The Casual Vacancy

III


Andrew had spent hours deciding which clothes he ought to wear for his first day’s work at the Copper Kettle. His final choice was draped over the back of the chair in his bedroom. A particularly angry acne pustule had chosen to bring itself to a shiny tight peak on his left cheek, and Andrew had gone so far as to experiment with Ruth’s foundation, which he had sneaked out of her dressing-table drawer.

He was laying the kitchen table on Friday evening, his mind full of Gaia and the seven solid hours of close proximity to her that were within touching distance, when his father returned from work in a state that Andrew had never seen before. Simon seemed subdued, almost disorientated.

‘Where’s your mother?’

Ruth came bustling out of the walk-in pantry.

‘Hello Si-Pie! How – what’s wrong?’

‘They’ve made me redundant.’

Ruth clapped her hands to her face in horror, then dashed to her husband, threw her arms around his neck and drew him close.

‘Why?’ she whispered.

‘That message,’ said Simon. ‘On that f*cking website. They pulled in Jim and Tommy too. It was take redundancy or we’ll sack you. And it’s a shitty deal. It’s not even what they gave Brian Grant.’

Andrew stood perfectly still, calcifying slowly into a monument of guilt.

‘F*ck,’ said Simon, into Ruth’s shoulder.

‘You’ll get something else,’ she whispered.

‘Not round here,’ said Simon.

He sat down on a kitchen chair, still in his coat, and stared across the room, apparently too stunned to speak. Ruth hovered around him, dismayed, affectionate and tearful. Andrew was glad to detect in Simon’s catatonic gaze a whiff of his usual ham theatrics. It made him feel slightly less guilty. He continued to lay the table without saying a word.

Dinner was a subdued affair. Paul, apprised of the family news, looked terrified, as though his father might accuse him of causing it all. Simon acted like a Christian martyr through the first course, wounded but dignified in the face of unwarranted persecution, but then – ‘I’ll pay someone to punch the f*cker’s fat face through the back of his neck,’ he burst out as he spooned apple crumble into himself; and the family knew that he meant Howard Mollison.

‘You know, there’s been another message on that council website,’ said Ruth breathlessly. ‘It’s not only you who’s had it, Si. Shir – somebody told me at work. The same person – The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother – has put up something horrible about Dr Jawanda. So Howard and Shirley got someone in to look at the site, and he realized that whoever’s doing these messages has been using Barry Fairbrother’s log-in details, so to be safe, they’ve taken them off the – the database or something—’

‘And will any of this get me my f*cking job back?’

Ruth did not speak again for several minutes.

Andrew was unnerved by what his mother had said. It was worrying that The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother was being investigated, and unnerving that somebody else had followed his lead.

Who else would have thought of using Barry Fairbrother’s log-in details but Fats? Yet why would Fats go for Dr Jawanda? Or was it just another way of getting at Sukhvinder? Andrew did not like it at all …

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Simon barked across the table.

‘Nothing,’ Andrew muttered, and then, backtracking, ‘it’s a shock, isn’t it … your job …’

‘Oh, you’re shocked, are you?’ shouted Simon, and Paul dropped his spoon and dribbled ice cream down himself. ‘(Clean it up, Pauline, you little pansy!) Well, this is the real world, Pizza Face!’ he shouted at Andrew. ‘F*ckers everywhere trying to do you down! So you,’ he pointed across the table at his eldest son, ‘you get some dirt on Mollison, or don’t bother coming home tomorrow!’

‘Si—’

Simon pushed his chair away from the table, threw down his own spoon, which bounced onto the floor with a clatter, and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him. Andrew waited for the inevitable, and was not disappointed.

‘It’s a terrible shock for him,’ a shaken Ruth whispered at her sons. ‘After all the years he’s given that company … he’s worried how he’s going to look after us all …’

When the alarm rang at six thirty the next morning, Andrew slammed it off within seconds and virtually leapt out of bed. Feeling as though it was Christmas Day, he washed and dressed at speed, then spent forty minutes on his hair and face, dabbing minuscule amounts of foundation onto the most obvious of his spots.

He half expected Simon to waylay him as he crept past his parents’ room, but he met nobody, and after a hasty breakfast he wheeled Simon’s racing bicycle out of the garage and sped off down the hill towards Pagford.

It was a misty morning that promised sunshine later. The blinds were still down in the delicatessen, but the door tinkled and gave when he pushed it.

‘Not this way!’ shouted Howard, waddling towards him. ‘You come in round the back! You can leave the bike by the bins, get it away from the front!’

The rear of the delicatessen, reached by a narrow passageway, comprised a tiny dank patch of stone-paved yard, bordered by high walls, sheds with industrial-sized metal bins and a trapdoor that led down vertiginous steps to a cellar.

‘You can chain it up somewhere there, out of the way,’ said Howard, who had appeared at the back door, wheezing and sweaty-faced. While Andrew fumbled with the padlock on the chain, Howard dabbed at his forehead with his apron.

‘Right, we’ll start with the cellar,’ he said, when Andrew had secured the bicycle. He pointed at the trapdoor. ‘Get down there and see the layout.’

He bent over the hatch as Andrew climbed down the steps. Howard had not been able to climb down into his own cellar for years. Maureen usually tottered up and down the steps a couple of times a week; but now that it was fully stocked with goods for the café, younger legs were indispensible.

‘Have a good look around,’ he shouted at the out-of-sight Andrew. ‘See where we’ve got the gateaux and all the baked goods? See the big bags of coffee beans and the boxes of teabags? And in the corner – the toilet rolls and the bin bags?’

‘Yeah,’ Andrew’s voice echoed up from the depths.

‘You can call me Mr Mollison,’ said Howard, with a slightly tart edge to his wheezy voice.

Down in the cellar, Andrew wondered whether he ought to start straight away.

‘OK … Mr Mollison.’

It sounded sarcastic. He hastened to make amends with a polite question.

‘What’s in these big cupboards?’

‘Have a look,’ said Howard impatiently. ‘That’s what you’re down there for. To know where you put everything and where you get it from.’

Howard listened to the muffled sounds of Andrew opening the heavy doors, and hoped that the boy would not prove gormless or need a lot of direction. Howard’s asthma was particularly bad today; the pollen count was unseasonably high, on top of all the extra work, and the excitement and petty frustrations of the opening. The way he was sweating, he might need to ring Shirley to bring him a new shirt before they unlocked the doors.

‘Here’s the van!’ Howard shouted, hearing a rumble at the other end of the passageway. ‘Get up here! You’re to carry the stuff down to the cellar and put it away, all right? And bring a couple of gallons of milk through to me in the café. You got that?’

‘Yeah … Mr Mollison,’ said Andrew’s voice from below.

Howard walked slowly back inside to fetch the inhaler that he kept in his jacket, which was hanging up in the staff room behind the delicatessen counter. Several deep breaths later, he felt much better. Wiping his face on his apron again, he sat down on one of the creaking chairs to rest.

Several times since he had been to see her about his skin rash, Howard had thought about what Dr Jawanda had said about his weight: that it was the source of all his health problems.

Nonsense, obviously. Look at the Hubbards’ boy: built like a beanpole, and shocking asthma. Howard had always been big, as far back as he could remember. In the very few photographs taken of him with his father, who had left the family when Howard was four or five, he was merely chubby. After his father had left, his mother had sat him at the head of the table, between herself and his grandmother, and been hurt if he did not take seconds. Steadily he had grown to fill the space between the two women, as heavy at twelve as the father who had left them. Howard had come to associate a hearty appetite with manliness. His bulk was one of his defining characteristics. It had been built with pleasure, by the women who loved him, and he thought it was absolutely characteristic of Bends-Your-Ear, that emasculating killjoy, that she wanted to strip him of it.

But sometimes, in moments of weakness, when it became difficult to breathe or to move, Howard knew fear. It was all very well for Shirley to act as though he had never been in danger, but he remembered long nights in the hospital after his bypass, when he had not been able to sleep for worry that his heart might falter and stop. Whenever he caught sight of Vikram Jawanda, he remembered that those long dark fingers had actually touched his naked, beating heart; the bonhomie with which he brimmed at each encounter was a way of driving out that primitive, instinctive terror. They had told him at the hospital afterwards that he needed to lose some weight, but he had dropped two stone naturally while he was forced to live off their dreadful food, and Shirley had been intent on fattening him up again once he was out …

Howard sat for a moment more, enjoying the ease with which he breathed after using his inhaler. Today meant a great deal to him. Thirty-five years previously, he had introduced fine dining to Pagford with the élan of a sixteenth-century adventurer returning with delicacies from the other side of the world, and Pagford, after initial wariness, had soon begun to nose curiously and timidly into his polystyrene pots. He thought wistfully of his late mother, who had been so proud of him and his thriving business. He wished that she could have seen the café. Howard heaved himself back to his feet, took his deerstalker from its hook and placed it carefully on his head in an act of self-coronation.

His new waitresses arrived together at half-past eight. He had a surprise for them.

‘Here you are,’ he said, holding out the uniforms: black dresses with frilly white aprons, exactly as he had imagined. ‘Ought to fit. Maureen reckoned she knew your sizes. She’s wearing one herself.’

Gaia forced back a laugh as Maureen stalked into the delicatessen from the café, smiling at them. She was wearing Dr Scholl’s sandals over her black stockings. Her dress finished two inches above her wrinkled knees.

‘You can change in the staff room, girls,’ she said, indicating the place from which Howard had just emerged.

Gaia was already pulling off her jeans beside the staff toilet when she saw Sukhvinder’s expression.

‘Whassamatter, Sooks?’ she asked.

The new nickname gave Sukhvinder the courage to say what she might otherwise have been unable to voice.

‘I can’t wear this,’ she whispered.

‘Why?’ asked Gaia. ‘You’ll look OK.’

But the black dress had short sleeves.

‘I can’t.’

‘But wh – Jesus,’ said Gaia.

Sukhvinder had pulled back the sleeves of her sweatshirt. Her inner arms were covered in ugly criss-cross scars, and angry fresh-clotted cuts travelled up from her wrist to her inner arm.

‘Sooks,’ said Gaia quietly. ‘What are you playing at, mate?’

Sukhvinder shook her head, with her eyes full of tears.

Gaia thought for a moment, then said, ‘I know – come here.’

She was stripping off her long-sleeved T-shirt.

The door suffered a big blow and the imperfectly closed bolt shot open: a sweating Andrew was halfway inside, carrying two weighty packs of toilet rolls, when Gaia’s angry shout stopped him in his tracks. He tripped out backwards, into Maureen.

‘They’re changing in there,’ she said, in sour disapproval.

‘Mr Mollison told me to put these in the staff bathroom.’

Holy shit, holy shit. She had been stripped to her bra and pants. He had seen nearly everything.

‘Sorry,’ Andrew yelled at the closed door. His whole face was throbbing with the force of his blush.

‘Wanker,’ muttered Gaia, on the other side. She was holding out her T-shirt to Sukhvinder. ‘Put it on underneath the dress.’

‘That’ll look weird.’

‘Never mind. You can get a black one for next week, it’ll look like you’re wearing long sleeves. We’ll tell him some story …’

‘She’s got eczema,’ Gaia announced, when she and Sukhvinder emerged from the staff room, fully dressed and aproned. ‘All up her arms. It’s a bit scabby.’

‘Ah,’ said Howard, glancing at Sukhvinder’s white T-shirted arms and then back at Gaia, who looked every bit as gorgeous as he had hoped.

‘I’ll get a black one for next week,’ said Sukhvinder, unable to look Howard in the eye.

‘Fine,’ he said, patting Gaia in the small of her back as he sent the pair of them through to the café. ‘Brace yourselves,’ he called to his staff at large. ‘We’re nearly there … doors open, please, Maureen!’

There was already a little knot of customers waiting on the pavement. A sign outside read: The Copper Kettle, Opening Today – First Coffee Free!

Andrew did not see Gaia again for hours. Howard kept him busy heaving milk and fruit juices up and down the steep cellar steps, and swabbing the floor of the small kitchen area at the back. He was given a lunch break earlier than either of the waitresses. The next glimpse he got of her was when Howard summoned him to the counter of the café, and they passed within inches of each other as she walked in the other direction, towards the back room.

‘We’re swamped, Mr Price!’ said Howard, in high good humour. ‘Get yourself a clean apron and mop down some of these tables for me while Gaia has her lunch!’

Miles and Samantha Mollison had sat down with their two daughters and Shirley at a table in the window.

‘It seems to be going awfully well, doesn’t it?’ Shirley said, looking around. ‘But what on earth is that Jawanda girl wearing under her dress?’

‘Bandages?’ suggested Miles, squinting across the room.

‘Hi, Sukhvinder!’ called Lexie, who knew her from primary school.

‘Don’t shout, darling,’ Shirley reproved her granddaughter, and Samantha bristled.

Maureen emerged from behind the counter in her short black dress and frilly apron, and Shirley corpsed into her coffee.

‘Oh dear,’ she said quietly, as Maureen walked towards them, beaming.

It was true, Samantha thought, Maureen looked ridiculous, especially next to a pair of sixteen-year-olds in identical dresses, but she was not going to give Shirley the satisfaction of agreeing with her. She turned ostentatiously away, watching the boy mopping tables nearby. He was spare but reasonably broad-shouldered. She could see his muscles working under the loose T-shirt. Incredible to think that Miles’ big fat backside could ever have been that small and tight – then the boy turned into the light and she saw his acne.

‘Not half bad, is it?’ Maureen was croaking to Miles. ‘We’ve been full all day.’

‘All right, girls,’ Miles addressed his family, ‘what’ll we have to keep up Grandpa’s profits?’

Samantha listlessly ordered a bowl of soup, as Howard waddled through from the delicatessen; he had been striding in and out of the café every ten minutes all day, greeting customers and checking the flow of cash into the till.

‘Roaring success,’ he told Miles, squeezing in at their table. ‘What d’you think of the place, Sammy? You haven’t seen it before, have you? Like the mural? Like the china?’

‘Mm,’ said Samantha. ‘Lovely.’

‘I was thinking about having my sixty-fifth here,’ said Howard, absent-mindedly scratching at the itch Parminder’s creams had not yet cured, ‘but it’s not big enough. I think we’ll stick with the church hall.’

‘When’s that, Grandpa?’ piped up Lexie. ‘Am I coming?’

‘Twenty-ninth, and what are you now – sixteen? Course you can come,’ said Howard happily.

‘The twenty-ninth?’ said Samantha. ‘Oh, but …’

Shirley looked at her sharply.

‘Howard’s been planning this for months. We’ve all been talking about it for ages.’

‘… that’s the night of Libby’s concert,’ said Samantha.

‘A school thing, is it?’ asked Howard.

‘No,’ said Libby, ‘Mum’s got me tickets for my favourite group. It’s in London.’

‘And I’m going with her,’ said Samantha. ‘She can’t go alone.’

‘Harriet’s mum says she could—’

‘I’m taking you, Libby, if you’re going to London.’

‘The twenty-ninth?’ said Miles, looking hard at Samantha. ‘The day after the election?’

Samantha let loose the derisive laugh that she had spared Maureen.

‘It’s the Parish Council, Miles. It’s not as though you’ll be giving press conferences.’

‘Well, we’ll miss you, Sammy,’ said Howard, as he hauled himself up with the aid of the back of her chair. ‘Best get on … all right, Andrew, you’re done here … go and see if we need anything up from the cellar.’

Andrew was forced to wait beside the counter while people passed to and from the bathroom. Maureen was loading up Sukhvinder with plates of sandwiches.

‘How’s your mother?’ she asked the girl abruptly, as though the thought had just occurred to her.

‘Fine,’ said Sukhvinder, her colour rising.

‘Not too upset by that nasty business on the council website?’

‘No,’ said Sukhvinder, her eyes watering.

Andrew proceeded out into the dank yard, which, in the early afternoon, had become warm and sunny. He had hoped that Gaia might be there, taking a breath of fresh air, but she must have gone into the staff room in the deli. Disappointed, he lit up a cigarette. He had barely inhaled when Gaia emerged from the café, finishing her lunch with a can of fizzy drink.

‘Hi,’ said Andrew, his mouth dry.

‘Hi,’ she said. Then, after a moment or two: ‘Hey, why’s that friend of yours such a shit to Sukhvinder? Is it personal or is he racist?’

‘He isn’t racist,’ said Andrew. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, trying to keep his hands from trembling, but could not think of anything else to say. The sunshine reflected off the bins warmed his sweaty back; close proximity to her in the tight black dress was almost overwhelming, especially now that he had glimpsed what lay beneath. He took another drag of the cigarette, not knowing when he had felt so bedazzled or so alive.

‘What’s she ever done to him, though?’

The curve of her hips to her tiny waist; the perfection of her wide, flecked eyes over the can of Sprite. Andrew felt like saying, Nothing, he’s a bastard, I’ll hit him if you let me touch you …

Sukhvinder emerged into the yard, blinking in the sunlight; she looked uncomfortable and hot in Gaia’s top.

‘He wants you back in,’ she said to Gaia.

‘He can wait,’ said Gaia coolly. ‘I’m finishing this. I’ve only had forty minutes.’

Andrew and Sukhvinder contemplated her as she sipped her drink, awed by her arrogance and her beauty.

‘Was that old bitch saying something to you just then, about your mum?’ Gaia asked Sukhvinder.

Sukhvinder nodded.

‘I think it might’ve been his mate,’ she said, staring at Andrew again, and he found her emphasis on his positively erotic, even if she meant it to be derogatory, ‘who put that message about your mum on that website.’

‘Can’t’ve been,’ said Andrew, and his voice wobbled slightly. ‘Whoever did it went after my old man, too. Couple of weeks ago.’

‘What?’ asked Gaia. ‘The same person posted something about your dad?’

He nodded, relishing her interest.

‘Something about stealing, wasn’t it?’ asked Sukhvinder, with considerable daring.

‘Yeah,’ said Andrew. ‘And he got the sack for it yesterday. So her mum,’ he met Gaia’s blinding gaze almost steadily, ‘isn’t the only one who’s suffered.’

‘Bloody hell,’ said Gaia, upending the can and throwing it into a bin. ‘People round here are effing mental.’





IV


The post about Parminder on the council website had driven Colin Wall’s fears to a nightmarish new level. He could only guess how the Mollisons were getting their information, but if they knew that about Parminder …

‘For God’s sake, Colin!’ Tessa had said. ‘It’s just malicious gossip! There’s nothing in it!’

But Colin did not dare believe her. He was constitutionally prone to believing that others too lived with secrets that drove them half-demented. He could not even take comfort in knowing that he had spent most of his adult life in dread of calamities that had not materialized, because, by the law of averages, one of them was bound to come true one day.

He was thinking about his imminent exposure, as he thought about it constantly, while walking back from the butcher’s at half-past two, and it was not until the hubbub from the new café caught his startled attention that he realized where he was. He would have crossed to the other side of the Square if he had not been already level with the Copper Kettle’s windows; mere proximity to any Mollison frightened him now. Then he saw something through the glass that made him do a double-take.

When he entered their kitchen ten minutes later, Tessa was on the telephone to her sister. Colin deposited the leg of lamb in the fridge and marched upstairs, all the way to Fats’ loft conversion. Flinging open the door, he saw, as he had expected, a deserted room.

He could not remember the last time he had been in here. The floor was covered in dirty clothes. There was an odd smell, even though Fats had left the skylight propped open. Colin noticed a large matchbox on Fats’ desk. He slid it open, and saw a mass of twisted cardboard stubs. A packet of Rizlas lay brazenly on the desk beside the computer.

Colin’s heart seemed to have toppled down out of his chest to thump against his guts.

‘Colin?’ came Tessa’s voice, from the landing below. ‘Where are you?’

‘Up here!’ he roared.

She appeared at Fats’ door looking frightened and anxious. Wordlessly, he picked up the matchbox and showed her the contents.

‘Oh,’ said Tessa weakly.

‘He said he was going out with Andrew Price today,’ said Colin. Tessa was frightened by the muscle working in Colin’s jaw, an angry little bump moving from side to side. ‘I’ve just been past that new café in the Square, and Andrew Price is working in there, mopping tables. So where’s Stuart?’

For weeks, Tessa had been pretending to believe Fats whenever he said that he was going out with Andrew. For days she had been telling herself that Sukhvinder must be mistaken in thinking that Fats was going out (would condescend, ever, to go out) with Krystal Weedon.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Come down and have a cup of tea. I’ll ring him.’

‘I think I’ll wait here,’ said Colin, and he sat down on Fats’ unmade bed.

‘Come on, Colin – come downstairs,’ said Tessa.

She was scared of leaving him here. She did not know what he might find in the drawers or in Fats’ school bag. She did not want him to look on the computer or under the bed. Refusing to probe dark corners had become her sole modus operandi.

‘Come downstairs, Col,’ she urged him.

‘No,’ said Colin, and he crossed his arms like a mutinous child, but with that muscle working in his jaw. ‘Drugs in his bin. The son of the deputy headmaster.’

Tessa, who had sat down on Fats’ computer chair, felt a familiar thrill of anger. She knew that self-preoccupation was an inevitable consequence of his illness, but sometimes …

‘Plenty of teenagers experiment,’ she said.

‘Still defending him, are you? Doesn’t it ever occur to you that it’s your constant excuses for him that make him think he can get away with blue murder?’

She was trying to keep a curb on her temper, because she must be a buffer between them.

‘I’m sorry, Colin, but you and your job aren’t the be all and end—’

‘I see – so if I get the sack—’

‘Why on earth would you get the sack?’

‘For God’s sake!’ shouted Colin, outraged. ‘It all reflects on me – it’s already bad enough – he’s already one of the biggest problem students in the—’

‘That’s not true!’ shouted Tessa. ‘Nobody but you thinks Stuart’s anything other than a normal teenager. He’s not Dane Tully!’

‘He’s going the same way as Tully – drugs in his bin—’

‘I told you we should have sent him to Paxton High! I knew you’d make everything he did all about you, if he went to Winterdown! Is it any wonder he rebels, when his every movement is supposed to be a credit to you? I never wanted him to go to your school!’

‘And I,’ bellowed Colin, jumping to his feet, ‘never bloody wanted him at all!’

‘Don’t say that!’ gasped Tessa. ‘I know you’re angry – but don’t say that!’

The front door slammed two floors below them. Tessa looked around, frightened, as though Fats might materialize instantly beside them. It wasn’t merely the noise that had made her start. Stuart never slammed the front door; he usually slipped in and out like a shape-shifter.

His familiar tread on the stairs; did he know, or suspect they were in his room? Colin was waiting, with his fists clenched by his sides. Tessa heard the creak of the halfway step, and then Fats stood before them. She was sure he had arranged his expression in advance: a mixture of boredom and disdain.

‘Afternoon,’ he said, looking from his mother to his rigid, tense father. He had all the self-possession that Colin had never had. ‘This is a surprise.’

Desperate, Tessa tried to show him the way.

‘Dad was worried about where you are,’ she said, with a plea in her voice. ‘You said you were going to be with Arf today, but Dad saw—’

‘Yeah, change of plan,’ said Fats.

He glanced towards the place where the matchbox had been.

‘So, do you want to tell us where you’ve been?’ asked Colin. There were white patches around his mouth.

‘Yeah, if you like,’ said Fats, and he waited.

‘Stu,’ said Tessa, half whisper, half groan.

‘I’ve been out with Krystal Weedon,’ said Fats.

Oh God, no, thought Tessa. No, no, no …

‘You’ve what?’ said Colin, so taken aback that he forgot to sound aggressive.

‘I’ve been out with Krystal Weedon,’ Fats repeated, a little more loudly.

‘And since when,’ said Colin, after an infinitesimal pause, ‘has she been a friend of yours?’

‘A while,’ said Fats.

Tessa could see Colin struggling to formulate a question too grotesque to utter.

‘You should have told us, Stu,’ she said.

‘Told you what?’ he said.

She was frightened that he was going to push the argument to a dangerous place.

‘Where you were going,’ she said, standing up and trying to look matter of fact. ‘Next time, call us.’

She looked towards Colin in the hope that he might follow her lead and move towards the door. He remained fixed in the middle of the room, staring at Fats in horror.

‘Are you … involved with Krystal Weedon?’ Colin asked.

They faced each other, Colin taller by a few inches, but Fats holding all the power.

‘“Involved”?’ Fats repeated. ‘What d’you mean, “involved”?’

‘You know what I mean!’ said Colin, his face growing red.

‘D’you mean, am I shagging her?’ asked Fats.

Tessa’s little cry of ‘Stu!’ was drowned by Colin shouting, ‘How bloody dare you!’

Fats merely looked at Colin, smirking. Everything about him was a taunt and a challenge.

‘What?’ said Fats.

‘Are you –’ Colin was struggling to find the words, growing redder all the time, ‘– are you sleeping with Krystal Weedon?’

‘It wouldn’t be a problem if I was, would it?’ Fats asked, and he glanced at his mother as he said it. ‘You’re all for helping Krystal, aren’t you?’

‘Helping—’

‘Aren’t you trying to keep that addiction clinic open so you can help Krystal’s family?’

‘What’s that got to do—?’

‘I can’t see what the problem is with me going out with her.’

‘And are you going out with her?’ asked Tessa sharply. If Fats wanted to take the row into this territory, she would meet him there. ‘Do you actually go anywhere with her, Stuart?’

His smirk sickened her. He was not prepared even to pretend to some decency.

‘Well, we don’t do it in either of our houses, do—’

Colin had raised one of his stiff, clench-fisted arms and swung it. He connected with Fats’ cheek, and Fats, whose attention had been on his mother, was caught off guard; he staggered sideways, hit the desk and slid, momentarily, to the floor. A moment later he had jumped to his feet again, but Tessa had already placed herself between the pair of them, facing her son.

Behind her, Colin was repeating, ‘You little bastard. You little bastard.’

‘Yeah?’ said Fats, and he was no longer smirking. ‘I’d rather be a little bastard than be you, you arsehole!’

‘No!’ shouted Tessa. ‘Colin, get out. Get out!’

Horrified, furious and shaken, Colin lingered for a moment, then marched from the room; they heard him stumble a little on the stairs.

‘How could you?’ Tessa whispered to her son.

‘How could I f*cking what?’ said Stuart, and the look on his face alarmed her so much that she hurried to close and bar the bedroom door.

‘You’re taking advantage of that girl, Stuart, and you know it, and the way you just spoke to your—’

‘The f*ck I am,’ said Fats, pacing up and down, every semblance of cool gone. ‘The f*ck I’m taking advantage of her. She knows exactly what she wants – just because she lives in the f*cking Fields, it doesn’t – the truth is, you and Cubby don’t want me to shag her because you think she’s beneath—’

‘That’s not true!’ said Tessa, even though it was, and for all her concern about Krystal, she would still have been glad to know that Fats had sense enough to wear a condom.

‘You’re f*cking hypocrites, you and Cubby,’ he said, still pacing the length of the bedroom. ‘All the bollocks the pair of you spout about wanting to help the Weedons, but you don’t want—’

‘That’s enough!’ shouted Tessa. ‘Don’t you dare speak to me like that! Don’t you realise – don’t you understand – are you so damn selfish …?’

Words failed her. She turned, tugged open his door and was gone, slamming it behind her.

Her exit had an odd effect on Fats, who stopped pacing and stared at the closed door for several seconds. Then he searched his pockets, drew out a cigarette and lit it, not bothering to blow the smoke out of the skylight. Round and round his room he walked, and he had no control of his own thoughts: jerky, unedited images filled his brain, sweeping past on a tide of fury.

He remembered the Friday evening, nearly a year previously, when Tessa had come up here to his bedroom to tell him that his father wanted to take him out to play football with Barry and his sons next day.

(‘What?’ Fats had been staggered. The suggestion was unprecedented.

‘For fun. A kick-around,’ Tessa had said, avoiding Fats’ glare by scowling down at the clothes littering the floor.

‘Why?’

‘Because Dad thought it might be nice,’ said Tessa, bending to pick up a school shirt. ‘Declan wants a practice, or something. He’s got a match.’

Fats was quite good at football. People found it surprising; they expected him to dislike sport, to disdain teams. He played as he talked, skilfully, with many a feint, fooling the clumsy, daring to take chances, unconcerned if they did not come off.

‘I didn’t even know he could play.’

‘Dad can play very well, he was playing twice a week when we met,’ said Tessa, riled. ‘Ten o’clock tomorrow morning, all right? I’ll wash your tracksuit bottoms.’)

Fats sucked on his cigarette, remembering against his will. Why had he gone along with it? Today, he would have simply refused to participate in Cubby’s little charade, but remained in bed until the shouting died away. A year ago he had not yet understood about authenticity.

(Instead he had left the house with Cubby and endured a silent five-minute walk, each equally aware of the enormous shortfall that filled all the space between them.

The playing field belonged to St Thomas’s. It had been sunny and deserted. They had divided into two teams of three, because Declan had a friend staying for the weekend. The friend, who clearly hero-worshipped Fats, had joined Fats and Cubby’s team.

Fats and Cubby passed to each other in silence, while Barry, easily the worst player, had yelled, cajoled and cheered in his Yarvil accent as he tore up and down the pitch they had marked out with sweatshirts. When Fergus scored, Barry had run at him for a flying chest bump, mistimed it and smashed Fergus on the jaw with the top of his head. The two of them had fallen to the ground, Fergus groaning in pain and laughing, while Barry sat apologizing through his roars of mirth. Fats had found himself grinning, then heard Cubby’s awkward, booming laugh and turned away, scowling.

And then had come that moment, that cringeworthy, pitiful moment, with the scores equal and nearly time to go, when Fats had successfully wrested the ball from Fergus, and Cubby had shouted, ‘Come on, Stu, lad!’

‘Lad.’ Cubby had never said ‘lad’ in his life. It sounded pitiful, hollow and unnatural. He was trying to be like Barry; imitating Barry’s easy, unself-conscious encouragement of his sons; trying to impress Barry.

The ball had flown like a cannon ball from Fats’ foot and there was time, before it hit Cubby full in his unsuspecting, foolish face, before his glasses cracked, and a single drop of blood bloomed beneath his eye, to realize his own intent; to know that he had hoped to hit Cubby, and that the ball had been dispatched for retribution.)

They had never played football again. The doomed little experiment in father-son togetherness had been shelved, like a dozen before it.

And I never wanted him at all!

He was sure he had heard it. Cubby must have been talking about him. They had been in his room. Who else could Cubby have been talking about?

Like I give a shit, thought Fats. It was what he’d always suspected. He did not know why this sensation of spreading cold had filled his chest.

Fats pulled the computer chair back into position, from the place where it had been knocked when Cubby had hit him. The authentic reaction would have been to shove his mother out of the way and punch Cubby in the face. Crack his glasses again. Make him bleed. Fats was disgusted with himself that he had not done it.

But there were other ways. He had overheard things for years. He knew much more about his father’s ludicrous fears than they thought.

Fats’ fingers were clumsier than usual. Ash spilt onto the keyboard from the cigarette in his mouth as he brought up the Parish Council website. Weeks previously, he had looked up SQL injections and found the line of code that Andrew had refused to share. After studying the council message board for a few minutes, he logged himself in, without difficulty, as Betty Rossiter, changed her username to The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother, and began to type.





V


Shirley Mollison was convinced that her husband and son were over-stating the danger to the council of leaving the Ghost’s posts online. She could not see how the messages were worse than gossip, and that, she knew, was not yet punishable by law; nor did she believe that the law would be foolish and unreasonable enough to punish her for what somebody else had written: that would be monstrously unfair. Proud as she was of Miles’ law degree, she was sure that he must have this bit wrong.

She was checking the message boards even more frequently than Miles and Howard had advised, but not because she was afraid of legal consequences. Certain as she was that Barry Fairbrother’s Ghost had not yet finished his self-appointed task of crushing the pro-Fielders, she was eager to be the first to set eyes on his next post. Several times a day she scurried into Patricia’s old room, and clicked on the web page. Sometimes a little frisson would run through her while she was hoovering or peeling potatoes and she would race to the study, only to be disappointed again.

Shirley felt a special, secret kinship with the Ghost. He had chosen her website as the forum where he would expose the hypocrisy of Howard’s opponents, and this, she felt, entitled her to the pride of the naturalist who has constructed a habitat in which a rare species deigns to nest. But there was more to it than that. Shirley relished the Ghost’s anger, his savagery and his audacity. She wondered who he might be, visualizing a strong, shadowy man standing behind herself and Howard, on their side, cutting a path for them through the opponents who crumpled as he slayed them with their own ugly truths.

Somehow, none of the men in Pagford seemed worthy to be the Ghost; she would have felt disappointed to learn that it was any of the anti-Fielders she knew.

‘That’s if it’s a man,’ said Maureen.

‘Good point,’ said Howard.

‘I think it’s a man,’ said Shirley coolly.

When Howard left for the café on Sunday morning, Shirley, still in her dressing gown, and holding her cup of tea, padded automatically to the study and brought up the website.

Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster posted by The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother.

She set down her tea with trembling hands, clicked on the post and read it, open-mouthed. Then she ran to the lounge, seized the telephone and called the café, but the number was engaged.

A mere five minutes later, Parminder Jawanda, who had also developed a habit of looking at the council message boards much more frequently than usual, opened up the site and saw the post. Like Shirley, her immediate reaction was to seize a telephone.

The Walls were breakfasting without their son, who was still asleep upstairs. When Tessa picked up, Parminder cut across her friend’s greeting.

‘There’s a post about Colin on the council website. Don’t let him see it, whatever you do.’

Tessa’s frightened eyes swivelled to her husband, but he was a mere three feet from the receiver and had already heard every word that Parminder had spoken so loudly and clearly.

‘I’ll call you back,’ said Tessa urgently. ‘Colin,’ she said, fumbling to replace the receiver, ‘Colin, wait—’

But he had already stalked out of the room, bobbing up and down, his arms stiff by his side, and Tessa had to jog to catch him up.

‘Perhaps it’s better not to look,’ she urged him, as his big, knobble-knuckled hand moved the mouse across the desk, ‘or I can read it and—’

Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster

One of the men hoping to represent the community at Parish Council level is Colin Wall, Deputy Headmaster at Winterdown Comprehensive School. Voters might be interested to know that Wall, a strict disciplinarian, has a very unusual fantasy life. Mr Wall is so frightened that a pupil might accuse him of inappropriate sexual behaviour that he has often needed time off work to calm himself down again. Whether Mr Wall has actually fondled a first year, the Ghost can only guess. The fervour of his feverish fantasies suggests that, even if he hasn’t, he would like to.

Stuart wrote that, thought Tessa, at once.

Colin’s face was ghastly in the light pouring out of the monitor. It was how she imagined he would look if he had had a stroke.

‘Colin—’

‘I suppose Fiona Shawcross has told people,’ he whispered.

The catastrophe he had always feared was upon him. It was the end of everything. He had always imagined taking sleeping tablets. He wondered whether they had enough in the house.

Tessa, who had been momentarily thrown by the mention of the headmistress, said, ‘Fiona wouldn’t – anyway, she doesn’t know—’

‘She knows I’ve got OCD.’

‘Yes, but she doesn’t know what you – what you’re afraid of—’

‘She does,’ said Colin. ‘I told her, before the last time I needed sick leave.’

‘Why?’ Tessa burst out. ‘What on earth did you tell her for?’

‘I wanted to explain why it was so important I had time off,’ said Colin, almost humbly. ‘I thought she needed to know how serious it was.’

Tessa fought down a powerful desire to shout at him. The tinge of distaste with which Fiona treated him and talked about him was explained; Tessa had never liked her, always thought her hard and unsympathetic.

‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘I don’t think Fiona’s got anything to do—’

‘Not directly,’ said Colin, pressing a trembling hand to his sweating upper lip. ‘But Mollison’s heard gossip from somewhere.’

It wasn’t Mollison. Stuart wrote that, I know he did. Tessa recognized her son in every line. She was even astonished that Colin could not see it, that he had not connected the message with yesterday’s row, with hitting his son. He couldn’t even resist a bit of alliteration. He must have done all of them – Simon Price. Parminder. Tessa was horror-struck.

But Colin was not thinking about Stuart. He was recalling thoughts that were as vivid as memories, as sensory impressions, violent, vile ideas: a hand seizing and squeezing as he passed through densely packed young bodies; a cry of pain, a child’s face contorted. And then asking himself, again and again: had he done it? Had he enjoyed it? He could not remember. He only knew that he kept thinking about it, seeing it happen, feeling it happen. Soft flesh through a thin cotton blouse; seize, squeeze, pain and shock; a violation. How many times? He did not know. He had spent hours wondering how many of the children knew he did it, whether they had spoken to each other, how long it would be until he was exposed.

Not knowing how many times he had offended, and unable to trust himself, he burdened himself with so many papers and files that he had no hands free to attack as he moved through the corridors. He shouted at the swarming children to get out of the way, to stand clear, as he passed. None of it helped. There were always stragglers, running past him, up against him, and with his hands burdened he imagined other ways to have improper contact with them: a swiftly repositioned elbow brushing against a breast; a side-step to ensure bodily contact; a leg accidentally entangled, so that the child’s groin made contact with his flesh.

‘Colin,’ said Tessa.

But he had started to cry again, great sobs shaking his big, ungainly body, and when she put her arms around him and pressed her face to his her own tears wet his skin.

A few miles away, in Hilltop House, Simon Price was sitting at a brand-new family computer in the sitting room. Watching Andrew cycle away to his weekend job with Howard Mollison, and the reflection that he had been forced to pay full market price for this computer, made him feel irritable and additionally hard done by. Simon had not looked at the Parish Council website once since the night that he had thrown out the stolen PC, but it occurred to him, by an association of ideas, to check whether the message that had cost him his job was still on the site and thus viewable by potential employers.

It was not. Simon did not know that he owed this to his wife, because Ruth was scared of admitting that she had telephoned Shirley, even to request the removal of the post. Slightly cheered by its absence, Simon looked for the post about Parminder, but that was gone too.

He was about to close the site, when he saw the newest post, which was entitled Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster.

He read it through twice and then, alone in the sitting room, he began to laugh. It was a savage triumphant laugh. He had never taken to that big, bobbing man with his massive forehead. It was good to know that he, Simon, had got off very lightly indeed by comparison.

Ruth came into the room, smiling timidly; she was glad to hear Simon laughing, because he had been in a dreadful mood since losing his job.

‘What’s funny?’

‘You know Fats’ old man? Wall, the deputy headmaster? He’s only a bloody paedo.’

Ruth’s smile slipped. She hurried forward to read the post.

‘I’m going to shower,’ said Simon, in high good humour.

Ruth waited until he had left the room before trying to call her friend Shirley, and alert her to this new scandal, but the Mollisons’ telephone was engaged.

Shirley had, at last, reached Howard at the delicatessen. She was still in her dressing gown; he was pacing up and down the little back room, behind the counter.

‘… been trying to get you for ages—’

‘Mo was using the phone. What did it say? Slowly.’

Shirley read the message about Colin, enunciating like a newsreader. She had not reached the end, when he cut across her.

‘Did you copy this down or something?’

‘Sorry?’ she said.

‘Are you reading it off the screen? Is it still on there? Have you taken it off?’

‘I’m dealing with it now,’ lied Shirley, unnerved. ‘I thought you’d like to—’

‘Get it off there now! God above, Shirley, this is getting out of hand – we can’t have stuff like that on there!’

‘I just thought you ought to—’

‘Make sure you’ve got rid of it, and we’ll talk about it when I get home!’ Howard shouted.

Shirley was furious: they never raised their voices to each other.