

This, apparently, is how Mick got somewhere in life and it’s a position that, on the whole, I agree with. So Jordan can’t
believe this waiving of the rules.

Are we being slobs? he asks me hopefully.

You bet.

Do you like Bond?

I love it.

No. I mean him—James Bond? Do you actually like him?

He’s great, I say, and, exhilarated by my attention and approval, Jordan turns and pats my face tenderly. His fingers smell
of heat and cheese.

I love you, Mummy, he says.

Yeah, yeah.

You’re so beautiful—I mean, you look so young.

I laugh.

I mean it—you only look about thirty-five, he says and I kiss the soft skin next to his eyes where the freckles spill over
so enthusiastically you can’t believe he will one day be a man and shave and have serious, grown-up thoughts.

Mummy needs another drink, I tell him and he pauses the video so I can go to the fridge to replenish my glass. But he rewinds
a little before he pauses it. He doesn’t want me to miss anything.

In the kitchen the windows are black and battered with rain. The fridge is white, the wine bottle yellow and cold. I put my
hands on it, feel the chill. It goes straight to my heart.

When I return, Jordan is kneeling up on the sofa, waiting.

What would you do if a baddie came in now? he asks me urgently as I set the wine down on the carpet and he unpauses the film.
He watches me, watches my face, waiting to see what I’ll say. On the screen, a Chinese girl is swimming underwater (again),
black hair waving in the gloom.

I’d call the police, I tell him.

Yes OK, he says impatiently. But what if they didn’t come?

They would, I say—surprised that Lacey’s serious face slips into my mind—they would come.

But, he insists, I mean, what if something happened to them on the way?

Oh Jordan—

Or if they didn’t hear the phone?

There are people whose special job it is to answer the phone, I tell him. So if you dial 999, of course they answer and they
come.

Hmm, he says, more or less satisfied.

But he’s missed one of the fights—they shot at the Chinese girl when she came out of the water—so we have
to wind back. As he holds the remote up and concentrates on the screen, I slip my arms under his and feel the snap of his
little chest, the warmth of his neck, his baby hair.

You smell like a rabbit, I tell him.

But he’s not listening, and before I can stop it happening, the room blurs and tears come.