The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling (10)

Terri Weedon was used to people leaving her. The first and greatest departure had been her mother’s, who had never said good-bye, but had simply walked out one day with a suitcase while Terri was at school.

There had been lots of social workers and care workers after she ran away at fourteen, and some of them had been nice enough, but they all left at the end of the working day. Every fresh departure added a fine new layer to the crust building over her core.

She had had friends in care, but at sixteen they were all on their own, and life had scattered them. She met Ritchie Adams, and she bore him two children. Tiny little pink things, pure and beautiful like nothing in the whole world: and they had come out of her, and for shining hours in the hospital, twice, it had been like her own rebirth.

And then they took the children from her, and she never saw them again, either.

Banger had left her. Nana Cath had left her. Nearly everybody went, hardly anyone stayed. She ought to be used to it by now.

When Mattie, her regular social worker, reappeared, Terri demanded, “Where’s the other one?”

“Kay? She was only covering for me while I was ill,” said Mattie. “So, where’s Liam? No…I mean Robbie, don’t I?”

Terri did not like Mattie. For one thing, she did not have kids, and how could people who didn’t have kids tell you how to raise them, how could they understand? She had not liked Kay, exactly, either…except that Kay gave you a funny feeling, the same feeling that Nana Cath had once given Terri, before she had called her a whore and told her she never wanted to see her again…you felt, with Kay — even though she carried folders, like the rest of them, even though she had instituted the case review — you felt that she wanted things to go right for you, and not only for the forms. You really did feel that. But she was gone, and she probably don’t even think about us now, thought Terri furiously.

On Friday afternoon, Mattie told Terri that Bellchapel would almost certainly close.

“It’s political,” she said briskly. “They want to save money, but methadone treatment’s unpopular with the District Council. Plus, Pagford wants them out of the building. It was all in the local paper, maybe you saw it?”

Sometimes she spoke to Terri like that, veering into a kind of after-all-we’re-in-this-together small-talk that jarred, because it sat alongside inquiries as to whether Terri was remembering to feed her son. But this time it was what she said, rather than how she said it, that upset Terri.

“They’re closin’ it?” she repeated.

“It looks that way,” said Mattie breezily, “but it won’t make any difference to you. Well, obviously…”

Three times Terri had embarked upon the program at Bellchapel. The dusty interior of the converted church with its partition walls and its flyers, the bathroom with its neon-blue light (so you could not find veins and shoot up in there), had become familiar and almost friendly. Lately, she had begun to sense in the workers there a change in the way they spoke to her. They had all expected her to fail again, in the beginning, but they had started talking to her the way Kay had talked: as if they knew a real person lived inside her pockmarked, burned body.

“ …obviously, it will be different, but you can get your methadone from your GP instead,” said Mattie. She flipped over pages in the distended file that was the state’s record of Terri’s life. “You’re registered with Dr. Jawanda in Pagford, right? Pagford…why are you going all the way out there?”

“I smacked a nurse at Cantermill,” said Terri, almost absentmindedly.

After Mattie had left, Terri sat for a long time in her filthy chair in the sitting room, gnawing at her nails until they bled.

The moment Krystal came home, bringing Robbie back from nursery, she told her that they were closing Bellchapel.

“They ain’t decided yet,” said Krystal with authority.

“The fuck do you know?” demanded Terri. “They’re closin’ it, and now they say I’ve gotta go to fuckin’ Pagford to that bitch that killed Nana Cath. Well, I fuckin’ ain’t.”

“You gotta,” said Krystal.

Krystal had been like this for days; bossing her mother, acting as though she, Krystal, was the grown-up.

“I ain’ gotta do fuckin’ anythin’,” said Terri furiously. “Cheeky little bitch,” she added, for good measure.

“If you start fuckin’ usin’ again,” said Krystal, scarlet in the face, “They’ll take Robbie away.”

He was still holding Krystal’s hand, and burst into tears.

“See?” both women shouted at each other.

“You’re fuckin’ doin’ it to him!” shouted Krystal. “An’ anyway, that doctor didn’ do nuthin’ to Nana Cath, that’s all jus’ Cheryl an’ them talking shit!”

“Fuckin’ little know-it-all, ain’t yeh?” yelled Terri. “You know fuck-all —”

Krystal spat at her.

“Get the fuck out!” screamed Terri, and because Krystal was bigger and heavier she seized a shoe lying on the floor and brandished it. “Gerrout!”

“I fuckin’ will!” yelled Krystal. “An’ I’ll take Robbie an’ all, an’ you can stay here an’ fuckin’ screw Obbo an’ make another one!”

She dragged the wailing Robbie out with her before Terri could stop her.

Krystal marched him all the way to her usual refuge, forgetting that at this time in the afternoon, Nikki would still be hanging around outside somewhere, not at home. It was Nikki’s mum who opened the door, in her Asda uniform.

“He ain’ stayin’ ’ere,” she told Krystal firmly, while Robbie whined and tried to pull his hand from Krystal’s tight grip. “Where’s your mum?”

“Home,” said Krystal, and everything else she wanted to say evaporated in the older woman’s stern gaze.

So she returned to Foley Road with Robbie, where Terri, bitterly triumphant, grabbed her son’s arm, pulled him inside and blocked Krystal from entering.

“’Ad enough of him already, ’ave yeh?” Terri jeered, over Robbie’s wails. “Fuck off.”

And she slammed the door.

Terri had Robbie sleep beside her on her own mattress that night. She lay awake and thought about how little she needed Krystal, and ached for her as badly as she had ever craved smack.

Krystal had been angry for days. The thing that Krystal had said about Obbo…

(“She said what?” he had laughed, incredulously, when they had met in the street, and Terri had muttered something about Krystal being upset.)

…he wouldn’t have done it. He couldn’t have.

Obbo was one of the few people who had hung around. Terri had known him since she was fifteen. They had gone to school together, hung out in Yarvil while she was in care, swigged cider together beneath the trees on the footpath that cut its way through the small patch of remaining farmland beside the Fields. They had shared their first joint.

Krystal had never liked him. Jealous, thought Terri, watching Robbie sleep in the street light pouring through the thin curtains. Just jealous. He’s done more for me than anyone, thought Terri defiantly, because when she tallied kindnesses she subtracted abandonment. Thus all of Nana Cath’s care had been annihilated by her rejection.

But Obbo had hidden her, once, from Ritchie, the father of her first two children, when she had fled the house barefoot and bleeding. Sometimes he gave her free bags of smack. She saw them as equivalent kindnesses. His refuges were more reliable than the little house in Hope Street that she had once, for three glorious days, thought was home.

Krystal did not return on Saturday morning, but that was nothing new; Terri knew she must be at Nikki’s. In a rage, because they were low on food, and she was out of cigarettes, and Robbie was whining for his sister, she stormed into her daughter’s room and kicked her clothes around, searching for money or the odd, overlooked fag. Something clattered as she threw aside Krystal’s crumpled old rowing kit, and she saw the little plastic jewelry box, upended, with the rowing medal that Krystal had won, and Tessa Wall’s watch lying beneath it.

Terri picked up the watch and stared at it. She had never seen it before. She wondered where Krystal had got it. Her first assumption was that Krystal had stolen it, but then she wondered whether she might have been given it by Nana Cath, or even left it in Nana Cath’s will. That was a much more troubling thought than the idea of the watch being stolen. The idea of the sneaky little bitch hiding it away, treasuring it, never mentioning it…

Terri put the watch inside the pocket of her tracksuit bottoms and bellowed for Robbie to come with her to the shops. It took ages to get him into his shoes, and Terri lost her temper and slapped him. She wished she could go to the shop alone, but the social workers did not like you leaving kids behind in the house, even though you could get things done much quicker without them.

“Where’s Krystal?” wailed Robbie, as she manhandled him out of the door. “I wan’ Krystal!”

“I dunno where the little tart is,” snapped Terri, dragging him along the road.

Obbo was on the corner beside the supermarket, talking to two men. When he saw her he raised a hand in greeting, and his two companions walked away.

“’Ow’s Ter?” he said.

“N’bad,” she lied. “Robbie, leggo.”

He was digging his fingers so tightly into her thin leg that it hurt.

“Listen,” said Obbo, “couldja keep a bit more stuff for me fer a bit?”

“Kinda stuff?” asked Terri, prying Robbie off her leg and holding his hand instead.

“Coupla bags o’ stuff,” said Obbo. “Really help me out, Ter.”

“’Ow long for?”

“Few days. Bring it round this evenin’. Will yeh?”

Terri thought of Krystal, and what she would say if she knew.

“Yeah, go on then,” said Terri.

She remembered something else, and pulled Tessa’s watch out of her pocket. “Gonna sell this, whaddaya reckon?”

“Not bad,” said Obbo, weighing it in his hand. “I’ll give yeh twenty for it. Bring it over tonight?”

Terri had thought the watch might be worth more, but she did not like to challenge him.

“Yeah, all righ’ then.”

She took a few steps toward the supermarket entrance, hand in hand with Robbie, but then turned abruptly.

“I ain’ usin’ though,” she said. “So don’ bring…”

“Still on the mixture?” he said, grinning at her through his thick glasses. “Bellchapel’s done for, mind. All in the paper.”

“Yeah,” she said miserably, and she tugged Robbie toward the entrance of the supermarket. “I know.”

I ain’t going to Pagford, she thought, as she picked biscuits off the shelf. I ain’t going there.

She was almost inured to constant criticism and assessment, to the sideways glance of passersby, to abuse from the neighbors, but she was not going to go all the way to that smug little town to get double helpings; to travel back in time, once a week, to the place where Nana Cath had said she would keep her, but let her go. She would have to pass that pretty little school that had sent horrible letters home about Krystal, saying that her clothes were too small and too dirty, that her behavior was unacceptable. She was afraid of long-forgotten relatives emerging from Hope Street, as they squabbled over Nana Cath’s house, and of what Cheryl would say, if she knew that Terri had entered into voluntary dealings with the Paki bitch who had killed Nana Cath. Another mark against her, in the family that despised her.

“They ain’t making me go to fuckin’ Pagford,” Terri muttered aloud, pulling Robbie toward the checkout.

“Brace yourself,” teased Howard Mollison at midday on Saturday. “Mum’s about to post the results on the website. Want to wait and see it made public or shall I tell you now?”

Miles turned away instinctively from Samantha, who was sitting opposite him at the island in the middle of the kitchen. They were having a last coffee before she and Libby set off for the station and the concert in London. With the handset pressed tightly to his ear, he said, “Go on.”

“You won. Comfortably. Pretty much two to one over Wall.”

Miles grinned at the kitchen door.

“OK,” he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. “Good to know.”

“Hang on,” said Howard. “Mum wants a word.”

“Well done, darling,” said Shirley gleefully. “Absolutely wonderful news. I knew you’d do it.”

“Thanks, Mum,” said Miles.

Those two words told Samantha everything, but she had resolved not to be scornful or sarcastic. Her band T-shirt was packed; she had had her hair done and she had bought new heels. She could hardly wait to leave.

“Parish Councillor Mollison then, is it?” she said, when he had hung up.

“That’s right,” he said a little warily.

“Congratulations,” she said. “It’s going to be a real celebration tonight, then. I’m sorry I’m missing it, actually,” she lied, out of excitement at her imminent escape. Touched, Miles leaned forward and squeezed her hand.

Libby appeared in the kitchen in tears. She was clutching her mobile in her hand.

“What?” said Samantha, startled.

“Please will you call Harriet’s mum?”

“Why?”

“Please will you?”

“But why, Libby?”

“Because she wants to talk to you, because,” Libby wiped her eyes and nose on the back of her hand, “Harriet and I’ve had a big row. Please will you call her?”

Samantha took the telephone through to the sitting room. She had only the haziest idea who this woman was. Since the girls had started at boarding school she had virtually no contact with their friends’ parents.

“I’m so desperately sorry to do this,” said Harriet’s mother. “I told Harriet I’d speak to you, because I’ve been telling her it’s not that Libby doesn’t want her to go…you know how close they are, and I hate seeing them like this…”

Samantha checked her watch. They needed to leave in ten minutes at the latest.

“Harriet’s got it into her head that Libby had a spare ticket, but didn’t want to take her. I’ve told her it’s not true — you’re taking the ticket because you don’t want Libby going alone, aren’t you?”

“Well, naturally,” said Samantha, “She can’t go alone.”

“I knew it,” said the other woman. She sounded strangely triumphant. “And I absolutely understand your protectiveness, and I would never suggest it if I didn’t think it would save you an awful lot of bother. It’s just that the girls are so close — and Harriet’s absolutely wild about this silly group — and I think, from what Libby’s just told Harriet on the phone, that Libby’s really desperate for her to go too. I totally understand why you want to keep an eye on Libby, but the thing is, my sister’s taking her two girls, so there would be an adult there with them. I could drive Libby and Harriet up together this afternoon, we’d meet up with the others outside the stadium and we could all stay overnight at my sister’s place. I absolutely guarantee that my sister or I will be with Libby at all times.”

“Oh…that’s so kind. But my friend,” said Samantha, with a strange ringing in her ears, “is expecting us, you see…”

“But if you still wanted to go and visit your friend…all I’m saying is there’s really no need for you to attend, is there, if somebody else is with the girls?…And Harriet’s absolutely desperate — really desperate — I wasn’t going to get involved, but now it’s putting a strain on their friendship…”

Then, on a less gushing note, “We’d buy the ticket from you, of course.”

There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.

“Oh,” said Samantha. “Yes. I just thought it might be nice to go with her —”

“They’d much prefer to be with each other,” said Harriet’s mother firmly. “And you won’t have to crouch down and hide among all the little teenyboppers, ha ha — it’s all right for my sister, she’s only five foot two.”

To Gavin’s disappointment, it seemed that he would have to attend Howard Mollison’s birthday party after all. If Mary, a client of the firm and the widow of his best friend, had asked him to stay for dinner, he would have considered himself more than justified in skipping it…but Mary had not asked him to stay. She had family visiting, and she had been oddly flustered when he had turned up.

She doesn’t want them to know, he thought, taking comfort in her self-consciousness as she ushered him toward the door.

He drove back to the Smithy, replaying his conversation with Kay in his mind.

I thought he was your best friend. He’s only been dead a few weeks!

Yeah, and I was looking after her for Barry, he retorted in his head, which is what he’d have wanted. Neither of us expected this to happen. Barry’s dead. It can’t hurt him now.

Alone in the Smithy he looked out a clean suit for the party, because the invitation said “formal,” and tried to imagine gossipy little Pagford relishing the story of Gavin and Mary.

So what? he thought, staggered by his own bravery. Is she supposed to be alone forever? It happens. I was looking after her.

And in spite of his reluctance to attend a party that was sure to be dull and exhausting, he was buoyed inside by a little bubble of excitement and happiness.

Up in Hilltop House, Andrew Price was styling his hair with his mother’s blow-dryer. He had never looked forward to a disco or a party as much as he had longed for tonight. He, Gaia and Sukhvinder were being paid by Howard to serve food and drinks at the party. Howard had hired him a uniform for the occasion: a white shirt, black trousers and a bow tie. He would be working alongside Gaia, not as potboy but as a waiter.

But there was more to his anticipation than this. Gaia had split up with the legendary Marco de Luca. He had found her crying about it in the backyard of the Copper Kettle that afternoon, when he had gone outside for a smoke.

“His loss,” Andrew had said, trying to keep the delight out of his voice.

And she had sniffed and said, “Cheers, Andy.”

“You little poofter,” said Simon, when Andrew finally turned off the dryer. He had been waiting to say it for several minutes, standing on the dark landing, staring through the gap in the door, which was ajar, watching Andrew preen himself in the mirror. Andrew jumped, then laughed. His good humor discomposed Simon.

“Look at you,” he jeered, as Andrew passed him on the landing in his shirt and bow tie. “With your dicky bow. You look a twat.”

And you’re unemployed, and I did it to you, dickhead.

Andrew’s feelings about what he had done to his father changed almost hourly. Sometimes the guilt would bear down on him, tainting everything, but then it would melt away, leaving him glorying in his secret triumph. Tonight, the thought of it gave extra heat to the excitement burning beneath Andrew’s thin white shirt, an additional tingle to the gooseflesh caused by the rush of evening air as he sped, on Simon’s racing bike, down the hill into town. He was excited, full of hope. Gaia was available and vulnerable. Her father lived in Reading.

Shirley Mollison was standing in a party dress outside the church hall when he cycled up, tying giant gold helium balloons in the shapes of fives and sixes to the railings.

“Hello, Andrew,” she trilled. “Bike away from the entrance, please.”

He wheeled it along to the corner, passing a brand-new, racing green BMW convertible parked feet away. He walked around the car on his way inside, taking in the luxurious inner fittings.

“And here’s Andy!”

Andrew saw at once that his boss’s good humor and excitement were equal to his own. Howard was striding down the hall, wearing an immense velvet dinner jacket; he resembled a conjurer. There were only five or six other people dotted around: the party would not start for twenty minutes. Blue, white and gold balloons had been fastened up everywhere. There was a massive trestle table largely covered in plates draped with tea towels, and at the top of the hall a middle-aged DJ setting up his equipment.

“Go help Maureen, Andy, will you?”

She was laying out glasses at one end of the long table, caught gaudily in a stream of light from an overhead lamp.

“Don’t you look handsome!” she croaked as he approached.

She was wearing a scant, stretchy shiny dress that revealed every contour of the bony body to which unexpected little rolls and pads of flesh still clung, exposed by the unforgiving fabric. From somewhere out of sight came a small “hi”; Gaia was crouching over a box of plates on the floor.

“Glasses out of boxes, please, Andy,” said Maureen, “and set them up here, where we’re having the bar.”

He did as he was told. As he unpacked the box, a woman he had never seen before approached, carrying several bottles of champagne.

“These should go in the fridge, if there is one.”

She had Howard’s straight nose, Howard’s big blue eyes and Howard’s curly fair hair, but whereas his features were womanish, softened by fat, his daughter — she had to be his daughter — was unpretty yet striking, with low brows, big eyes and a cleft chin. She was wearing trousers and an open-necked silk shirt. After dumping the bottles onto the table she turned away. Her demeanor, and something about the quality of her clothing, made Andrew sure that she was the owner of the BMW outside.

“That’s Patricia,” whispered Gaia in his ear, and his skin tingled again as though she carried an electric charge. “Howard’s daughter.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” he said, but he was much more interested to see that Gaia was unscrewing the cap of a bottle of vodka and pouring out a measure. As he watched, she drank it straight off with a little shudder. She had barely replaced the top when Maureen reappeared beside them with an ice bucket.

“Bloody old slapper,” said Gaia, as Maureen walked away, and Andrew smelled the spirits on her breath. “Look at the state of her.”

He laughed, turned and stopped abruptly, because Shirley was right beside them, smiling her pussycat smile.

“Has Miss Jawanda not arrived yet?” she asked.

“She’s on her way, she just texted me,” said Gaia.

But Shirley did not really care where Sukhvinder was. She had overheard Andrew and Gaia’s little exchange about Maureen, and it had completely restored the good mood that had been dented by Maureen’s evident delight in her own toilette. It was difficult to satisfactorily puncture self-esteem so obtuse, so deluded, but as Shirley walked away from the teenagers toward the DJ, she planned what she would say to Howard the next time she saw him alone.

I’m afraid the young ones were, well, laughing at Maureen…it’s such a pity she wore that dress…I hate seeing her make a fool of herself.

There was plenty to be pleased about, Shirley reminded herself, for she needed a little bolstering tonight. She and Howard and Miles were all going to be on the council together; it would be marvelous, simply marvelous.

She checked that the DJ knew that Howard’s favorite song was “The Green, Green Grass of Home,” Tom Jones’ version, and looked around for more little jobs to do: but instead her gaze fell upon the reason that her happiness, tonight, had not quite that perfect quality she had anticipated.

Patricia was standing alone, staring up at the Pagford coat of arms on the wall, and making no effort to talk to anybody. Shirley wished that Patricia would wear a skirt sometimes; but at least she had arrived alone. Shirley had been afraid that the BMW might contain another person, and that absence was something gained.

You weren’t supposed to dislike your own child; you were supposed to like them no matter what, even if they were not what you wanted, even if they turned out to be the kind of person that you would have crossed the street to avoid had you not been related. Howard took a large view of the whole matter; he even joked about it, in a mild way, beyond Patricia’s hearing. Shirley could not rise to those heights of detachment. She felt compelled to join Patricia, in the vague, unconscious hope that she might dilute the strangeness she was afraid everyone else would smell by her own exemplary dress and behavior.

“Do you want a drink, darling?”

“Not yet,” said Patricia, still staring up at the Pagford arms. “I had a heavy night last night. Probably still over the limit. We were out drinking with Melly’s office pals.”

Shirley smiled vaguely up at the crest above them.

“Melly’s fine, thanks for asking,” said Patricia.

“Oh, good,” said Shirley.

“I liked the invitation,” said Patricia. “Pat and guest.”

“I’m sorry, darling, but that’s just what you put, you know, when people aren’t married —”

“Ah, that’s what it says in Debrett’s, does it? Well, Melly didn’t want to come if she wasn’t even named on the invitation, so we had a massive row, and here I am, alone. Result, eh?”

Patricia stalked away toward the drinks, leaving Shirley a little shaken behind her. Patricia’s rages had been frightening even as a child.

“You’re late, Miss Jawanda,” she called, recovering her composure as a flustered Sukhvinder came hurrying toward her. In Shirley’s opinion, the girl was demonstrating a kind of insolence turning up at all, after what her mother had said to Howard, here, in this very hall. She watched her hurry to join Andrew and Gaia, and thought that she would tell Howard that they ought to let Sukhvinder go. She was tardy, and there was probably a hygiene issue with the eczema she was hiding under the long-sleeved black T-shirt; Shirley made a mental note to check whether it was contagious, on her favorite medical website.

Guests began to arrive promptly at eight o’clock. Howard told Gaia to come and stand beside him and collect coats, because he wanted everyone to see him ordering her around by name, in that little black dress and frilly apron. But there were soon too many coats for her to carry alone, so he summoned Andrew to help.

“Nick a bottle,” Gaia ordered Andrew, as they hung coats three and four deep in the tiny cloakroom, “and hide it in the kitchen. We can take it in turns to go and have some.”

“OK,” said Andrew, elated.

“Gavin!” cried Howard, as his son’s partner came through the door alone at half past eight.

“Kay not with you, Gavin?” asked Shirley swiftly (Maureen was changing into sparkly stilettos behind the trestle table, so there was very little time to steal a march on her).

“No, she couldn’t make it, unfortunately,” said Gavin; then, to his horror, he came face-to-face with Gaia, who was waiting to take his coat.

“Mum could have made it,” said Gaia, in a clear, carrying voice, as she glared at him. “But Gavin’s dumped her, haven’t you, Gav?”

Howard clapped Gavin on the shoulder, pretending he had not heard, and boomed, “Great to see you, go get yourself a drink.”

Shirley’s expression remained impassive, but the thrill of the moment did not subside quickly, and she was a little dazed and dreamy, greeting the next few guests. When Maureen tottered over in her awful dress to join the greeting party, Shirley took immense pleasure in telling her quietly: “We’ve had a very awkward little scene. Very awkward. Gavin and Gaia’s mother…oh, dear…if we’d known…”

“What? What’s happened?”

But Shirley shook her head, savoring the exquisite pleasure of Maureen’s frustrated curiosity, and opened her arms wide as Miles, Samantha and Lexie entered the hall.

“Here he is! Parish Councillor Miles Mollison!”

Samantha watched Shirley hugging Miles as though from a great distance. She had moved so abruptly from happiness and anticipation to shock and disappointment that her thoughts had become white noise, against which she had to fight to take in the exterior world.

(Miles had said: “That’s great! You can come to Dad’s party, you were only just saying —”

“Yes,” she had replied, “I know. It is great, isn’t it?”

But when he had seen her dressed in the jeans and band T-shirt she had been visualizing herself in for over a week, he had been perplexed.

“It’s formal.”

“Miles, it’s the church hall in Pagford.”

“I know, but the invitation —”

“I’m wearing this.”)

“Hello, Sammy,” said Howard. “Look at you. You needn’t have dressed up.”

But his embrace was as lascivious as ever, and he patted her tightly jeaned backside.

Samantha gave Shirley a cold tight smile and walked past her towards the drinks. A nasty voice inside her head was asking: but what did you think was going to happen at the concert, anyway? What was the point? What were you after?

Nothing. A bit of fun.

The dream of strong young arms and laughter, which was to have had some kind of catharsis tonight; her own thin waist encircled again, and the sharp taste of the new, the unexplored; her fantasy had lost wings, it was plummeting back to earth…

I only wanted to look.

“Looking good, Sammy.”

“Cheers, Pat.”

She had not met her sister-in-law for over a year.

I like you more than anyone else in this family, Pat.

Miles had caught up with her; he kissed his sister.

“How are you? How’s Mel? Isn’t she here?”

“No, she didn’t want to come,” said Patricia. She was drinking champagne, but from her expression, it might have been vinegar. “The invitation said Pat and guest are invited…huge bloody row. One up to Mum.”

“Oh, Pat, come on,” said Miles, smiling.

“Oh, Pat, fucking come on what, Miles?”

A furious delight took hold of Samantha: a pretext to attack.

“That’s a bloody rude way to invite your sister’s partner and you know it, Miles. Your mother could do with some lessons in manners, if you ask me.”

He was fatter, surely, than he had been a year ago. She could see his neck bulging over the collar of his shirt. His breath went sour quickly. He had a little trick of bouncing on his toes that he had caught from his father. She experienced a surge of physical disgust and walked away to the end of the trestle table, where Andrew and Sukhvinder were busy filling and handing out glasses.

“Have you got any gin?” Samantha asked. “Give me a big one.”

She barely recognized Andrew. He poured her a measure, trying not to look at her breasts, boundlessly exposed in the T-shirt, but it was like trying not to squint in direct sunlight.

“Do you know them?” Samantha asked, after downing half a glass of gin and tonic.

A blush had risen before Andrew could marshal his thoughts. To his horror, she gave a reckless cackle, and said, “The band. I’m talking about the band.”

“Yeah, I — yeah, I’ve heard of them. I don’t…not my kind of thing.”

“Is that right?” she said, throwing back the rest of her drink. “I’ll have another one of those, please.”

She realized who he was: the mousy boy from the delicatessen. His uniform made him look older. Maybe a couple of weeks of lugging pallets up and down the cellar steps had built some muscle.

“Oh, look,” said Samantha, spotting a figure heading away from her into the growing crowd, “There’s Gavin. The second-most boring man in Pagford. After my husband, obviously.”

She strode off, pleased with herself, holding her new drink; the gin had hit her where she most needed it, anesthetizing and stimulating at the same time, and as she walked she thought: he liked my tits; let’s see what he thinks of my arse.

Gavin saw Samantha coming and tried to deflect her by joining somebody else’s conversation, anybody’s; the nearest person was Howard and he insinuated himself hastily into the group around his host.

“I took a risk,” Howard was saying to three other men; he was waving a cigar, and a little ash had dribbled down the front of his velvet jacket. “I took a risk and I put in the graft. Simple as that. No magic formula. Nobody handed me — oh, here’s Sammy. Who are those young men, Samantha?”

While four elderly men stared at the pop group stretched across her breasts, Samantha turned to Gavin.

“Hi,” she said, leaning in and forcing him to kiss her. “Kay not here?”

“No,” said Gavin shortly.

“Talking about business, Sammy,” said Howard happily, and Samantha thought of her shop, failed and finished. “I was a self-starter,” he informed the group, reprising what was clearly an established theme. “That’s all there is to it. That’s all you need. I was a self-starter.”

Massive and globular, he was like a miniature velvety sun, radiating satisfaction and contentment. His tones were already rounded and mellowed by the brandy in his hand. “I was ready to take a risk — could’ve lost everything.”

“Well, your mum could have lost everything,” Samantha corrected him. “Didn’t Hilda mortgage her house to put up half the deposit on the shop?”

She saw the tiny flicker in Howard’s eyes, but his smile remained constant.

“All credit to my mother, then,” he said, “for working and scrimping and saving, and giving her son a start. I multiply what I was given, and I give back to the family — pay for your girls to go to St. Anne’s — what goes round, comes round, eh, Sammy?”

She expected this from Shirley, but not from Howard. Both of them drained their glasses, and Samantha watched Gavin drift away without trying to stop him.

Gavin was wondering whether it would be possible to slip out unnoticed. He was nervous, and the noise was making it worse. A horrible idea had taken possession of him since meeting Gaia at the door. What if Kay had told her daughter everything? What if the girl knew that he was in love with Mary Fairbrother, and told other people? It was the sort of thing that a vengeful sixteen-year-old might do.

The very last thing he wanted was for Pagford to know that he was in love with Mary before he had a chance to tell her himself. He had imagined doing it months and months hence, perhaps a year down the line…letting the first anniversary of Barry’s death slip by…and, in the meantime, nurturing the tiny shoots of trust and reliance that were already there, so that the reality of her feelings stole gradually upon her, as they had upon him…

“You haven’t got a drink, Gav!” said Miles. “That situation must be remedied!”

He led his partner firmly to the drinks table and poured him a beer, talking all the while, and, like Howard, giving off an almost visible glow of happiness and pride.

“You heard I won the seat?”

Gavin had not, but he did not feel equal to feigning surprise.

“Yeah. Congratulations.”

“How’s Mary?” asked Miles expansively; he was a friend to the whole town tonight, because it had elected him. “She doing OK?”

“Yeah, I think —”

“I heard she might be going to Liverpool. Might be for the best.”

“What?” said Gavin sharply.

“Maureen was saying this morning; apparently, Mary’s sister’s trying to persuade Mary to go home with the kids. She’s still got a lot of family in Liver —”

“This is her home.”

“I think it was Barry who liked Pagford. I’m not sure Mary will want to stay without him.”

Gaia was watching Gavin through a chink in the kitchen door. She was clutching a paper cup containing several fingers of the vodka that Andrew had stolen for her.

“He’s such a bastard,” she said. “We’d still be in Hackney if he hadn’t led Mum on. She’s so bloody stupid. I could have told her he wasn’t that interested. He never took her out. He couldn’t wait to leave after they’d shagged.”

Andrew, who was piling additional sandwiches on an almost empty platter behind her, could hardly believe that she was using words like shagged. The chimeric Gaia who filled his fantasies was a sexually inventive and adventurous virgin. He did not know what the real Gaia had done, or not done, with Marco de Luca. Her judgment on her mother made it sound as if she knew how men behaved after sex, if they were interested…

“Drink something,” she told Andrew as he approached the door with the platter, and she held up her own polystyrene cup to his lips, and he drank some of her vodka. Giggling a little, she backed away to let him out and called after him: “Make Sooks come in here and get some!”

The hall was crowded and noisy. Andrew put the pile of fresh sandwiches on the table, but interest in the food seemed to have waned; Sukhvinder was struggling to keep up with demand at the drinks table, and many people had started pouring their own.

“Gaia wants you in the kitchen,” Andrew told Sukhvinder, and he took over from her. There was no point acting like a bartender; instead, he filled as many glasses as he could find, and left them on the table for people to help themselves.

“Hi, Peanut!” said Lexie Mollison. “Can I have some champagne?”

They had been at St. Thomas’s together, but he had not seen her for a long time. Her accent had changed since she had been at St. Anne’s. He hated being called Peanut.

“It’s there in front of you,” he said, pointing.

“Lexie, you’re not drinking,” snapped Samantha, appearing out of the crowd. “Absolutely not.”

“Grandad said —”

“I don’t care.”

“Everyone else —”

“I said no!”

Lexie stomped away. Andrew, glad to see her go, smiled at Samantha, and was surprised when she beamed at him.

“Do you talk back to your parents?”

“Yeah,” he said, and she laughed. Her breasts really were enormous.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” boomed a voice through the microphone, and everyone stopped talking to listen to Howard. “Wanted to say a few words…most of you probably know by now that my son Miles has just been elected to the Parish Council!”

There was a smattering of applause and Miles raised his drink high above his head to acknowledge it. Andrew was startled to hear Samantha say quite clearly under her breath, “Hoo-fucking-ray.”

Nobody was coming for drinks now. Andrew slipped back into the kitchen. Gaia and Sukhvinder were alone in there, drinking and laughing, and when they saw Andrew they both shouted, “Andy!”

He laughed too.

“Are you both pissed?”

“Yes,” said Gaia, and “No,” said Sukhvinder. “She is, though.”

“I don’t care,” said Gaia. “Mollison can sack me if he wants. No point saving up for a ticket to Hackney anymore.”

“He won’t sack you,” said Andrew, helping himself to some of the vodka. “You’re his favorite.”

“Yeah,” said Gaia. “Creepy old bastard.”

And the three of them laughed again.

Through the glass doors, amplified by the microphone, came Maureen’s croaky voice.

“Come on, then, Howard! Come on — a duet for your birthday! Go on — ladies and gentlemen — Howard’s favorite song!”

The teenagers gazed at each other in tantalized horror. Gaia tripped forward, giggling, and pushed the door open.

The first few bars of “The Green, Green Grass of Home” blared out, and then, in Howard’s bass and Maureen’s gravelly alto:

 

The old home town looks the same,

As I step down from the train…

 

Gavin was the only one who heard the giggles and snorts, but when he turned around all he saw were the double doors to the kitchen, swinging a little on their hinges.

Miles had left to chat with Aubrey and Julia Fawley, who had arrived late, wreathed in polite smiles. Gavin was in the grip of a familiar mixture of dread and anxiety. His brief sunlit haze of freedom and happiness had been overcast by the twin threats of Gaia blabbing what he had said to her mother, and of Mary leaving Pagford forever. What was he going to do?

 

Down the lane I walk, with my sweet Mary,

Hair of gold and lips like cherries…

 

“Kay not here?”

Samantha had arrived, leaning against the table beside him, smirking.

“You already asked me that,” said Gavin. “No.”

“Everything OK with you two?”

“Is that really any of your business?”

It slipped out of him before he could stop it; he was sick of her constant probing and jeering. For once, it was just the two of them; Miles was still busy with the Fawleys.

She overacted being taken aback. Her eyes were bloodshot and her speech was deliberate; for the first time, Gavin felt more dislike than intimidation.

“I’m sorry. I was only —”

“Asking. Yeah,” he said, as Howard and Maureen swayed, arm in arm.

“I’d like to see you settled down. You and Kay seemed good together.”

“Yeah, well, I like my freedom,” said Gavin. “I don’t know many happily married couples.”

Samantha had drunk too much to feel the full force of the dig, but she had the impression that one had been made.

“Marriages are always a mystery to outsiders,” she said carefully. “Nobody can ever really know except the two people involved. So you shouldn’t judge, Gavin.”

“Thanks for the insight,” he said, and irritated past endurance he set down his empty beer can and headed toward the cloakroom.

Samantha watched him leave, sure that she had had the best of the encounter, and turned her attention to her mother-in-law, whom she could see through a gap in the crowd, watching Howard and Maureen sing. Samantha relished Shirley’s anger, which was expressed in the tightest, coldest smile she had worn all evening. Howard and Maureen had performed together many a time over the years; Howard loved to sing, and Maureen had once performed backing vocals for a local skiffle band. When the song finished, Shirley clapped her hands together once; she might have been summoning a flunky, and Samantha laughed out loud and moved along to the bar end of the table, which she was disappointed to find unmanned by the boy in the bow tie.

Andrew, Gaia and Sukhvinder were still convulsed in the kitchen. They laughed because of Howard and Maureen’s duet, and because they had finished two-thirds of the vodka, but mostly they laughed because they laughed, feeding off each other until they could barely stand.

The little window over the sink, propped ajar so that the kitchen did not become too steamy, rattled and clattered, and Fats’ head appeared through it.

“Evening,” he said. Evidently he had climbed onto something outside, because, with a noise of scraping and a heavy object falling over, more and more of him emerged through the window until he landed heavily on the draining board, knocking several glasses to the ground, where they shattered.

Sukhvinder walked straight out of the kitchen. Andrew knew immediately that he did not want Fats there. Only Gaia seemed unperturbed. Still giggling, she said, “There’s a door, you know.”

“No shit?” said Fats. “Where’s the drink?”

“This is ours,” said Gaia, cradling the vodka in her arms. “Andy nicked it. You’ll have to get your own.”

“Not a problem,” said Fats coolly, and he walked through the doors into the hall.

“Need the loo…” mumbled Gaia, and she stowed the vodka bottle back under the sink, and left the kitchen too.

Andrew followed. Sukhvinder had returned to the bar area, Gaia was disappearing into the bathroom, and Fats was leaning against the trestle table with a beer in one hand and a sandwich in the other.

“Didn’t think you’d want to come to this,” said Andrew.

“I was invited, mate,” said Fats. “It was on the invitation. Whole Wall family.”

“Does Cubby know you’re here?”

“Dunno,” said Fats. “He’s in hiding. Didn’t get ol’ Barry’s seat after all. The whole social fabric’ll collapse now Cubby’s not holding it together. Fucking hell, that’s horrible,” he added, spitting out a mouthful of sandwich. “Wanna fag?”

The hall was so noisy, and the guests so raucously drunk, that nobody seemed to care where Andrew went anymore. When they got outside, they found Patricia Mollison, alone beside her sports car, looking up at the clear starry sky, smoking.

“You can have one of these,” she said, offering her packet, “if you want.”

After she had lit their cigarettes, she stood at her ease with one hand balled deep in her pocket. There was something about her that Andrew found intimidating; he could not even bring himself to glance at Fats, to gauge his reaction.

“I’m Pat,” she told them, after a little while. “Howard and Shirley’s daughter.”

“Hi,” said Andrew. “’M Andrew.”

“Stuart,” said Fats.

She did not seem to need to prolong conversation. Andrew felt it as a kind of compliment and tried to emulate her indifference. The silence was broken by footsteps and the sound of muffled girls’ voices.

Gaia was dragging Sukhvinder outside by the hand. She was laughing, and Andrew could tell that the full effect of the vodka was still intensifying inside her.

“You,” said Gaia, to Fats, “are really horrible to Sukhvinder.”

“Stop it,” said Sukhvinder, tugging against Gaia’s hand. “I’m serious — let me —”

“He is!” said Gaia breathlessly. “You are! Do you put stuff on her Facebook?”

“Stop it!” shouted Sukhvinder. She wrenched herself free and plunged back inside the party.

“You are horrible to her,” said Gaia, grabbing on to the railings for support. “Calling her a lesbian and stuff…”

“Nothing wrong with being a lesbian,” said Patricia, her eyes narrowed through the smoke she was inhaling. “But then, I would say that.”

Andrew saw Fats look at Pat sideways.

“I never said there was anything wrong with it. It’s only jokes,” he said.

Gaia slid down the rails to sit on the chilly pavement, her head in her arms.

“You all right?” Andrew asked. If Fats had not been there, he would have sat down too.

“Pissed,” she muttered.

“Might do better to stick your fingers down your throat,” suggested Patricia, looking down at her dispassionately.

“Nice car,” Fats said, eyeing the BMW.

“Yeah,” said Patricia. “New. I make double what my brother makes,” she said, “but Miles is the Christ Child. Miles the Messiah…Parish Councillor Mollison the Second…of Pagford. Do you like Pagford?” she asked Fats, while Andrew watched Gaia breathing deeply, her head between her knees.

“No,” said Fats. “It’s a shithole.”

“Yeah, well…I couldn’t wait to leave, personally. Did you know Barry Fairbrother?”

“A bit,” said Fats.

Something in his voice made Andrew worried.

“He was my reading mentor at St. Thomas’s,” said Patricia, with her eyes still on the end of the street. “Lovely bloke. I would have come back for the funeral, but Melly and I were in Zermatt. What’s all this stuff my mother’s been gloating about…this Barry’s Ghost stuff?”

“Someone putting stuff on the Parish Council website,” said Andrew hastily, afraid of what Fats might say, if he let him. “Rumors and stuff.”

“Yeah, my mother would love that,” said Patricia.

“Wonder what the Ghost’ll say next?” Fats asked, with a sidelong glance at Andrew.

“Probably stop now the election’s over,” muttered Andrew.

“Oh, I dunno,” said Fats. “If there’s stuff old Barry’s Ghost is still pissed off about…”

He knew that he was making Andrew anxious and he was glad of it. Andrew was spending all his time at his poxy job these days, and he would soon be moving. Fats did not owe Andrew anything. True authenticity could not exist alongside guilt and obligation.

“You all right down there?” Patricia asked Gaia, who nodded, with her face still hidden. “What was it, the drink or the duet that made you feel sick?”

Andrew laughed a little bit, out of politeness and because he wanted to keep the subject away from the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother.

“Turned my stomach too,” said Patricia. “Old Maureen and my father singing along together. Arm in arm.” Patricia took a final fierce drag on her cigarette and threw the end down, grinding it beneath her heel. “I walked in on her blowing him when I was twelve,” she said. “And he gave me a fiver not to tell my mother.”

Andrew and Fats stood transfixed, scared even to look at each other. Patricia wiped her face on the back of her hand: she was crying.

“Shouldn’t have bloody come,” she said. “Knew I shouldn’t.”

She got into the BMW, and the two boys watched, stunned, as she turned on the engine, reversed out of her parking space and drove away into the night.

“Fuck me,” said Fats.

“I think I might be sick,” whispered Gaia.

“Mr. Mollison wants you back inside — for the drinks.”

Her message delivered, Sukhvinder darted away again.

“I can’t,” whispered Gaia.

Andrew left her there. The din in the hall hit him as he opened the inner doors. The disco was in full swing. He had to move aside to allow Aubrey and Julia Fawley room to leave. Both, with their backs to the party, looked grimly pleased to be going.

Samantha Mollison was not dancing, but was leaning up against the trestle table where, so recently, there had been rows and rows of drinks. While Sukhvinder rushed around collecting glasses, Andrew unpacked the last box of clean ones, set them out and filled them.

“Your bow tie’s crooked,” Samantha told him, and she leaned across the table and straightened it for him. Embarrassed, he ducked into the kitchen as soon as she let go. Between each load of glasses he put in the dishwasher, Andrew took another swig of the vodka he had stolen. He wanted to be drunk like Gaia; he wanted to return to that moment when they had been laughing uncontrollably together, before Fats had appeared.

After ten minutes, he checked the drinks table again; Samantha was still propped up against it, glassy-eyed, and there were plenty of fresh-poured drinks left for her to enjoy. Howard was bobbing in the middle of the dance floor, sweat pouring down his face, roaring with laughter at something Maureen had said to him. Andrew wound his way through the crowd and back outside.

He could not see where she was at first: then he spotted them. Gaia and Fats were locked together ten yards away from the door, leaning up against the railings, bodies pressed tight against each other, tongues working in each other’s mouths.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it all,” said Sukhvinder desperately from behind him. Then she spotted Fats and Gaia and let out something between a yelp and a sob. Andrew walked back into the hall with her, completely numb. In the kitchen, he poured the remainder of the vodka into a glass and downed it in one. Mechanically he filled the sink and set to washing out the glasses that could not fit in the dishwasher.

The alcohol was not like dope. It made him feel empty, but also keen to hit someone: Fats, for instance.

After a while, he realized that the plastic clock on the kitchen wall had leaped from midnight to one and that people were leaving.

He was supposed to find coats. He tried for a while, but then lurched off to the kitchen again, leaving Sukhvinder in charge.

Samantha was leaning up against the fridge, on her own, with a glass in her hand. Andrew’s vision was strangely jerky, like a series of stills. Gaia had not come back. She was doubtless long gone with Fats. Samantha was talking to him. She was drunk too. He was not embarrassed by her anymore. He suspected that he might be sick quite soon.

“…hate bloody Pagford…” said Samantha, and, “but you’re young enough to get out.”

“Yeah,” he said, unable to feel his lips. “An’ I will. ’Nigh will.”

She pushed his hair off his forehead and called him sweet. The image of Gaia with her tongue in Fats’ mouth threatened to obliterate everything. He could smell Samantha’s perfume, coming in waves from her hot skin.

“That band’s shit,” he said, pointing at her chest, but he did not think she heard him.

Her mouth was chapped and warm, and her breasts were huge, pressed against his chest; her back was as broad as his —

“What the fuck?”

Andrew was slumped against the draining board and Samantha was being dragged out of the kitchen by a big man with short graying hair. Andrew had a dim idea that something bad had happened, but the strange flickering quality of reality was becoming more and more pronounced, until the only thing to do was to stagger across the room to the bin and throw up again and again and again…

“Sorry, you can’t come in!” he heard Sukhvinder tell someone. “Stuff piled up against the door!”

He tied the bin bag tightly on his own vomit. Sukhvinder helped him clear the kitchen. He needed to throw up twice more, but both times managed to get to the bathroom.

It was nearly two o’clock by the time Howard, sweaty but smiling, thanked them and said good night.

“Very good work,” he said. “See you tomorrow, then. Very good…where’s Miss Bawden, by the way?”

Andrew left Sukhvinder to come up with a lie. Out in the street, he unchained Simon’s bicycle and wheeled it away into the darkness.

The long cold walk back to Hilltop House cleared his head, but assuaged neither his bitterness nor his misery.

Had he ever told Fats that he fancied Gaia? Maybe not, but Fats knew. He knew that Fats knew…were they, perhaps, shagging right now?

I’m moving, anyway, Andrew thought, bent over and shivering as he pushed the bicycle up the hill. So fuck them…

Then he thought: I’d better be moving…Had he just snogged Lexie Mollison’s mother? Had her husband walked in on them? Had that really happened?

He was scared of Miles, but he also wanted to tell Fats about it, to see his face…

When he let himself into the house, exhausted, Simon’s voice came out of the darkness from the kitchen.

“Have you put my bike in the garage?”

He was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bowl of cereal. It was nearly half past two in the morning.

“Couldn’t sleep,” said Simon.

For once, he was not angry. Ruth was not there, so he did not have to prove himself bigger or smarter than his sons. He seemed weary and small.

“Think we’re gonna have to move to Reading, Pizza Face,” said Simon. It was almost a term of endearment.

Shivering slightly, feeling old and shell-shocked, and immensely guilty, Andrew wanted to give his father something to make up for what he had done. It was time to redress balances and claim Simon as an ally. They were a family. They had to move together. Perhaps it could be better, somewhere else.

“I’ve got something for you,” he said. “Come through here. Found out how to do it at school…”

And he led the way to the computer.

A misty blue sky stretched like a dome over Pagford and the Fields. Dawn light shone upon the old stone war memorial in the Square, on the cracked concrete facades of Foley Road, and turned the white walls of Hilltop House pale gold. As Ruth Price climbed into her car ready for another long shift at the hospital, she looked down at the River Orr, shining like a silver ribbon in the distance, and felt how completely unjust it was that somebody else would soon have her house and her view.

A mile below, in Church Row, Samantha Mollison was still sound asleep in the spare bedroom. There was no lock on the door, but she had barricaded it with an armchair before collapsing, semidressed, onto the bed. The beginnings of a vicious headache disturbed her slumber, and the sliver of sunshine that had penetrated the gap in the curtains fell like a laser beam across the corner of one eye. She twitched a little, in the depths of her dry-mouthed, anxious half sleep, and her dreams were guilty and strange.

Downstairs, among the clean, bright surfaces of the kitchen, Miles sat bolt upright and alone with an untouched mug of tea in front of him, staring at the fridge, and stumbling again, in his mind’s eye, upon his drunken wife locked in the embrace of a sixteen-year-old schoolboy.

Three houses away, Fats Wall lay smoking in his bedroom in the clothes he had worn to Howard Mollison’s birthday party. He had wanted to stay awake all night, and he had done it. His mouth was slightly numb and tingly from all the cigarettes he had smoked, but his tiredness had had the reverse effect of the one he had hoped: he was unable to think very clearly, but his unhappiness and unease were as acute as ever.

Colin Wall woke, drenched in sweat, from another of the nightmares that had tormented him for years. He had always done terrible things in the dreams, the kinds of things that he spent his waking life dreading, and this time he had killed Barry Fairbrother, and the authorities had only just found out, and had come to tell him that they knew, that they had dug up Barry and found the poison that Colin had administered.

Staring up at the lampshade’s familiar shadow on the ceiling, Colin wondered why he had never considered the possibility that he had killed Barry; and at once, the question presented itself to him: How do you know you didn’t?

Downstairs, Tessa was injecting insulin into her stomach. She knew that Fats had come home the previous evening, because she could smell the cigarette smoke at the bottom of the stairs to his attic bedroom. Where he had been and what time he had come in, she did not know, and it frightened her. How had things come to this?

Howard Mollison was sleeping soundly and happily in his double bed. The patterned curtains dappled him with pink petals and protected him from a rude awakening, but his rattling wheezing snores had roused his wife. Shirley was eating toast and drinking coffee in the kitchen, wearing her glasses and her candlewick dressing gown. She visualized Maureen swaying arm in arm with her husband in the village hall and experienced a concentrated loathing that took the taste from every mouthful.

In the Smithy, a few miles outside Pagford, Gavin Hughes soaped himself under a hot shower and wondered why he had never had the courage of other men, and how they managed to make the right choices among almost infinite alternatives. There was a yearning inside him for a life he had glimpsed but never tasted, yet he was afraid. Choice was dangerous: you had to forgo all other possibilities when you chose.

Kay Bawden was lying awake and exhausted in bed in Hope Street, listening to the early morning quiet of Pagford and watching Gaia, who was asleep beside her in the double bed, pale and drained in the early daylight. There was a bucket next to Gaia on the floor, placed there by Kay, who had half carried her daughter from bathroom to bedroom in the early hours, after holding her hair out of the toilet for an hour.

“Why did you make us come here?” Gaia had wailed, as she choked and retched over the bowl. “Get off me. Get off. I fuck — I hate you.”

Kay watched the sleeping face and recalled the beautiful little baby who had slept beside her, sixteen years ago. She remembered the tears that Gaia had shed when Kay had split up with Steve, her live-in partner of eight years. Steve had attended Gaia’s parents’ evenings and taught her to ride a bicycle. Kay remembered the fantasy she had nurtured (with hindsight, as silly as four-year-old Gaia’s wish for a unicorn) that she would settle down with Gavin and give Gaia, at last, a permanent stepfather, and a beautiful house in the country. How desperate she had been for a storybook ending, and a life to which Gaia would always want to return; because her daughter’s departure was hurtling toward Kay like a meteorite, and she foresaw the loss of Gaia as a calamity that would shatter her world.

Kay reached out a hand beneath the duvet and held Gaia’s. The feel of the warm flesh that she had accidentally brought into the world made Kay start to weep, quietly, but so violently that the mattress shook.

And at the bottom of Church Row, Parminder Jawanda slipped a coat on over her nightdress and took her coffee into the back garden. Sitting in the chilly sunlight on a wooden bench, she saw that it was promising to be a beautiful day, but there seemed to be a blockage between her eyes and her heart. The heavy weight on her chest deadened everything.

The news that Miles Mollison had won Barry’s seat on the Parish Council had not been a surprise, but on seeing Shirley’s neat little announcement on the website, she had known another flicker of that madness that had overtaken her at the last meeting: a desire to attack, superseded almost at once by stifling hopelessness.

“I’m going to resign from the council,” she told Vikram. “What’s the point?”

“But you like it,” he had said.

She had liked it when Barry had been there too. It was easy to conjure him up this morning, when everything was quiet and still. A little, ginger-bearded man; she had been taller than him by half a head. She had never felt the slightest physical attraction towards him. What was love, after all? thought Parminder, as a gentle breeze ruffled the tall hedge of Leyland cypresses that enclosed the Jawandas’ big back lawn. Was it love when somebody filled a space in your life that yawned inside you, once they had gone?

I did love laughing, thought Parminder. I really miss laughing.

And it was the memory of laughter that, at last, made the tears flow from her eyes. They trickled down her nose and into her coffee, where they made little bullet holes, swiftly erased. She was crying because she never seemed to laugh anymore, and also because the previous evening, while they had been listening to the jubilant distant thump of the disco in the church hall, Vikram had said, “Why don’t we visit Amritsar this summer?”

The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the religion to which he was indifferent. She had known at once what Vikram was doing. Time lay slack and empty on her hands as never before in her life. Neither of them knew what the GMC would decide to do with her, once it had considered her ethical breach toward Howard Mollison.

“Mandeep says it’s a big tourist trap,” she had replied, dismissing Amritsar at a stroke.

Why did I say that? Parminder wondered, crying harder than ever in the garden, with her coffee cooling in her hand. It’d be good to show the children Amritsar. He was trying to be kind. Why didn’t I say yes?

She felt dimly that she had betrayed something, in refusing the Golden Temple. A vision of it swam through her tears, its lotus-flower dome reflected in a sheet of water, honey-bright against a backdrop of white marble.

“Mum.”

Sukhvinder had crossed the lawn without Parminder noticing. She was dressed in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. Parminder hastily wiped her face and squinted at Sukhvinder, who had her back to the sun.

“I don’t want to go to work today.”

Parminder responded at once, in the same spirit of automatic contradiction that had made her turn down Amritsar. “You’ve made a commitment, Sukhvinder.”

“I don’t feel well.”

“You mean you’re tired. You’re the one who wanted this job. Now you fulfill your obligations.”

“But —”

“You’re going to work,” snapped Parminder, and she might have been pronouncing sentence. “You’re not giving the Mollisons another reason to complain.”

After Sukhvinder walked back to the house Parminder felt guilty. She almost called her daughter back, but instead she made a mental note that she must try and find time to sit down with her and talk to her without arguing.

Krystal was walking along Foley Road in the early morning sunlight, eating a banana. It was an unfamiliar taste and texture, and she could not make up her mind whether she liked it or not. Terri and Krystal never bought fruit.

Nikki’s mother had just turfed her unceremoniously out of the house.

“We got things to do, Krystal,” she had said. “We’re going to Nikki’s gran’s for dinner.”

As an afterthought, she had handed Krystal the banana to eat for breakfast. Krystal had left without protest. There was barely enough room for Nikki’s family around the kitchen table.

The Fields were not improved by sunshine, which merely showed up the dirt and the damage, the cracks in the concrete walls, the boarded windows and the litter.

The Square in Pagford looked freshly painted whenever the sun shone. Twice a year, the primary school children had walked through the middle of town, crocodile fashion, on their way to church for Christmas and Easter services. (Nobody had ever wanted to hold Krystal’s hand. Fats had told them all that she had fleas. She wondered whether he remembered.) There had been hanging baskets full of flowers; splashes of purple, pink and green, and every time Krystal had passed one of the planted troughs outside the Black Canon, she had pulled off a petal. Each one had been cool and slippery in her fingers, swiftly becoming slimy and brown as she clutched it, and she usually wiped it off on the underside of a warm wooden pew in St. Michael’s.

She let herself into her house and saw at once, through the open door to her left, that Terri had not gone to bed. She was sitting in her armchair with her eyes closed and her mouth open. Krystal closed the door with a snap, but Terri did not stir.

Krystal was at Terri’s side in four strides, shaking her thin arm. Terri’s head fell forwards onto her shrunken chest. She snored.

Krystal let go of her. The vision of a dead man in the bathroom swam back into her subconscious.

“Silly bitch,” she said.

Then it occurred to her that Robbie was not there. She pounded up the stairs, shouting for him.

“’M’ere,” she heard him say, from behind her own closed bedroom door.

When she shouldered it open, she saw Robbie standing there, naked. Behind him, scratching his bare chest, lying on her own mattress, was Obbo.

“All righ’, Krys?” he said, grinning.

She seized Robbie and pulled him into his own room. Her hands trembled so badly that it took her ages to dress him.

“Did ’e do somethin’ to yer?” she whispered to Robbie.

“’M’ungry,” said Robbie.

When he was dressed, she picked him up and ran downstairs. She could hear Obbo moving around in her bedroom.

“Why’s ’e ’ere?” she shouted at Terri, who was drowsily awake in her chair. “Why’s ’e with Robbie?”

Robbie fought to get out of her arms; he hated shouting.

“An’ wha’ the fuck’s that?” screamed Krystal, spotting, for the first time, two black holdalls lying beside Terri’s armchair.

“S’nuthin’,” said Terri vaguely.

But Krystal had already forced one of the zips open.

“S’nuthin’!” shouted Terri.

Big, bricklike blocks of hashish wrapped neatly in sheets of polythene: Krystal, who could barely read, who could not have identified half the vegetables in a supermarket, who could not have named the Prime Minister, knew that the contents of the bag, if discovered on the premises, meant prison for her mother. Then she saw the tin, with the coachman and horses on the lid, half protruding from the chair on which Terri was sitting.

“Yeh’ve used,” said Krystal breathlessly, as disaster rained invisibly around her and everything collapsed. “Yeh’ve fuckin’ —”

She heard Obbo on the stairs and she snatched up Robbie again. He wailed and struggled in her arms, frightened by her anger, but Krystal’s grip was unbreakable.

“Fuckin’ lerrim go,” called Terri fruitlessly. Krystal had opened the front door and was running as fast as she could, encumbered by Robbie who was resisting and moaning, back along the road.

Shirley showered and pulled clothes out of the wardrobe while Howard slept noisily on. The church bell of St. Michael and All Saints, ringing for ten o’clock matins, reached her as she buttoned up her cardigan. She always thought how loud it must be for the Jawandas, living right opposite, and hoped that it struck them as a loud proclamation of Pagford’s adherence to the old ways and traditions of which they, so conspicuously, were not a part.

Automatically, because it was what she so often did, Shirley walked along the hall, turned into Patricia’s old bedroom and sat down at the computer.

Patricia ought to be here, sleeping on the sofa bed that Shirley had made up for her. It was a relief not to have to deal with her this morning. Howard, who had still been humming “The Green, Green Grass of Home” when they arrived at Ambleside in the early hours, had not realized that Patricia was absent until Shirley had had the key in the front door.

“Where’s Pat?” he had wheezed, leaning against the porch.

“Oh, she was upset that Melly didn’t want to come,” sighed Shirley. “They had a row or something…I expect she’s gone home to try and patch things up.”

“Never a dull moment,” said Howard, bouncing lightly off alternate walls of the narrow hallway as he navigated his way carefully toward the bedroom.

Shirley brought up her favorite medical website. When she typed in the first letter of the condition she wished to investigate, the site offered its explanation of EpiPens again, so Shirley swiftly revised their use and content, because she might yet have an opportunity to save their potboy’s life. Next, she carefully typed in “eczema,” and learned, somewhat to her disappointment, that the condition was not infectious, and could not, therefore, be used as an excuse to sack Sukhvinder Jawanda.

From sheer force of habit, she then typed in the address of the Pagford Parish Council website, and clicked onto the message board.

She had grown to recognize at a glance the shape and length of the user name The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother, just as a besotted lover knows at once the back of their beloved’s head, or the set of their shoulders, or the tilt of their walk.

A single glimpse at the topmost message sufficed: excitement exploded; he had not forsaken her. She had known that Dr. Jawanda’s outburst could not go unpunished.

 

Affair of the First Citizen of Pagford

 

She read it, but did not, at first, understand: she had been expecting to see Parminder’s name. She read it again, and gave the suffocated gasp of a woman being hit by icy water.

 

Howard Mollison, First Citizen of Pagford, and long-standing resident Maureen Lowe have been more than business partners for many years. It is common knowledge that Maureen holds regular tastings of Howard’s finest salami. The only person who appears not to be in on the secret is Shirley, Howard’s wife.

 

Completely motionless in her chair, Shirley thought: it’s not true.

It could not be true.

Yes, she had once or twice suspected…had hinted, sometimes, to Howard…

No, she would not believe it. She could not believe it.

But other people would. They would believe the Ghost. Everybody believed him.

Her hands were like empty gloves, fumbling and feeble, as she tried, with many a blunder, to remove the message from the site. Every second that it remained there, somebody else might be reading it, believing it, laughing about it, passing it to the local newspaper…Howard and Maureen, Howard and Maureen…

The message was gone. Shirley sat and stared at the computer monitor, her thoughts scurrying like mice in a glass bowl, trying to escape, but there was no way out, no firm foothold, no way of climbing back to the happy place she had occupied before she saw that dreadful thing, written in public for the world to see…

He had laughed at Maureen.

No, she had laughed at Maureen. Howard had laughed at Kenneth.

Always together: holidays and workdays and weekend excursions…

…only person who appears not to be in on the secret…

…she and Howard did not need sex: separate beds for years, they had a silent understanding…

…holds regular tastings of Howard’s finest salami…

(Shirley’s mother was alive in the room with her: cackling and jeering, a glass slopping wine…Shirley could not bear dirty laughter. She had never been able to bear ribaldry or ridicule.)

She jumped up, tripping over the chair legs, and hurried back to the bedroom. Howard was still asleep, lying on his back, making rumbling, porcine noises.

“Howard,” she said. “Howard.”

It took a whole minute to rouse him. He was confused and disoriented, but as she stood over him, she saw him still as a knight protector who could save her.

“Howard, the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother’s put up another message.”

Disgruntled at his rude awakening, Howard made a growling groaning noise into the pillow.

“About you,” said Shirley.

They did very little plain speaking, she and Howard. She had always liked that. But today she was driven to it.

“About you,” she repeated, “and Maureen. It says you’ve been — having an affair.”

His big hand slid up over his face and he rubbed his eyes. He rubbed them longer, she was convinced, than he needed.

“What?” he said, his face shielded.

“You and Maureen, having an affair.”

“Where’s he get that from?”

No denial, no outrage, no scathing laughter. Merely a cautious request for a source.

Ever afterwards, Shirley would remember this moment as a death; a life truly ended.

“Fuckin’ shurrup, Robbie! Shurrup!”

Krystal had dragged Robbie to a bus stop several streets away, so that neither Obbo nor Terri could find them. She was not sure she had enough money for the fare, but she was determined to get to Pagford. Nana Cath was gone, Mr. Fairbrother was gone, but Fats Wall was there, and she needed to make a baby.

“Why wuz ’e in the room with yeh?” Krystal shouted at Robbie, who grizzled and did not answer.

There was only a tiny amount of battery power left on Terri’s mobile phone. Krystal called Fats’ number, but it went to voice mail.

In Church Row, Fats was busy eating toast and listening to his parents having one of their familiar, bizarre conversations in the study across the hall. It was a welcome distraction from his own thoughts. The mobile in his pocket vibrated but he did not answer it. There was nobody he wanted to talk to. It would not be Andrew. Not after last night.

“Colin, you know what you’re supposed to do,” his mother was saying. She sounded exhausted. “Please, Colin —”

“We had dinner with them on Saturday night. The night before he died. I cooked. What if —”

“Colin, you didn’t put anything in the food — for God’s sake, now I’m doing it — I’m not supposed to do this, Colin, you know I’m not supposed to get into it. This is your OCD talking.”

“But I might’ve, Tess, I suddenly thought, what if I put something —”

“Then why are we alive, you, me and Mary? They did a post-mortem, Colin!”

“Nobody told us the details. Mary never told us. I think that’s why she doesn’t want to talk to me anymore. She suspects.”

“Colin, for Christ’s sake —”

Tessa’s voice became an urgent whisper, too quiet to hear. Fats’ mobile vibrated again. He pulled it out of his pocket. Krystal’s number. He answered.

“Hiya,” said Krystal, over what sounded like a kid shouting. “D’you wanna meet up?”

“Dunno,” yawned Fats. He had been intending to go to bed.

“I’m comin’ into Pagford on the bus. We could hook up.”

Last night he had pressed Gaia Bawden into the railings outside the town hall, until she had pulled away from him and thrown up. Then she had started to berate him again, so he had left her there and walked home.

“I dunno,” he said. He felt so tired, so miserable.

“Go on,” she said.

From the study, he heard Colin. “You say that, but would it show up? What if I —”

“Colin, we shouldn’t be going into this — you’re not supposed to take these ideas seriously.”

“How can you say that to me? How can I not take it seriously? If I’m responsible —”

“Yeah, all right,” said Fats to Krystal. “I’ll meet you in twenty, front of the pub in the Square.”

Samantha was driven from the spare room at last by her urgent need to pee. She drank cold water from the tap in the bathroom until she felt sick, gulped down two paracetamol from the cabinet over the sink, then took a shower.

She dressed without looking at herself in the mirror. Through everything she did, she was alert for some noise that would indicate the whereabouts of Miles, but the house seemed to be silent. Perhaps, she thought, he had taken Lexie out somewhere, away from her drunken, lecherous, cradle-snatching mother…

(“He was in Lexie’s class at school!” Miles had spat at her, once they were alone in their bedroom. She had waited for him to move away from the door, then wrenched it back open and run to the spare room.)

Nausea and mortification came over her in waves. She wished she could forget, that she had blacked out, but she could still see the boy’s face as she launched herself at him…she could remember the feel of his body pressed against her, so skinny, so young…

If it had been Vikram Jawanda, there might have been some dignity in it…She had to get coffee. She could not stay in the bathroom forever. But as she turned to open the door, she saw herself in the mirror, and her courage almost failed. Her face was puffy, her eyes hooded, the lines in her face etched more deeply by pressure and dehydration.

Oh God, what must he have thought of me…

Miles was sitting in the kitchen when she entered. She did not look at him, but crossed straight to the cupboard where the coffee was. Before she had touched the handle, he said, “I’ve got some here.”

“Thanks,” she muttered, and poured herself out a mug, avoiding eye contact.

“I’ve sent Lexie over to Mum and Dad’s,” said Miles. “We need to talk.”

Samantha sat down at the kitchen table.

“Go on, then,” she said.

“Go on — is that all you can say?”

“You’re the one who wants to talk.”

“Last night,” said Miles, “at my father’s birthday party, I came to look for you, and I found you snogging a sixteen-year —”

“Sixteen-year-old, yes,” said Samantha. “Legal. One good thing.”

He stared at her, appalled.

“You think this is funny? If you’d found me so drunk that I didn’t even realize —”

“I did realize,” said Samantha.

She refused to be Shirley, to cover everything up with a frilly little tablecloth of polite fiction. She wanted to be honest, and she wanted to penetrate that thick coating of complacency through which she no longer recognized a young man she had loved.

“You did realize — what?” said Miles.

He had so plainly expected embarrassment and contrition that she almost laughed.

“I did realize that I was kissing him,” she said.

He stared at her, and her courage seeped away, because she knew what he was going to say next.

“And if Lexie had walked in?”

Samantha had no answer to that. The thought of Lexie knowing what had happened made her want to run away and not come back — and what if the boy told her? They had been at school together. She had forgotten what Pagford was like…

“What the hell’s going on with you?” asked Miles.

“I’m…unhappy,” said Samantha.

“Why?” asked Miles, but then he added quickly, “Is it the shop? Is it that?”

“A bit,” said Samantha. “But I hate living in Pagford. I hate living on top of your parents. And sometimes,” she said slowly, “I hate waking up next to you.”

She thought he might get angry, but instead he asked, quite calmly, “Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?”

“I don’t know,” said Samantha.

He seemed thinner in his open-necked shirt. For the first time in a long while, she thought she glimpsed somebody familiar and vulnerable inside the aging body across the table. And he still wants me, she thought, with wonder, recalling the crumpled face in the mirror upstairs.

“But I was glad,” she added, “The night that Barry Fairbrother died, that you were still alive. I think I dreamed you weren’t, and I woke up, and I know I was happy when I heard you breathing.”

“And that’s — that’s all you’ve got to say to me, is it? You’re glad I’m not dead?”

She had been wrong to think that he was not angry. He had simply been in shock.

“That’s all you’ve got to say to me? You get absolutely ratted at my father’s birthday —”

“Would it have been better if it hadn’t been your bloody father’s party?” she shouted, his anger igniting hers. “Was that the real problem, that I showed you up in front of Mummy and Daddy?”

“You were kissing a sixteen-year-old boy —”

“Maybe he’ll be the first of many!” yelled Samantha, getting up from the table and slamming her mug down in the sink; the handle came off in her hand. “Don’t you get it, Miles? I’ve had enough! I hate our fucking life and I hate your fucking parents —”

“— you don’t mind them paying for the girls’ education —”

“— I hate you turning into your father in front of me —”

“— absolute bollocks, you just don’t like me being happy when you’re not —”

“— whereas my darling husband doesn’t give a shit how I feel —”

“— plenty for you to do round here, but you’d rather sit at home and sulk —”

“— I don’t intend to sit at home anymore, Miles —”

“— not going to apologize for getting involved with the community —”

“— well, I meant what I said — you’re not fit to fill his shoes!”

“What?” he said, and his chair fell over as he jumped to his feet, while Samantha strode to the kitchen door.

“You heard me,” she shouted. “Like my letter said, Miles, you’re not fit to fill Barry Fairbrother’s shoes. He was sincere.”

“Your letter?” he said.

“Yep,” she said breathlessly, with her hand on the doorknob. “I sent that letter. Too much to drink one evening, while you were on the phone to your mother. And,” she pulled the door open, “I didn’t vote for you either.”

The look on his face unnerved her. Out in the hall, she slipped on clogs, the first pair of shoes she could find, and was through the front door before he could catch up.

The journey took Krystal back to her childhood. She had made this trip daily to St. Thomas’s, all on her own, on the bus. She knew when the abbey would come into sight, and she pointed it out to Robbie.

“See the big ruin’ castle?”

Robbie was hungry, but slightly distracted by the excitement of being on a bus. Krystal held his hand tightly. She had promised him food when they got off at the other end, but she did not know where she would get it. Perhaps she could borrow money from Fats for a bag of crisps, not to mention the return bus fare.

“I wen’ ter school ’ere,” she told Robbie, while he wiped his fingers on the dirty windows, making abstract patterns. “An’ you’ll go to school ’ere too.”

When they rehoused her, because of her pregnancy, they were almost certain to give her another Fields house; nobody wanted to buy them, they were so run down. But Krystal saw this as a good thing, because in spite of their dilapidation it would put Robbie and the baby in the catchment area for St. Thomas’s. Anyway, Fats’ parents would almost certainly give her enough money for a washing machine once she had their grandchild. They might even get a television.

The bus rolled down a slope toward Pagford, and Krystal caught a glimpse of the glittering river, briefly visible before the road sank too low. She had been disappointed, when she joined the rowing team, that they did not train on the Orr, but on the dirty old canal in Yarvil.

“’Ere we are,” Krystal told Robbie, as the bus turned slowly into the flower-decked square.

Fats had forgotten that waiting in front of the Black Canon meant standing opposite Mollison and Lowe’s and the Copper Kettle. There was more than an hour to go until midday, when the café opened on Sundays, but Fats did not know how early Andrew had to arrive for work. He had no desire to see his oldest friend this morning, so he skulked down the side of the pub out of sight, and only emerged when the bus arrived.

It pulled away, revealing Krystal and a small dirty-looking boy.

Nonplussed, Fats loped towards them.

“’E’s my brother,” said Krystal aggressively, in response to something she had seen in Fats’ face.

Fats made another mental adjustment to what gritty and authentic life meant. He had been fleetingly taken with the idea of knocking Krystal up (and showing Cubby what real men were able to achieve casually, without effort) but this little boy clinging to his sister’s hand and leg disconcerted him.

Fats wished that he had not agreed to meet her. She was making him ridiculous. He would rather have gone back to that stinking, squalid house of hers, now that he saw her in the Square.

“’Ave yeh got any money?” Krystal demanded.

“What?” said Fats. His wits were slow with tiredness. He could not remember now why he had wanted to sit up all night; his tongue was throbbing with all the cigarettes he had smoked.

“Money,” repeated Krystal. “’E’s ’ungry an’ I’ve lost a fiver. Pay yeh back.”

Fats stuck a hand in his jeans pocket and touched a crumpled banknote. Somehow he did not want to look too flush in front of Krystal, so he ferreted deeper for change, and finally came up with a small amount of silver and coppers.

They went to the tiny newsagent’s two streets from the Square, and Fats hung around outside while Krystal bought Robbie crisps and a packet of Rolos. None of them said a word, not even Robbie, who seemed fearful of Fats. At last, when Krystal had handed her brother the crisps, she said to Fats, “Where’ll we go?”

Surely, he thought, she could not mean that they were going to shag. Not with the boy there. He had had some idea of taking her to the Cubby Hole: it was private, and it would be a final desecration of his and Andrew’s friendship; he owed nothing to anyone, anymore. But he balked at the idea of fucking in front of a three-year-old.

“’E’ll be all right,” said Krystal. “’E’s got chocolates now. No, later,” she said to Robbie, who was whining for the Rolos still in her hand. “When you’ve ’ad the crisps.”

They walked off down the road in the direction of the old stone bridge.

“’E’ll be all right,” Krystal repeated. “’E does as ’e’s told. Dontcha?” she said loudly to Robbie.

“Wan’ chocolates,” he said.

“Yeah, in a minute.”

She could tell that Fats needed cajoling today. She had known, on the bus, that bringing Robbie, however necessary, would be difficult.

“Whatcha bin up ter?” she asked.

“Party last night,” said Fats.

“Yeah? Who wuz there?”

He yawned widely, and she had to wait for an answer.

“Arf Price. Sukhvinder Jawanda. Gaia Bawden.”

“Does she live in Pagford?” asked Krystal sharply.

“Yeah, in Hope Street,” said Fats.

He knew, because Andrew had let it slip, where she lived. Andrew had never said that he liked her, but Fats had watched him watching Gaia almost constantly in the few classes they shared. He had noticed Andrew’s extreme self-consciousness around her, and whenever she was mentioned.

Krystal, though, was thinking about Gaia’s mother: the only social worker she had ever liked, the only one who had got through to her mother. She lived in Hope Street, the same as Nana Cath. She was probably there right now. What if…

But Kay had left them. Mattie was their social worker again. Anyway, you weren’t supposed to bother them at home. Shane Tully had once followed his social worker to her house, and he’d got a restraining order for his pains. But then, Shane had earlier tried to heave a brick through the woman’s car window…

And, Krystal reasoned, squinting as the road turned, and the river dazzled her eyes with thousands of blinding white spots of light, Kay was still the keeper of folders, the scorekeeper and the judge. She had seemed all right, but none of her solutions would keep Krystal and Robbie together…

“We could go down there,” she suggested to Fats, pointing at the overgrown stretch of bank, a little way along from the bridge. “An’ Robbie could wait up there, on the bench.”

She would be able to keep an eye on him from there, she thought, and she would make sure he didn’t see anything. Not that it was anything he had not seen before, in the days that Terri brought strangers home…

But, exhausted as he was, Fats was revolted. He could not do it in the grass, under the eye of a small boy.

“Nah,” he said, trying to sound offhand.

“’E won’ bother,” said Krystal. “’E’s got ’is Rolos. ’E won’ even know,” she said, although she thought that was a lie. Robbie knew too much. There had been trouble at nursery when he’d mimicked doing it doggy-style on another child.

Krystal’s mother, Fats remembered, was a prostitute. He hated the idea of what she was suggesting, but was that not inauthenticity?

“Whassamatter?” Krystal asked him aggressively.

“Nothing,” he said.

Dane Tully would do it. Pikey Pritchard would do it. Cubby, not in a million years.

Krystal walked Robbie to the bench. Fats bent to peer over the back of it, down to the overgrown patch of weeds and bushes, and thought that the kid might not see anything, but that he would be as quick as he could, in any case.

“’Ere y’are,” Krystal told Robbie, pulling out the long tube of Rolos while he reached for them excitedly. “Yeh can ’ave all of ’em if yeh jus’ sit ’ere fer a minute, all righ’? Yeh jus’ sit ’ere, Robbie, an’ I’ll be in them bushes. D’yeh understand, Robbie?”

“Yeah,” he said happily, his cheeks already full of chocolate and toffee.

Krystal slipped and slid down the bank toward the patch of undergrowth, hoping that Fats was not going to make any difficulties about doing it without a condom.

Gavin was wearing sunglasses against the glare of the morning sun, but that was no disguise: Samantha Mollison was sure to recognize his car. When he caught sight of her, striding along the pavement alone with her hands in her pockets and her head down, Gavin made a sharp left turn, and instead of continuing along the road to Mary’s, crossed the old stone bridge, and parked up a side lane on the other side of the river.

He did not want Samantha to see him parking outside Mary’s house. It did not matter on workdays, when he wore a suit and carried a briefcase; it had not mattered before he had admitted to himself what he felt about Mary, but it mattered now. In any case, the morning was glorious and a walk bought him time.

Still keeping my options open, he thought, as he crossed the bridge on foot. There was a small boy sitting by himself on a bench, eating sweets, below him. I don’t have to say anything…I’ll play it by ear…

But his palms were wet. The thought of Gaia telling the Fairbrother twins that he was in love with their mother had haunted him all through a restless night.

Mary seemed pleased to see him.

“Where’s your car?” she asked, peering over his shoulder.

“Parked it down by the river,” he said. “Lovely morning. I fancied a walk, and then it occurred to me that I could mow the lawn if you —”

“Oh, Graham did it for me,” she said, “but that’s so sweet of you. Come in and have a coffee.”

She chatted as she moved around the kitchen. She was wearing old cutoff jeans and a T-shirt; they showed how thin she was, but her hair was shiny again, the way he usually thought of it. He could see the twin girls, lying out on the freshly mown lawn on a blanket, both with headphones in, listening to their iPods.

“How are you?” Mary asked, sitting down beside him.

He could not think why she sounded so concerned; then he remembered that he had found time to tell her, yesterday, during his brief visit, that he and Kay had split up.

“I’m OK,” he said. “Probably for the best.”

She smiled and patted his arm.

“I heard last night,” he said, his mouth a little dry, “That you might be moving.”

“News travels fast in Pagford,” she said. “It’s just an idea. Theresa wants me to move back to Liverpool.”

“And how do the kids feel about that?”

“Well, I’d wait for the girls and Fergus to do their exams in June. Declan’s not so much of a problem. I mean, none of us wants to leave…”

She melted into tears in front of him, but he was so happy that he reached out to touch her delicate wrist.

“Of course you don’t…”

“…Barry’s grave.”

“Ah,” said Gavin, his happiness snuffed out like a candle.

Mary wiped her streaming eyes on the back of her hand. Gavin found her a little morbid. His family cremated their dead. Barry’s burial had only been the second he had ever attended, and he had hated everything about it. Gavin saw a grave purely as a marker for the place where a corpse was decomposing; a nasty thought, yet people took it into their heads to visit and bring flowers, as though it might yet recover.

She had got up to get tissues. Outside on the lawn, the twins had switched to sharing a set of headphones, their heads bobbing up and down in time to the same song.

“So Miles got Barry’s seat,” she said. “I could hear the celebrations all the way up here last night.”

“Well, it was Howard’s…yeah, that’s right,” said Gavin.

“And Pagford’s nearly rid of the Fields,” she said.

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“And now Miles is on the council, it’ll be easier to close Bellchapel,” she said.

Gavin always had to remind himself what Bellchapel was; he had no interest in these issues at all.

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“So everything Barry wanted is finished,” she said.

Her tears had dried up, and the patches of high angry color had returned to her cheeks.

“I know,” he said. “It’s really sad.”

“I don’t know,” she said, still flushed and angry. “Why should Pagford pick up the bills for the Fields? Barry only ever saw one side of it. He thought everyone in the Fields was like him. He thought Krystal Weedon was like him, but she wasn’t. It never occurred to him that people in the Fields might be happy where they are.”

“Yeah,” said Gavin, overjoyed that she disagreed with Barry, and feeling as if the shadow of his grave had lifted from between them, “I know what you mean. From all I’ve heard about Krystal Weedon —”

“She got more of his time and his attention than his own daughters,” said Mary. “And she never even gave a penny for his wreath. The girls told me. The whole rowing team chipped in, except Krystal. And she didn’t come to his funeral, even, after all he’d done for her.”

“Yeah, well, that shows —”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t stop thinking about it all,” she said frenetically. “I can’t stop thinking that he’d still want me to worry about bloody Krystal Weedon. I can’t get past it. All the last day of his life, and he had a headache and he didn’t do anything about it, writing that bloody article!”

“I know,” said Gavin. “I know. I think,” he said, with a sense of putting his foot tentatively on an old rope bridge, “it’s a bloke thing. Miles is the same. Samantha didn’t want him to stand for the council, but he went ahead anyway. You know, some men really like a bit of power —”

“Barry wasn’t in it for power,” said Mary, and Gavin hastily retreated.

“No, no, Barry wasn’t. He was in it for —”

“He couldn’t help himself,” she said. “He thought everyone was like him, that if you gave them a hand they’d start bettering themselves.”

“Yeah,” said Gavin, “but the point is, there are other people who could use a hand — people at home…”

“Well, exactly!” said Mary, dissolving yet again into tears.

“Mary,” said Gavin, leaving his chair, moving to her side (on the rope bridge now, with a sense of mingled panic and anticipation), “look…it’s really early…I mean, it’s far too soon…but you’ll meet someone else.”

“At forty,” sobbed Mary, “with four children…”

“Plenty of men,” he began, but that was no good; he would rather she did not think she had too many options. “The right man,” he corrected himself, “won’t care that you’ve got kids. Anyway, they’re such nice kids…anyone would be glad to take them on.”

“Oh, Gavin, you’re so sweet,” she said, dabbing her eyes again.

He put his arm around her, and she did not shrug it off. They stood without speaking while she blew her nose, and then he felt her tense to move away, and he said, “Mary…”

“What?”

“I’ve got to — Mary, I think I’m in love with you.”

He knew for a few seconds the glorious pride of the skydiver who pushes off firm floor into limitless space.

Then she pulled away.

“Gavin. I —”

“I’m sorry,” he said, observing with alarm her repulsed expression. “I wanted you to hear it from me. I told Kay that’s why I wanted to split up, and I was scared you’d hear it from someone else. I wouldn’t have said anything for months. Years,” he added, trying to bring back her smile and the mood in which she found him sweet.

But Mary was shaking her head, arms folded over her thin chest.

“Gavin, I never, ever —”

“Forget I said anything,” he said foolishly. “Let’s just forget it.”

“I thought you understood,” she said.

He gathered that he should have known that she was encased in the invisible armor of grief, and that it ought to have protected her.

“I do understand,” he lied. “I wouldn’t have told you, only —”

“Barry always said you fancied me,” said Mary.

“I didn’t,” he said frantically.

“Gavin, I think you’re such a nice man,” she said breathlessly. “But I don’t — I mean, even if —”

“No,” he said loudly, trying to drown her out. “I understand. Listen, I’m going to go.”

“There’s no need…”

But he almost hated her now. He had heard what she was trying to say: even if I weren’t grieving for my husband, I wouldn’t want you.

His visit had been so brief that when Mary, slightly shaky, poured away his coffee it was still hot.

Howard had told Shirley that he did not feel well, that he thought he had better stay in bed and rest, and that the Copper Kettle could run without him for an afternoon.

“I’ll call Mo,” he said.

“No, I’ll call her,” said Shirley sharply.

As she closed the bedroom door on him, Shirley thought, He’s using his heart.

He had said, “Don’t be silly, Shirl,” and then, “It’s rubbish, bloody rubbish,” and she had not pressed him. Years of genteel avoidance of grisly topics (Shirley had been literally struck dumb when twenty-three-year-old Patricia had said: “I’m gay, Mum.”) seemed to have muzzled something inside her.

The doorbell rang. Lexie said, “Dad told me to come round here. He and Mum have got something to do. Where’s Grandad?”

“In bed,” said Shirley. “He overdid it a bit last night.”

“It was a good party, wasn’t it?” said Lexie.

“Yes, lovely,” said Shirley, with a tempest building inside her.

After a while, her granddaughter’s prattling wore Shirley down.

“Let’s have lunch at the café,” she suggested. “Howard,” she called through the closed bedroom door, “I’m taking Lexie for lunch at the Copper Kettle.”

He sounded worried, and she was glad. She was not afraid of Maureen. She would look Maureen right in the face…

But it occurred to Shirley, as she walked, that Howard might have telephoned Maureen the moment she had left the bungalow. She was so stupid…somehow, she had thought that, in calling Maureen herself about Howard’s illness, she had stopped them communicating…she was forgetting…

The familiar, well-loved streets seemed different, strange. She had taken a regular inventory of the window she presented to this lovely little world: wife and mother, hospital volunteer, secretary to the Parish Council, First Citizeness; and Pagford had been her mirror, reflecting, in its polite respect, her value and her worth. But the Ghost had taken a rubber stamp and smeared across the pristine surface of her life a revelation that would nullify it all: “her husband was sleeping with his business partner, and she never knew…”

It would be all that anyone said, when she was mentioned; all that they ever remembered about her.

She pushed open the door of the café; the bell tinkled, and Lexie said, “There’s Peanut Price.”

“Howard all right?” croaked Maureen.

“Just tired,” said Shirley, moving smoothly to a table and sitting down, her heart beating so fast that she wondered whether she might have a coronary herself.

“Tell him neither of the girls has turned up,” said Maureen crossly, lingering by their table, “and neither of them bothered to call in either. It’s lucky we’re not busy.”

Lexie went to the counter to talk to Andrew, who had been put on waiter duty. Conscious of her unusual solitude, as she sat alone at the table, Shirley remembered Mary Fairbrother, erect and gaunt at Barry’s funeral, widowhood draped around her like a queen’s train; the pity, the admiration. In losing her husband, Mary had become the silent passive recipient of admiration, whereas she, shackled to a man who had betrayed her, was cloaked in grubbiness, a target of derision…

(Long ago, in Yarvil, men had subjected Shirley to smutty jokes because of her mother’s reputation, even though she, Shirley, had been as pure as it was possible to be.)

“Grandad’s feeling ill,” Lexie was telling Andrew. “What’s in those cakes?”

He bent down behind the counter, hiding his red face.

I snogged your mum.

Andrew had almost skived off work. He had been afraid that Howard might sack him on the spot for kissing his daughter-in-law, and was downright terrified that Miles Mollison might storm in, looking for him. At the same time, he was not so naive that he did not know that Samantha, who must, he thought ruthlessly, be well over forty, would figure as the villain of the piece. His defense was simple. “She was pissed and she grabbed me.”

There was a tiny glimmer of pride in his embarrassment. He had been anxious to see Gaia; he wanted to tell her that a grown woman had pounced on him. He had hoped that they might laugh about it, the way that they laughed about Maureen, but that she might be secretly impressed; and also that in the course of laughing, he might find out exactly what she had done with Fats; how far she had let him go. He was prepared to forgive her. She had been pissed too. But she had not turned up.

He went to fetch a napkin for Lexie and almost collided with his boss’s wife, who was standing behind the counter, holding his EpiPen.

“Howard wanted me to check something,” Shirley told him. “And this needle shouldn’t be kept in here. I’ll put it in the back.”

Halfway down his packet of Rolos, Robbie became extremely thirsty. Krystal had not bought him a drink. He climbed off the bench and crouched down in the warm grass, where he could still see her outline in the bushes with the stranger. After a while, he scrambled down the bank toward them.

“’M thirsty,” he whined.

“Robbie, get out of it!” screamed Krystal. “Go an’ sit on the bench!”

“Wanna drink!”

“Fuckin’ — go an’ wai’ by the bench, an’ I’ll gerra drink in a minute! Go ’way, Robbie!”

Crying, he climbed back up the slippery bank to the bench. He was accustomed to not being given what he wanted, and disobedient by habit, because grown-ups were arbitrary in their wrath and their rules, so he had learned to seize his tiny pleasures wherever and whenever he could.

Angry at Krystal, he wandered a little way from the bench along the road. A man in sunglasses was walking along the pavement toward him.

(Gavin had forgotten where he had parked the car. He had marched out of Mary’s and walked straight down Church Row, only realizing that he was heading in the wrong direction when he drew level with Miles and Samantha’s house. Not wanting to pass the Fairbrothers’ again, he had taken a circuitous route back to the bridge.

He saw the boy, chocolate-stained, ill-kempt and unappealing, and walked past, with his happiness in tatters, half wishing that he could have gone to Kay’s house and been silently cradled…she had always been nicest to him when he was miserable, it was what had attracted him to her in the first place.)

The rushing of the river increased Robbie’s thirst. He cried a bit more as he changed direction and headed away from the bridge, back past the place where Krystal was hidden. The bushes had started shaking. He walked on, wanting a drink, then noticed a hole in a long hedge on the left of the road. When he drew level, he spotted a playing field beyond.

Robbie wriggled through the hole and contemplated the wide green space with its spreading chestnut tree and goalposts. Robbie knew what they were, because his cousin Dane had showed him how to kick a football at the play park. He had never seen so much greenness.

A woman came striding across the field, with her arms folded and her head bowed.

(Samantha had been walking at random, walking and walking, anywhere as long as it was nowhere near Church Row. She had been asking herself many questions and coming up with few answers; and one of the questions she asked herself was whether she might not have gone too far in telling Miles about that stupid, drunken letter, which she had sent out of spite, and which seemed much less clever now…

She glanced up and her eyes met Robbie’s. Children often wriggled through the hole in the hedge to play in the field at weekends. Her own girls had done it when they were younger.

She climbed over the gate and turned away from the river toward the Square. Self-disgust clung to her, no matter how hard she tried to outrun it.)

Robbie went back through the hole in the hedge and walked a little way along the road after the striding lady, but she was soon out of sight. The half packet of remaining Rolos were melting in his hand, and he did not want to put them down, but he was so thirsty. Maybe Krystal had finished. He wandered back in the opposite direction.

When he reached the first patch of bushes on the bank, he saw that they were not moving, so he thought it was all right to approach.

“Krystal,” he said.

But the bushes were empty. Krystal was gone.

Robbie started to wail and shout for Krystal. He clambered back up the bank and looked wildly up and down the road, but there was no sign of her.

“Krystal!” he yelled.

A woman with short silver hair glanced at him, frowning, as she trotted briskly along the opposite pavement.

Shirley had left Lexie at the Copper Kettle, where she seemed happy, but a short way across the Square she had caught a glimpse of Samantha, who was the very last person she wanted to meet, so she had taken off in the opposite direction.

The boy’s wails and squawks echoed behind her as she hurried along. Shirley’s fist was clutched tightly around the EpiPen in her pocket. She would not be a dirty joke. She wanted to be pure and pitied, like Mary Fairbrother. Her rage was so enormous, so dangerous, that she could not think coherently: she wanted to act, to punish, to finish.

Just before the old stone bridge, a patch of bushes shivered to Shirley’s left. She glanced down and caught a disgusting glimpse of something sordid and vile, and it drove her on.

Sukhvinder had been walking around Pagford longer than Samantha. She had left the Old Vicarage shortly after her mother had told her she must go to work, and since then had been wandering the streets, observing invisible exclusion zones around Church Row, Hope Street and the Square.

She had nearly fifty pounds in her pocket, which represented her wages from the café and the party, and the razor blade. She had wanted to take her building society passbook, which resided in a little filing cabinet in her father’s study, but Vikram had been at his desk. She had waited for a while at the bus stop where you could catch a bus into Yarvil, but then she had spotted Shirley and Lexie Mollison coming down the road, and dived out of sight.

Gaia’s betrayal had been brutal and unexpected. Pulling Fats Wall…he would drop Krystal now that he had Gaia. Any boy would drop any girl for Gaia, she knew that. But she could not bear to go to work and hear her one ally trying to tell her that Fats was all right, really.

Her mobile buzzed. Gaia had already texted her twice.

 

How pissed was I last nite?

R u going 2 work?

 

Nothing about Fats Wall. Nothing about snogging Sukhvinder’s torturer. The new message said, R u OK?

Sukhvinder put the mobile back into her pocket. She might walk toward Yarvil and catch a bus outside town, where nobody would see her. Her parents would not miss her until five thirty, when they expected her home from the café.

A desperate plan formed as she walked, hot and tired: if she could find a place to stay that cost less than fifty pounds…all she wanted was to be alone and ply her razor blade.

She was on the river road with the Orr flowing beside her. If she crossed the bridge, she would be able to take a backstreet all the way round to the start of the bypass.

“Robbie! Robbie! Where are you?”

It was Krystal Weedon, running up and down the riverbank. Fats Wall was smoking, with one hand in his pocket, watching Krystal run.

Sukhvinder took a sharp right onto the bridge, terrified that one of them might notice her. Krystal’s yells were echoing off the rushing water.

Sukhvinder caught sight of something in the river below.

Her hands were already on the hot stone ledge before she had thought about what she was doing, and then she had hoisted herself onto the edge of the bridge; she yelled, “He’s in the river, Krys!” and dropped, feetfirst, into the water. Her leg was sliced open by a broken computer monitor as she was pulled under by the current.

When Shirley opened the bedroom door, she saw nothing but two empty beds. Justice required a sleeping Howard; she would have to advise him to return to bed.

But there was no sound from either the kitchen or the bathroom. Shirley was worried that, by taking the river road home, she had missed him. He must have got dressed and set off for work; he might already be with Maureen in the back room, discussing Shirley; planning, perhaps, to divorce her and marry Maureen instead, now that the game was up, and pretense was ended.

She half ran into the sitting room, intending to telephone the Copper Kettle. Howard was lying on the carpet in his pajamas.

His face was purple and his eyes were popping. A faint wheezing noise came from his lips. One hand was clutching feebly at his chest. His pajama top had ridden up. Shirley could see the very patch of scabbed raw skin where she had planned to plunge the needle.

Howard’s eyes met hers in mute appeal.

Shirley stared at him, terrified, then darted out of the room. At first she hid the EpiPen in the biscuit barrel; then she retrieved it and shoved it down the back of the cookery books.

She ran back into the sitting room, seized the telephone receiver and dialed 999.

“Pagford? This is for Orrbank Cottage, is it? There’s one on the way.”

“Oh, thank you, thank God,” said Shirley, and she had almost hung up when she realized what she had said and screamed, “no, no, not Orrbank Cottage…”

But the operator had gone and she had to dial again. She was panicking so much that she dropped the receiver. On the carpet beside her, Howard’s wheezing was becoming fainter and fainter.

“Not Orrbank Cottage,” she shouted. “Thirty-six Evertree Crescent, Pagford — my husband’s having a heart attack…”

In Church Row, Miles Mollison came tearing out of his house in bedroom slippers and sprinted down the steep sloping pavement to the Old Vicarage on the corner. He banged on the thick oak door with his left hand, while trying to dial his wife’s number with his right.

“Yes?” said Parminder, opening the door.

“My dad,” gasped Miles “…another heart attack…Mum’s called an ambulance…will you come? Please, will you come?”

Parminder made a swift move back into the house, mentally seizing her doctor’s bag, but checked.

“I can’t. I’m suspended from work, Miles. I can’t.”

“You’re joking…please…the ambulance won’t be here for —”

“I can’t, Miles,” she said.

He turned and ran away from her through the open gate. Ahead, he saw Samantha, walking up their garden path. He called to her, his voice breaking, and she turned in surprise. At first, she thought that his panic was on her account.

“Dad…collapsed…there’s an ambulance coming…bloody Parminder Jawanda won’t come…”

“My God,” said Samantha. “Oh my God.”

They dashed to the car and drove up the road, Miles in his slippers, Samantha in the clogs that had blistered her feet.

“Miles, listen, there’s a siren — it’s here already…”

But when they turned into Evertree Crescent, there was nothing there, and the siren was already gone.

On a lawn a mile away, Sukhvinder Jawanda was vomiting river water beneath a willow tree, while an old lady pressed blankets around her that were already as sodden as Sukhvinder’s clothes. A short distance away, the dog-walker who had dragged Sukhvinder from the river by her hair and her sweatshirt was bent over a small, limp body.

Sukhvinder had thought she felt Robbie struggling in her arms, but had that been the cruel tug of the river, trying to rip him from her? She was a strong swimmer, but the Orr had dragged her under, pulled her helplessly wherever it chose. She had been swept around the bend, and it had thrown her in towards land, and she had managed a scream, and seen the man with his dog, running towards her along the bank…

“No good,” said the man, who had worked on Robbie’s little body for twenty minutes. “He’s gone.”

Sukhvinder wailed, and slumped to the cold wet ground, shaking furiously as the sound of the siren reached them, too late.

Back in Evertree Crescent, the paramedics were having enormous difficulty getting Howard onto the stretcher; Miles and Samantha had to help.

“We’ll follow in the car, you go with Dad,” Miles shouted at Shirley, who seemed bewildered, and unwilling to get into the ambulance.

Maureen, who had just shown her last customer out of the Copper Kettle, stood on the doorstep, listening.

“Lots of sirens,” she said over her shoulder to an exhausted Andrew, who was mopping tables. “Something must have happened.”

And she took a deep breath, as though she hoped to taste the tang of disaster on the warm afternoon air.