Something Might Happen

by Julie Myerson

  You’re honoured, I tell him. Mostly she cries when she sees strangers.

  Am I a stranger?

  Well—

  She’s seen me before, he points out.

  OK. But not very much.

  He stands up then and I’m thinking several things—how hard he is to talk to, how awkward and how this awkwardness makes me shy. And also that he seems to be about to go and I don’t even know why he came, what he came to say.

  Look, he says abruptly, do you want some coffee or something?

  Coffee?

  Yes.

  He coughs a little cough of embarrassment and my heart races. I glance down at Liv and flush again.

  We have coffee here, I say.

  No, he says. No—I mean out somewhere.

  I laugh.

  I haven’t got long.

  Come on.

  All right, I tell him, OK, fine.

  Outside it has turned into an OK day. Warmish and lightish, almost not like autumn at all, but late, lingering summer, the last dregs of brightness.

  I put Liv in the buggy, tuck the blanket in around her and clip her in. Her small white fingers flutter a moment on my wrist and I feel almost happy.

  So, he says as we wheel up the High Street. Where to?

  No idea, I say.

  Come on, he says, you know this place.

  OK, I go. Follow me.

  We head for the front, the prom. Up past Curdell’s and the grocer’s and The King’s Head and John Empson’s and Somerfield. Across the marketplace, wheels joggling on the cobbles. He doesn’t speak. I glance at his reflection in the dark windows of Pam’s Florist’s. I feel him beside me but I don’t look.

  The Whole Loaf Deli has its shades down as if it’s lunch. Hard to tell if they’re open or not. Outside there are two people with large woven shopping baskets.

  Do you know, I ask him since he has already brought it up, how soon they’ll release her—the body, I mean?

  You mean for a funeral? he says and I nod.

  He hesitates, pushing his hands through his hair.

  No, he says, not really. It could take a while.

  We’ve reached the Sailors’ Reading Room. He glances uncertainly down the steep and narrow steps to the prom. The metal handrail is splashed in places with birdshit. One or two pink poppies still bloom in the gorse.

  Can you help me lift it? I ask him.

  What, all the way down there? That’s where we’re going?

  It’s worth it, you’ll see.

  He takes the other side of the buggy and helps me down, me in front and him behind.

  You know, he says once we reach the concrete esplanade at the bottom and put the buggy down, how Alex feels? About her heart?

  I flush with surprise.

  What? What about it?

  Getting it back, I mean.

  I stop the buggy and turn to stare at him properly. The wind drops and my head feels suddenly warm and light.

  No, I say, I don’t. What do you mean?

  That he doesn’t want to bury her without it?

  Oh, I say. He hasn’t said that to me.

  Oh, well I’m sorry. I thought he might have.

  No.

  Lacey seems flustered. Again he pushes his hair back from his head—a pointless thing to do since it springs straight back.

  I think, he says slowly, hesitating, I mean, I don’t know how to put this, but I think Alex may have unrealistic ideas about what I can do—

  You?

  With regard to bringing it back I mean. Finding it.

  I take a breath.

  Well, you can’t can you? I say.

  He looks at me again.

  Look, he says. Do you mind me talking to you like this?

  No, I say without even thinking.

  Despite this, he seems to hesitate.

  It’s just—I can understand it—he doesn’t want to bury her without it.

  But he’ll have to?

  He looks away from me, at the beach, the sea.

  I think so. Yes.

  I press my fingers on my mouth, stopping a rush of tears from coming.

  Have you said that to him? I ask Lacey.

  What?

  That he’ll have to.

  No, he says and I turn my face away into the wind. I don’t want to cry in front of him.

  I’m sorry, I tell him as we continue on along the prom, it’s just that I can’t really think about it for very long, any of it—

  I know, he says. It’s OK. You don’t have to.

  I’m sorry, I tell him.

  Don’t be silly, he says.

  I look away from him and try to think. The tide is out—a distant frill of brown—and the shingle shines all over with smallish creeks. I love the beach best like this.

  Some little kids are running and shouting and building something in the sand exposed between the bumps of shingle. They have swimming costumes on even though it’s October, but they dash around in the jagged, goose-pimpled way of kids by the sea, waving their spades and shrieking.

  You’re used to this, though, aren’t you? I tell him.

  We stand for a moment and watch the kids—their small, curvy backs and tense, startled little legs. A dog is barking and barking at the far-out waves the way Fletcher used to when he was young and crazy, and a woman is hanging wet towels on the railing of one of the beach huts.

  Used to what?

  I mean this stuff—dealing with it, the really terrible stuff.

  I know he’s looking at me.

  He says, It’s my job. To support people—the victims and their families. But I don’t think anyone gets used to it.

  Do you stay in touch with people?—I mean, afterwards?

  Not always. Mostly not. Sometimes they just want you out of their lives.

  Oh?

  They want to start again and not be reminded. That’s fine. It makes sense.

  But, I say, what about you? Don’t you ever get—attached?

  He smiles. Doesn’t answer.

  Or them, I insist. Sometimes they must get attached to you?

  If they do, he says, it’s fake. That’s what you have to remember. It’s only because you’re with them for twelve or fourteen hours a day. You have to withdraw—carefully.

  How? I ask him. How do you do that?

  It’s called an exit strategy.

  He smiles again and looks at me.

  It’s not as bad as it sounds, he says. It’s just a job.

  You must be very strong, then, to do it.

  Not especially, he says. Just a good listener.

  Al doesn’t talk much, I point out suddenly though I don’t know why.

  No, Lacey agrees, he doesn’t. Where’s this coffee, then?

  In the buggy Livvy gurgles and bats at her toy.

  Estelle’s is the next one along, I tell him.

  What’s Estelle’s?

  The Tea Hut. Look, down there.

  OK.

  The best place.

  If you say so.

  I do.

  The day after Lennie died, they had Estelle on the local TV news. They showed her putting hot water in the big metal teapot, looking sad, looking out to sea.

  She said, This is a very rural community and everyone knows everyone else and we are all so very shocked that such a terrible crime could happen here in our midst.

  At Estelle’s you can buy just about anything. Windmills and air mattresses and pocket kites and buckets and spades, the lot. When they were younger, the kids would nag us for the little packs of paper sandcastle flags, the ones you can get for 35p. They’d swear to us that they couldn’t build a sandcastle without them—and then we’d find them later, discarded and crushed and sandy at the bottom of the nappy changing bag.

  I park the buggy and Lacey goes over and buys two mugs of coffee filled the way Estelle always fills them, to the brim. He brings them over carefully, picking his way between the big white plastic chairs.

  We came here all the ti
me, I tell him, pulling my coat up around me, Lennie and me, you know. Even in winter.

  Jesus, he says, looking around him, I can’t say I really see the point of this place in winter.

  Oh, winter’s the best, I say, vaguely disappointed that he should say such a thing.

  I try not to think of Lennie and me, huddling on the shingle in our jumpers, with a mug of weak Earl Grey from Estelle’s, taking it in turns to watch the kids. When the beach is empty, you can let them run and run till they’re no more than tiny black specks heading for Blackshore. As long as you can still see them, they’re safe, you can relax. And then if the sun slides out from under a cloud, a moment of pure yellow heavenly warmth, before the grey returns.

  Lacey is looking at me.

  Can I ask you something? he says.

  What sort of thing?

  Well—ah, OK, it’s this. I need to know what sort of a relationship Lennie and Alex had.

  You can tell he finds this a difficult question to ask because he looks me straight in the eye as he asks it. His gaze doesn’t wobble. I feel the blood hit my face.

  Goodness, I say. You mean their marriage—were they happy together?

  Lacey nods. That sort of thing, yes.

  But—I hesitate—I mean, shouldn’t you ask Alex that?

  Oh, well, I have.

  And?

  He shrugs, looks down at his knees.

  As you yourself said, he doesn’t talk much.

  But—why ask me?

  Come on, he says. She was your friend, wasn’t she? Women tell other women things.

  I think hard. I think about what to say.

  I’m sorry, he says. I’ve embarrassed you.

  No, I tell him quickly, no, of course you haven’t. I understand—that you have to ask these things.

  Lacey puts down his coffee mug and scrapes his chair back a little on the concrete. Shoves his hands in his pockets, waiting.

  It’s just, I say, it’s difficult. So soon after.

  He says nothing, waits, looks at me.

  Do you think you were a good friend to her, Tess? he asks me then. And I notice two things: that it’s the first time he’s used my name and also that the question bothers me more than I thought it would.

  I take a breath.

  Not always, no, I tell him.

  He looks surprised.

  Do you mind telling me why?

  It’s personal, I tell him. And I don’t think it’s relevant.

  Relevant to what?

  To—this.

  It could well be, he says.

  I don’t think so, I tell him.

  Isn’t that for me to decide?

  I look at him then. He’s leaning forward, wrists on his knees, the way he did when he was listening to us all in our kitchen at home. I look in his eyes and try to discover what he’s expecting to hear.

  Is it part of your job, I ask him, to question me like this?

  Yeah, he says, you know it is.

  I make an exasperated noise and he laughs. Not seeming to mind that I haven’t answered him.

  OK, he says at last. OK, forget that. Tell me something else instead.

  What?

  I don’t know. Anything. Whatever you like.

  Afterwards, we walk a little way together along Pier Road—claustrophobic with its leylandii and dwarf conifers, porches crammed with dead geraniums. I always think that and I think it now. But if I cut across the playground and the churchyard, it’s the quickest way back to the clinic.

  By the phone box on the corner I stop.

  I’m going through there, I tell him, indicating the grassy field with its swings and slides and big old tyre which hangs above a bark-chip-strewn expanse.

  The church clock is striking. Eleven already.

  Oh, he says. Right.

  I’ll see you, I tell him. Thanks for coffee.

  Take care, he says and he looks at me.

  You OK? he asks me.

  I’m fine.

  Thanks for your time, he says. Maybe we can do it again?

  Maybe, I say uncertainly. Then a thought occurs to me. It was random, wasn’t it? I ask him suddenly, my heart racing. Just a random, horrible, vicious thing? She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time—

  He stares at me.

  Hey, he says, why’d you suddenly say that?

  I don’t know. It’s just—been in my head.

  There’s no such thing as random, he says slowly, not really. Not in that sense.

  I shiver.

  Meaning—?

  Tess, there’ll be a reason, a kind of logic to it—

  You think he’s local? Someone we might all know—someone living right here in this town?

  Is that what you think? he asks me quickly.

  You’re the expert, I say and he gives me a sober look.

  No, he says, I told you. Not in that way. I’m not much of an expert, not really.

  I leave him then. In the playground a couple of mothers—I don’t know them—are sitting at the picnic benches near the climbing frame, chatting and watching over their toddlers who are picking up handfuls of the bark chips and chucking them at each other. As the gate swings shut behind me, I hear squeals of laughter, then the sound of someone crying and then—very faint and only in blotted snatches—the sound of someone practising the organ deep inside the walls of the church.

  Chapter 7

  FOR DAYS AND DAYS, PEOPLE HAVE BEEN LAYING FLOWERS in the car park. Even strangers from Reydon and Wangford—people who didn’t even know her—have brought bouquets and laid them there. The pile is growing. It feels like it will never stop. If you go near the pier, it hits you. The decayed sweetness of freesias and roses wrapped in cellophane and blown on the wind.

  Alex isn’t comfortable with it. He says it’s not what Lennie would have wanted and anyone who knew her agrees. On Sunday morning, Canon Graham Cleve lets it be known that Lennie’s family would far rather people made a donation to one of her favourite charities instead. But no one takes any notice. The flowers keep on piling up and Winton’s, the bigger florist’s in the High Street, stays open till 7 P.M. four days in a row to cope with the demand.

  Two national papers run obituaries of Lennie—proper longish obituaries that talk about her with a serious kind of respect, as if she was someone you’d have heard of. In the world of ceramics she was on the way up, though, as Alex likes to point out, they still wouldn’t give her a show of her own in London.

  The photo they use is the one taken about three years ago by one of the local papers. In it she is bent over a glossy wet pot, strands of hair falling in her face, fingers and apron squidgy with clay. Because she’s concentrating, the expression on her face is unsettling—savage, almost. It’s a different Lennie from the one we knew. Certainly I never saw her look like that.

  Someone from the Crafts Council is quoted as saying that, Leonora Daniels was a welcome breath of fresh air in ceramics, relying as she did on her instincts rather than following the whims and vagaries of fashion. Bollocks, Alex says. He’s sure this person never even met Lennie, let alone had anything good to say about her when she was alive.

  Meanwhile everyone in the town has their own small thing to add.

  She was so normal, Peggy at the dry-cleaner’s tells me when I go to pick up the curtains. There was no side to her, no side at all.

  She was ever such a nice person, one of the dinner ladies at the school tells the Gazette. I hardly knew her but she always went out of her way to say hello.

  Almost a week has passed and the whole town knows that no killer has yet been caught. Daphne Ellison, who works on the till at Somerfield, tells me that everyone she meets is talking about security. People who never thought twice about leaving their doors on the latch now double-lock them, even during the day. More than once, she’s seen the locksmith’s van parked in Cumberland Road or Skilman’s Hill or next to the cottages at Woodley’s Yard.

  It’s sad really. You don’t want to give into it, she
says, the fear I mean. But it’s all right for me, I’ve got a husband. What can I say to my poor old mother who lives alone?

  Now everyone supervises their kids closely. Mick won’t let Nat go out alone to the playground and he’s not allowed to hang around on the Green with the other kids like he used to. In fact, plenty of people I know won’t venture out across the Common or do the marsh walks alone now, not even to watch the sun go down or exercise their dogs. And certainly no one would dream of going near the pier, or hanging around anywhere in the town after dark.

  I bump into Alex at the school gates. He looks terrible—pale, unshaven, used-up, glittery-eyed. Some days he lets us call for Con and some days he doesn’t. He’ll only accept so much help, even from us. He says he’s still trying to be a normal father, and I can sympathise with that.

  Naughty girl, he says, once I’ve shouted at Jordan to come back for his PE kit and waved him goodbye.

  What?

  I hear you’ve been hanging out with Ted Lacey.

  I blush straightaway and hate myself for it. I should know better. I should know Alex better.

  I try to look him in the eye.

  We talked, I say, yes. Why?

  And, he says in a mock-accusing voice, you had coffee and went for a walk.

  I look at him. I can hear the dryness in his mouth. I wonder vaguely, helplessly, if he might be ill.

  Are you all right? I ask him.

  He smiles.

  Perfectly fine. Why? Don’t I look it?

  No, you don’t actually. You look—terrible.

  We start walking, away from the school, and he rubs his face. I see that his hands are shaking.

  Have you eaten today?

  Yes, Mummy.

  Al—

  Well for Christ’s sake. What the fuck do you expect me to say?

  I touch his sleeve and he pulls away.

  I never see you any more, he says.

  I look at him.

  What? I say. But you see me all the time—

  No. I mean alone. I don’t see you alone any more.

  I stop.

  You don’t need to see me alone.

  Don’t I?

  What’s this all about? I ask him: Seriously—what’s the matter?

  You know what the matter is. Seriously.

  No, I say. I don’t. I mean today—this—what’s it about?

  He shrugs.