The Casual Vacancy

IV


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 façades 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, semi-dressed, 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.

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 f*ck – 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 towards 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 any more, 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 towards Howard Mollison.

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

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 fulfil 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.





V


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 f*ck’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, brick-like 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 f*ckin’—’

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.

‘F*ckin’ 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.





VI


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 towards the bedroom.

Shirley brought up her favourite 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 disorientated, 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.





VII


‘F*ckin’ 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 voicemail.

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 any more. 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.’





VIII


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 for ever. 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 any more?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Samantha.

‘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 f*cking life and I hate your f*cking 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 any more, 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.