Something Might Happen Read Online Free PDF Page A

electric milk van is stopped and told to go back round the other way, along North Road. The tide
     turns. A series of black groynes point up like fingers at the sky.
    After perhaps half an hour, a small yellow and white tent is erected. It flaps about in the early morning wind that comes
     off the sea. Yellow tape is strung between the posts of the car park. No one is allowed to cross it—only one or two police
     are let through and even they have to be cleared by the grey-haired man in a white jacket who arrived ten minutes earlier,
     looking tired-out and carrying a small nylon bag.
    Paramedics stand around. Grim faces. Confusion. What are they waiting for? Is someone just injured or are they dead? At last
     a police officer walks briskly forward, head down, talking into his radio. They immediately let him through the tape. His
     breath is a cold cloud and he looks at no one.
    He pulls a coat on over his neon jacket, which glints oddly in the bright sea light. He is followed by two policewomen, one
     of them frowning hard and carrying something small and heavy. The wind blows the clouds apart and everything is lit up and
     sparkly-yellow in that split second. Far out to sea is a perfect little boat with a brown sail. You can tell the wind is strong
     because of how the boat scuds along. Eager and fast. It looks like it’s going to be a lovely day. That’s what it’s like the
     morning they find Lennie—everyone says that, everyone remembers it. An especially lovely day for the time of year.
    Someone has died. The whisper goes around. A woman’s body has been found—attacked and left for—yes, a female, someone from
     here—no one knows who. No, they haven’t said. Yes, dead.
    No one says murdered, not yet, not then.
    A good soul from one of the B. & B.s on North Parade appears with several mugs of tea—by which time a crowd of dog walkers
     and delivery people and shopworkers has gathered. A couple of chambermaids from The Angel, shivering in their black. People
     speak quietly to one another. Someone’s mobile phone starting up and the culprit walking away, guilty, to answer it.
    Meanwhile, three or four hefty gulls alight on the concrete wall by the bins—in case such an improbably sudden crowd means
     food.
    Oh Tess, he says.
    Have they found her? Even as I speak the words, something in my throat settles and hardens and the answer bubbles up.
    Yes, he says, they have.
    I wait and then whisper, And—?
    I’m afraid they have, he says again.
    It’s—bad?
    He takes a breath. There’s sweat on his face, and on mine.
    I think she’s dead, he says. He takes a breath, corrects himself, No. I mean—she is—oh Tess—she is dead.
    Dead. Lennie is dead. The air around my head blooms into a massive, soft silence. Everything stops and my ears are velvety
     with it.
    Tess?
    I am about to answer him but instead the floor comes zooming up to meet my face.
    It’s OK, I can hear him saying, it’s OK.
    With my head between my knees and him holding me, I breathe. Big, hurting breaths, in and out. Down there in that other world,
     I notice things—the bare patches on Lennie’s blue carpet, the crumbs and dust bunnies beneath the edge of the sofa. Two rubber
     bands. A piece of Lego and next to it something sticky, dulled with fluff, a spat-out fruit gum perhaps.
    Deep breaths, Mick says and him saying it reminds me of us in labour, having our babies. The most together we have ever been.
     Except that right now this moment I have no memory whatever of having Liv.
    How? I ask him, and he tells me. He tells me what has been done to Lennie. After a few moments, he asks me if I am OK. He
     asks even though he knows the answer. It’s not his fault. It’s only because he loves me.
    And outside the wind has dropped and the kids are all standing just as we left them. Such good children—so quiet, all of them,
     no one touching or nudging anyone else, not a cry or complaint or a yowl of anger from anyone. You would not know