Rosa!
Fletcher barks once. His lonely, mystified bark, the one he does when he’s either being left somewhere or doesn’t know what’s going on. It has a kind of scream at the end of it. He barks like that now, just once, and then once more.
We run down the concrete steps and go crashing over the shingle under the great concrete legs of the pier, the place where in summer kids chuck their used condoms and takeaway cartons. Water hits the graffitied sides of the pier, the breakwater, so hard you’d think it would come loose and float away. Fletcher barks again—he barks so hard and pointedly at the water, you really would think there was someone there.
Rosa!
We wait for a moment looking at the water, but we’re looking at nothing.
I stumble back up into the car park. Two cars are parked there at the far end, but otherwise the tarmac expanse is empty. No one uses the car park in November, especially not at night. Wind rattles the heavy chain on the boating-lake gate and an old fish and chip paper is lifted by the wind and hits the side of the phone box.
I shudder and tremble. Circles of cold close around me.
The moon is wrapped up in cloud at the moment that Lacey moves out of the shadows. As his arms come around me, I gasp.
Shh. It’s OK, he says softly. Look. It’s me.
In his arms, I can’t move, can’t go forward or back. I begin to cry.
What have I done? I say to him. Oh what? What did I do?
He puts his hand on my head, on my hair.
Shh, he says. It’s not you, Tess, it isn’t, it’s not you.
But—my Rosa!
They’ll find her, he says. They will, they’ll find her.
I cry louder.
Fletcher whimpers and Lacey takes him from me and, keeping his arms around me or at least on me, he presses me against him and doesn’t speak. I know he is trying to keep me altogether, to stop parts of me flying off, and that he’s a good person basically and that he knows less than I do and also that he can do nothing for me now.
Where is she? I say desperately. What can have happened?
I want him to tell me but he doesn’t answer, he just says nothing. He doesn’t say they’ve found her and he doesn’t any more say it will be OK, he just says nothing and stands with me there.
Chapter 17
ALEX RINGS EARLY THE NEXT MORNING. HIS VOICE IS jagged and upset.
Where is she? he says. I don’t believe it. I mean—where the fuck could she possibly go?
I try to speak but I can’t. My head is hard and tight. I’m afraid of what I might say.
I don’t know what to do, he says. How to help. Tell me, Tess—
We’ve lost her, I hear myself whisper. Al, I just know it—she’s lost, gone.
Look, he says. Listen to me—
I try to listen. But I don’t know what he says. All the time, other things creep in. Down the street is the clink of Doug the milkman delivering, just like any normal day. Birds doing things in the roof. Outside the window the sky is white, stripped bare by wind.
I’m half dressed, trying to drink a glass of water. If I don’t drink, I won’t be able to feed Liv, it’s as simple as that.
We’re just—waiting, I tell him, my voice shaky with tears. Oh God, Al, oh God.
I should have come round, last night.
There was no point.
Have you slept?
No, I say. Have you?
A little. I think so, yes.
He’s silent for a moment.
Christ, he says. Jesus, Tess, I mean it. What’s Mawhinney saying? Where could she have gone—?
They’re all out there looking, I tell him. So many of them. He says if she’s out there they’ll find her—
Alex takes a breath. Or maybe he’s smoking. In the background I can hear Connor saying something to Max.
I’m sorry, I tell him.
What do you mean?
Today. That it had to be today—to have this—today.
Don’t be so fucking stupid, he says.
A beat of silence. Tears are creeping down my cheeks again.
Look, he says, I’ve got Patsy here with the boys. Bob’s shattered—I don’t know what time he got in. Do you want me to come round?
There’s nothing you can do, I tell him.
Be with you?
I don’t need that.
Where’s Mick?
Out there, with them.
When’s he coming back?
I don’t know.
The funeral will go ahead. It can’t be postponed and no one wants it to be. Everyone’s ready. The town needs it to happen now.
For Christ’s sake, Alex says when I tell him Mick and I are still coming, neither of you need to be there. What does it matter? It will all happen with or without you—
We’ll see what happens, is what Mick says.
I know what he means. He means that the afternoon is an unthinkably faraway place. So much could happen between now and then.
I start to think things. I think, if Rosa’s just run away, if she’s perfectly OK and just being naughty and hiding or something, then she will be there, she will somehow come to Lennie’s funeral, I know she will. She has a watch. She knows when it is. She, more than anyone, would want to see Lennie buried, there beneath that spreading yew.
I want to be there, I tell Alex, panic mounting. I have to be there.
Tess, he says, why?
For Lennie.
You know what Lennie would want, he says.
* * *
The boys are watching a video, but only because I made them. Their faces are turned towards it, but they keep looking around them—Jordan at me, into the kitchen, Nat out of the window.
Jordan woke up this morning with a stomach ache and asked immediately about Rosa. Nat wants to go out looking for her again and he’s angry with me because I won’t let him.
Liv is asleep, but not for long. She’s hungry and my milk is going. Fast. I can feel it. When I tried to feed this morning at about five thirty—weepy and tired—I was shocked at how little there was, just a thin blueish spurt and then a dribble, then nothing. Liv sucked so hard it hurt, then burst into furious cries. Then so did I. So, almost, did Mick.
Now my breasts feel small, useless.
It’s the anxiety, says Maggie Farr who has kindly come over with a tin of formula. Tess, seriously—no one could keep on feeding through all of this.
If I can just keep drinking, I tell her.
You need to eat as well.
I’m trying to eat, I say but it’s a lie. When Mick made me a sandwich last night I almost choked on it. My body is rejecting everything.
Mick has already put the bottles in the steriliser. Seeing that pink and blue tin of powdered milk and knowing what it means makes me cry all over again.
I don’t want to get into all that, I tell Mick.
All what?
I don’t want to start boiling kettles and sterilising.
He looks at me with a strained face.
But you said—
I know what I said.
You won’t manage, he says, if she’s hungry and crying.
I know, but I didn’t want to stop yet. I wanted to keep going a bit longer.
She’s quite old enough, Tess—
It’s so final.
Tess.
I just don’t want it to be—like this.
By lunchtime nothing has changed except that Liv has done it, she’s taken a bottle. Mawhinney and his men are still out. Mick goes to take a shower and Maggie sits with me in the kitchen. I can’t speak or think but Maggie doesn’t seem to expect it. All I want to do is to sit by the phone and wait and Maggie lets me do it.
My two girls, I tell her and then I stop myself. Words, bursting up to the surface, but pointless. My two girls.
Maggie takes my hand.
She has on her black clothes already, even though Alex has expressly asked for people not to wear black. The brighter the better, he says, e
specially as Lennie hated black. A colour that sucked out the light, she said it was.
Maggie’s black dress has red piping.
A compromise, she tells me. I know, I chickened out. I couldn’t dress in bright colours. I just don’t feel it, I just can’t.
Tears slide down her face. I lean forward and tuck in her label which is sticking out at the back.
I feel I’m doing more harm than good being here, she says.
No, I tell her. No, it’s not true.
She makes us some coffee. She makes it too weak because she’s not used to making it in an espresso pot. She opens her handbag and gets out her sweeteners, clicks a couple into hers. We sit there and neither of us touch our cups.
There’s washing-up piled in the sink. Maggie is so desperate to load the dishwasher and start washing pans that she keeps on touching the apron that Mick has flung down on a chair. Eventually I give in and let her. It’s easier.
Rosa knows when the funeral is, I tell Maggie. And where.
Yes, Maggie agrees, but she carries on standing with her back to me. I long for her to turn so I can see if there is hope on her face.
When Maggie has gone, Mick comes back down. He has on his dark clothes, the suit we got dry-cleaned, the white pressed shirt that belonged to his father. I can feel him looking at me, trying to decide whether to say something or not. I feel him decide not.
The service is to begin at two. Lennie’s body, already on its way from Halesworth, is to start the slow and winding journey towards Blackshore at one. The bells will start ringing then. An hour of bells. A sound not heard in the town since the last lifeboat tragedy, two decades ago.
Alex phones and I know what he’s doing is telling Mick for fuck’s sake to forget being a pall bearer, to go and carry on looking for Rosa instead.
I hear Mick start to argue.
There’s all those police out there, Al, I hear him say. It makes no difference whether I’m with them for that hour or not.
Mick pauses while Alex says something, I don’t know what.
I’m already changed, he says uselessly.
He’s silent a moment, listening to Alex. Then he says OK, then he puts down the phone.
I look at him.
Are you doing it?
No, he says. No, of course I’m not.
I hear him cross the hall and go into the downstairs toilet. I hear him shut the door. I hear him being sick.
After a misty, rainy start, the day has brightened and it’s a lot like yesterday, with great sudden floods of sun swooping over the rooftops.
I make the boys eat a plate of sandwiches. Peanut butter and honey, anything they’ll eat. I make too many—I am programmed always to make food for three. Jordan insists on putting two sandwiches on a plate for Rosa. He gets the clingfilm out to cover it and drops the box. The film unravels and gets in a mess. He begins to cry. I wipe his tears and tell him it’s OK. His hair is cool against my face. Together we smooth the clingfilm back over the plate and put the sandwich next to the bottles of formula in the fridge.
Nat sighs and looks down at his plate. His eyes are circled with tiredness.
What is it, Nat?
You know I don’t like crunchy peanut butter, he says.
The bells have started. Mick comes down again, in jeans now, and finds me standing in the kitchen and holding a dishcloth and staring at the wall. He takes the cloth from my hands and gently pushes me into a chair.
No, I tell him, I don’t want to. I don’t want to sit.
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.
Something Might Happen Page 21
