Before they closed her eyes, I looked. I insisted. What I saw was that they were already darkening, losing the spark and shine that is Rosa. I know she believes that your soul goes somewhere when you die. Obviously hers had already gone to that place. Knowing her, it would have rushed there, eager to be first. You could see this on her face—that her soul had spilled out of her far too quickly, leaving her somehow startled and bereft.
The police say we can keep her till morning but that then she will have to go to Ipswich so a proper post-mortem can be carried out. Though, based on the pathologist’s initial examination, her death is not being treated as suspicious. She almost certainly just fell in the sea and drowned, they say.
But she was a good swimmer, I insist. I say it again and again to anyone who’ll listen. But you can see they just daren’t tell me what I already know: that it doesn’t matter how far you can swim. Anyone can drown in a rough sea on a dark night.
* * *
We sit there all night with our Rosa. Sometimes we hold hands, Mick and me, and sometimes we hold onto each other, our whole bodies moving under waves of sobs, but mostly we just sit there in our separate silences. I see him gazing at his daughter, snatching his last hungry looks. I watch him doing this and I don’t know what to say or how to feel.
As dawn comes and a greyish light moves over the chest of drawers, the bookshelves, the collection of ornamental cats and duck feathers, the pink dried-up glitter pens with their lids left off, Rosa’s face seems to change again. It looks almost alive. A trick of the light, I tell myself—or else it’s just that we’ve got used to it, to her, to this.
We both lean in and kiss her, first him then me, then both of us wanting to go again. Our girl. She doesn’t smell bad—just of our family and of our soap and, slightly, of Rosa. Then we fetch the boys in to say goodbye. Mick says that’s important, letting them see. Nat and Jordan look at her so carefully, as if the wrong sort of look could damage her. I feel almost proud of them, that they can look at their sister so gently.
Can I touch her? Jordan whispers.
Of course, I tell him and he reaches out and puts a hand on her cold, white forehead, on her smoothed hair.
Can she feel that? he says and my heart jumps as I tell him, No.
Yes, but if she was alive, could she? he says.
Yes, I whisper. If she was alive, yes.
He stands there and looks at her and thinks about this. I look at Mick. He is shuddering with sobs, his whole body moving. No noise, just shaking silently.
There is a time—I think so, it comes back to me later—when we all just stand and cry in the room together. That’s the feeling I have anyway, though the moment has long slunk away, out of memory. I remember Jordan’s small knuckles pressing on my face, the empty hungry smell of his breath. I remember Nat, the dark top of his head wrapped inside Mick’s arms.
And when the ambulance comes, the men are so good. They creep up the stairs so quietly and carefully, as if a million babies were asleep in our house, instead of just Liv with her mouth wet and hands flung up in her cot. Fletcher barks as they come and then again as they go but I shush him and straightaway he shuts up.
As I stand there by the front door, I think I will never be able to let them take her, never be able to let her—that small blonde fast-asleep baby from that long ago summer morning—go. But in the end I surprise myself and it all happens quite easily, and I do, we let her, we do.
Chapter 19
LENNIE’S HEART IS NEVER FOUND. SOME MONTHS LATER though, something horrible is washed up in a plastic carrier bag at Dunwich. It turns out to be a heart—badly decomposed and a long time in the water. The carrier bag containing it has been sealed with duct tape—but not very well. I can’t imagine what it was like for whoever had to open it.
Reporters rush to the town, only to be told it’s nothing, the heart of a farm animal probably—maybe a cow, maybe a horse. Certainly not a human. No one has any idea why it was chucked in the sea in a carrier bag, but the truth is, people do strange things. Satanic ritual, one or two of the papers eagerly imply, but nothing the police say backs that up.
* * *
And no one is convicted of Lennie’s murder either. The lead Mawhinney thought he had just petered out. Not enough evidence. It takes more than just a lead to get an arrest, he says, and even more to get a conviction. Mick always said that, after those crucial first days had elapsed, he didn’t think the police ever really believed they’d get anyone.
The case stays open—Alex has been assured it will remain open for some time—but, though Mawhinney stays in touch, the murder squad leaves the town and the Dolphin Diner gets its storage rooms back and life returns pretty much to normal. One or two vindictive people continue to cut Darren Sims in the street and whisper about him in shops and pubs, and someone tells him he shouldn’t ever bother showing his face at The Red Lion again.
But everyone knows who they are and no one supports them. Everyone agrees that Darren should be left alone. As Jan Curdell points out, since when did a low IQ make someone a murderer? Besides, Alex later admitted he could have been mistaken about seeing Darren. So the police have established for once and for all that there’s nothing to link him to Lennie that night.
Actually, the knife Darren found in the ditch that time is indeed a lino-cutter. It is eventually traced back to a carpet fitter from Wangford who was laying a new floor in the Pool Room at The Anchor. How it got from there to the ditch at Blackshore is something no one has ever been able to explain. Even when the police interview the carpet man at some length—though there’s still no forensic evidence to indicate this is the murder weapon—still no satisfactory explanation emerges.
Anyway, the man has a perfect alibi for the night of Lennie’s murder. He was in custody in Lowestoft at the time, charged with drunken driving.
Anyone who knows Alex well knows he won’t stay single for very long. After the funeral is over, after Rosa, it’s only a matter of a month or so before he starts an affair with Gemma Dawson who has been helping out with the boys and who, at seventeen, is far too young for him. In the end, Gemma ditches him, but too late, Polly’s furious. She never forgives him for distracting her daughter during her spring mocks.
So it’s a relief when he falls for Ellie—single, thirtyish, independent and with her own business making and selling wrought-iron garden furniture. Ellie’s based in London but, after only a couple of months of knowing him, she puts her flat on the market and moves in with him and the boys.
Just to see how things pan out, she tells me. Nothing, after all, is set in stone.
I agree with her. Nothing is.
What makes me smile is that Ellie is far more like Lennie than anyone will admit. She’s unimpressed by Alex for a start. She’s tough, she’s creative, she’s funny—she’s good with the boys. She rides a bicycle around town and the locals take an instant shine to her because of her red hair and the fact that she’s not stuck up. She doesn’t mind getting wet or dirty—crucial when you live with boys. Best of all, perhaps, she doesn’t seem to expect miracles. Alex told me she’s even written to Bob, asked him to come over and spend the summer, see his grandchildren.
I think they may marry. I really hope so. I’ve barely seen them this past year—all of us have been so busy with one thing and another—but I’m hoping they’ll come up and stay soon. Besides, Jordan misses Connor desperately. Jordan misses everyone desperately.
Last time I spoke to Alex on the phone, he mentioned that he and Ellie are trying for a baby of their own, but that it’s taking its time to happen.
Still, she’s only thirty-three, he went on. She’s still got all the time in the world, hasn’t she?
Yes, I agreed, surprised to feel the tears spring to my eyes.
We didn’t stay in the town, Mick and me. How could we? As well as taking a part of us, the place had lost all of its magic, all of its charm. It’s not that I blame it for what happened to Rosa, but I couldn’t go on being somew
here that reminded me—of what? Of how I took my eye off the ball for that split second—which is, after all, all it takes to lose just about everything you care about?
Most of all I found I couldn’t any longer bear to look at the sea—at that grey and pitiless expanse, sucking and shifting its shadowy weight over the cold wet sand. Or I could of course, if I had to—but only for just long enough to call Fletcher back, or for Jordan to be able to run and grab his Frisbee out of the foam. After that I’d have to look away, to turn. I’d have to run.
It took all of our strength to leave, but we knew, Mick and I, that leaving was our only chance of a future and we owed it to ourselves and the children to hang onto that.
We moved there to be safe but, in most ways, I feel safer where we live now. I’m amazed that Alex can stay there, that he loves it still. I think maybe Lacey was right. It makes you dizzy: too much water, too much sky.
Mick’s new job pays him well. Silly money, he calls it. Everyone says he’s fallen on his feet. He never really thought he’d go back into journalism—and he despises the paper for its bland complacency—but he sees it as a temporary measure.
The best thing is it’s given him a push. Now he spends all his evenings and weekends writing his own stuff. I don’t know if he’ll be able to make a living at it, or even if he can write. All I know is, I love the look on his face when he’s trying.
I know what will happen with Lacey. What will happen is that, sooner or later, one of these days, we’ll find each other. There he’ll be, standing in his dark coat on a crowded tube platform—or striding along the street among the bright lights and shop windows—and he’ll touch my sleeve.
Come for a drink, he’ll say.
What? I’ll go, blushing. You mean now?
Yes of course now, he’ll say, smiling. Why not now?
And we’ll go and sit in a bar somewhere—a bar crowded with business people and their crushed-up suits and bags and phones—and in the space created by our new shyness, we’ll talk and not talk and I’ll remember him all over again, what I liked about him, how he confused me, threw me off course, how it felt, to have his body against mine.
I’ll ask him how his life is going.
And he’ll look down at the dirty, pine floor and then back at my face.
OK, he’ll say.
And work?
A long story. Basically, something else came up, something I knew I could do better.
What? I’ll ask him, unable to imagine what that something could be. What thing?
Not now, he’ll say. I’ll tell you all about it. Some other time.
And maybe I’ll ask him how Natasha is. And he’ll say he split up with her a long time ago, that winter actually. But that he’s been seeing someone—a woman, an old friend he knew from long ago, from his student days.
It’s all very weird, he’ll add dismissively.
In what way weird?
I’m just—not sure it’s going to lead to anything.
Well, I hope it does, I’ll tell him truthfully, refusing the bait.
I suppose I hope so too, he’ll say and then he’ll glance at me in that way of his and I’ll quickly look away and we’ll both smile.
He’ll be interested to hear about the move and will seem genuinely glad about Mick enjoying his work. He’ll ask how the boys are getting on and I’ll tell him fine, adding that Nat now towers above me, would you believe it? and he’ll say that yes, he does believe it.
And Livvy? he’ll say—and it will make me feel strange, to hear him speak her name, not just because I know he has a soft spot for my baby girl, but also because she was part of it. She was with us on that long ago terrible night.
A terror, I’ll say—explaining how she’s up and walking now, running around like a maniac, driving Mick and me crazy, getting into every cupboard and pulling things off shelves and so on.
Maybe he’ll ask me who Liv looks like now and I’ll laugh and say she’s got Mick’s black hair and black eyes but she doesn’t look like anyone really.
She just looks like herself, I’ll say.
Her own person.
Exactly.
And we won’t talk about Rosa, but when we discuss the other kids, I’ll see a question in his eyes and I’ll answer it truthfully without speaking, because that’s how it is with Lacey. Not everything comes down to words.
We’ll both agree it would be great to meet up.
Well, I’ll say, why not come over for supper some time?
I’d like that, he’ll say and I’ll tell him that he could see Mick and he could see the house—though it’s still a mess with builders everywhere of course—and he might if he’s lucky even get a glimpse of the kids.
And I’ll pull a scrap of paper from my bag and we’ll write down each other’s e-mail addresses. He’ll read mine aloud to check he’s got it right and fold it away in his wallet, but we both know we’ll never do it, we’ll never e-mail. We know that, even as we write them down so carefully and as we fix on each other’s faces for that one last time, we won’t do it.
Maybe once or twice in my life, on a sad or shaky night, my fingers will hover over the keys. They may, occasionally, even go so far as to type in his address. But I’ll always reach for the split-second safety of the delete. Mostly it will just be enough to see that scrap of blue paper with his handwriting on it stuck to my wall, to know it’s there, to know it could be there, that it will continue to be there if I want it to be.
Rosa is buried right bang next to Lennie, as close under the yew as they could manage. Cleve was very good about it. Asked no questions, made no fuss, just made it happen. Leave it to me, he said and we did.
She is there and we are here and sometimes that is very hard, but that’s why we still go down there, why we’ll always go. Apart from Alex and his family, Rosa is what pulls us forever towards the town. She lies there and maybe one day we’ll lie there too. I hope so. I used not to care at all about where I ended up, but I don’t think I could leave my little girl there forever on her own.
Though she’s not alone of course. When I’m there, I’m amazed at how I see the place through their eyes—Rosa’s and Lennie’s. Lennie used to say that the countryside around there scared her—that it had an energy that sucked you in, that snared you, whether you wanted it or not. I think Rosa understood that. And now I too am beginning to understand what she meant.
Because I know that, if you walk along past Blackshore and the ferry to the marshes, something strange happens. Sound and texture dissolve and all signs of human life recede and silence crashes into your ears. And that, once you’re past a certain point, the cow parsley grows as high as your head and the sky clots to a palish green and the horizon dips and swerves and falls away.
And then, when you can no longer see a single soul or any sign of life save, to your right, maybe one small dark sail out at sea and, to your left, crowds of terns alighting in slow motion on the flats beyond Buss Creek, you can convince yourself that you’re truly alone on the planet, that everyone’s gone and there’s no one out there but you.
Knowing this can cause a person’s breathing to sharpen and their heart to tilt. Because, with or without the friendly souls of the dead, this place can seem like the loneliest and forlornest on earth.
And then, despite the crackle of insects in the gorse, the cry of the bittern, the brown gleam of the saltings, the eerie, mauve light that creeps in just before rain, you shiver. Because—smelling the coltsfoot coming off the dunes, feeling the sharp breeze that lifts your hair—you sense the truth. That there’s no one at all out there to save you, should something happen.
Acknowledgements
Apart from the usual suspects—thank you Jono, Jake, Chloe and Raff!—a few special people made a difference during the writing of this novel. Jonathan Coe, Susanna Denniston, Esther Freud, John and Jackie O’Farrell, and Henry Sutton gave me unconditional fun and friendship through a dark winter. Philip Hensher generously told me things I needed to hear
when I was down. Gill Coleridge and Lucy Luck believed unswervingly in the book right from the start, and Dan Franklin and Caroline Michel gave it the best home it could possibly have. And when I needed to remind myself all over again about babies, a small person called Izzy Thomas was somehow—magically!—there. One day you’ll know how important a job that was. Thank you, Izzy.
JSM, London 2002
JULIE MYERSON has written four other novels, one of which, Sleepwalking, was shortlisted for the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. She lives in South London with her husband and their three children.
On a cold night in autumn, an unspeakable crime shatters the quiet calm in a small seaside village.
When Tess’s best friend, Lennie, goes missing, Tess holds out hope that a simple accident has delayed or trapped her somewhere—but on some level she can already feel her absence. When the police confirm that Lennie has been found murdered, the pain is impossible to bear.
Ted Lacey comes to town to help the police better understand the crime, to get to know the families involved, and to comfort the community. His skill is to fade into the background in order to see everything with clarity, and he sees Tess etched in full relief: a woman on her own terms, outside the boundaries of wife, mother, or friend. In the shock that follows Lennie’s death, Tess is drawn to Ted Lacey in ways she can’t explain. At a time when she should pull her husband and four children in close, she finds herself stepping away, powerless in the face of her attraction to Ted Lacey’s steady presence. In a world where grief has suspended all rules, Tess uncovers emotions long buried, and she unravels the extraordinary skein of secrets, evasions, and repressed passion her life has become.
Something Might Happen Page 23
