The Casual Vacancy

IX


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 towards 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 bank note. 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, any more. But he baulked at the idea of f*cking 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 score-keeper 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 towards the patch of undergrowth, hoping that Fats was not going to make any difficulties about doing it without a condom.





X


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 work days, 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 cut-off 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 colour 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 armour 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.





XI


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 defence 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.’





XII


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 towards them.

‘’M thirsty,’ he whined.

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

‘Wanna drink!’

‘F*ckin’ – 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 towards 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 goal posts. 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 towards 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.





XIII


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 pass book, 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 towards 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 back street all the way round to the start of the bypass.

‘Robbie! Robbie! Where are you?’

It was Krystal Weedon, running up and down the river bank. 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, feet first, into the water. Her leg was sliced open by a broken computer monitor as she was pulled under by the current.





XIV


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 pretence was ended.

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

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 pyjama 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 dialled 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 …’





XV


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.