The Casual Vacancy (49 page)

There was no harm in reminding them both that he was in need of their support. Miles jogged downstairs and proceeded to the Copper Kettle, where, during a brief postcoital chat, he had arranged to meet his wife so that they could go down to the church hall together.

Samantha had spent the morning at home, leaving her assistant in charge at the shop. She knew that she could no longer put off telling Carly that they were out of business, and that Carly was out of a job, but she could not bring herself to do it before the weekend and the concert in London. When Miles appeared, and she saw his excited little grin, she experienced a rush of fury.

“Dad not coming?” were his first words.

“They’re going down after closing time,” said Samantha.

There were two old ladies in the voting booths when she and Miles got there. Samantha waited, looking at the backs of their iron-gray perms, their thick coats and their thicker ankles. That was how she would look one day. The more crooked of the two old women noticed Miles as they left, beamed, and said, “I’ve just voted for you!”

“Well, thank you very much!” said Miles, delighted.

Samantha entered the booth and stared down at the two names: Miles Mollison and Colin Wall, the pencil, tied to the end of a piece of string, in her hand. Then she scribbled “I hate bloody Pagford” across the paper, folded it over, crossed to the ballot box and dropped it, unsmiling, through the slot.

“Thanks, love,” said Miles quietly, with a pat on her back.

Tessa Wall, who had never failed to vote in an election before, drove past the church hall on her way back home from school and did not stop. Ruth and Simon Price spent the day talking more seriously than ever about the possibility of moving to Reading. Ruth threw out their voter registration cards while clearing the kitchen table for supper.

Gavin had never intended to vote; if Barry had been alive to stand, he might have done so, but he had no desire to help Miles achieve another of his life’s goals. At half past five he packed up his briefcase, irritable and depressed, because he had finally run out of excuses not to have dinner at Kay’s. It was particularly irksome, because there were hopeful signs that the insurance company was shifting in Mary’s favor, and he had very much wanted to go over and tell her so. This meant that he would have to store up the news until tomorrow; he did not want to waste it on the telephone.

When Kay opened the door to him, she launched at once into the rapid, quick-fire talk that usually meant she was in a bad mood.

“Sorry, it’s been a dreadful day,” she said, although he had not complained, and they had barely exchanged greetings. “I was late back, I meant to be further on with dinner, come through.”

From upstairs came the insistent crash of drums and a loud bass line. Gavin was surprised that the neighbors were not complaining. Kay saw him glance up at the ceiling and said, “Oh, Gaia’s furious because some boy she liked back in Hackney has started going out with another girl.”

She seized the glass of wine she was already drinking and took a big gulp. Her conscience had hurt her when she called Marco de Luca “Some boy.” He had virtually moved into their house in the weeks before they had left London. Kay had found him charming, considerate and helpful. She would have liked a son like Marco.

“She’ll live,” said Kay, pushing the memories away, and she returned to the potatoes she was boiling. “She’s sixteen. You bounce at that age. Help yourself to wine.”

Gavin sat down at the table, wishing that Kay would make Gaia turn the music down. She had virtually to shout at him over the vibration of the bass, the rattling saucepan lids and the noisy extractor fan. He yearned again for the melancholy calm of Mary’s big kitchen, for Mary’s gratitude, her need for him.

“What?” he said loudly, because he could tell that Kay had just asked him something.

“I said, did you vote?”

“Vote?”

“In the council election!” she said.

“No,” he replied. “Couldn’t care less.”

He was not sure whether she had heard. She was talking again, and only when she turned to the table with knives and forks could he hear her clearly.

“…absolutely disgusting, actually, that the parish is colluding with Aubrey Fawley. I expect Bellchapel will be finished if Miles gets in…”

She drained the potatoes and the splatter and crash drowned her temporarily again.

“ …if that silly woman hadn’t lost her temper, we might be in with a better shot. I gave her masses of stuff on the clinic and I don’t think she used any of it. She just screamed at Howard Mollison that he was too fat. Talk about unprofessional…”

Gavin had heard rumors about Dr. Jawanda’s public outburst. He had found it mildly amusing.

“…all this uncertainty’s very damaging to the people who work at that clinic, not to mention the clients.”

But Gavin could muster neither pity nor indignation; all he felt was dismay at the firm grip Kay seemed to have on the intricacies and personalities involved in this esoteric local issue. It was yet another indication of how she was driving roots deeper and deeper into Pagford. It would take a lot to dislodge her now.

He turned his head and gazed out of the window onto the overgrown garden beyond. He had offered to help Fergus with Mary’s garden this weekend. With luck, he thought, Mary would invite him to stay for dinner again, and if she did, he would skip Howard Mollison’s sixty-fifth birthday party, to which Miles seemed to think he was looking forward with excitement.

“…wanted to keep the Weedons, but no, Gillian says we can’t cherry-pick. Would
you
call that cherry-picking?”

“Sorry, what?” asked Gavin.

“Mattie’s back,” she said, and he had to struggle to recollect that this was a colleague of hers, whose cases she had been covering. “I wanted to keep working with the Weedons, because sometimes you do get a particular feeling for a family, but Gillian won’t let me. It’s crazy.”

“You must be the only person in the world who ever wanted to keep the Weedons,” said Gavin. “From what I’ve heard, anyway.”

It took nearly all Kay’s willpower not to snap at him. She pulled the salmon fillets she had been baking out of the oven. Gaia’s music was so loud that she could feel it vibrating through the tray, which she slammed down on the hob.

“Gaia!” she screamed, making Gavin jump as she strode past him to the foot of the stairs. “GAIA! Turn it down! I mean it! TURN IT DOWN!”

The volume diminished by perhaps a decibel. Kay marched back into the kitchen, fuming. The row with Gaia, before Gavin arrived, had been one of their worst ever. Gaia had stated her intention of telephoning her father and asking to move in with him.

“Well, good luck with that!” Kay had shouted.

But perhaps Brendan would say yes. He had left her when Gaia was only a month old. Brendan was married now, with three other children. He had a huge house and a good job. What if he said yes?

Gavin was glad that he did not have to talk as they ate; the thumping music filled the silence, and he could think about Mary in peace. He would tell her tomorrow that the insurance company was making conciliatory noises, and receive her gratitude and admiration…

He had almost cleared his plate when he realized that Kay had not eaten a single mouthful. She was staring at him across the table, and her expression alarmed him. Perhaps he had somehow revealed his inner thoughts…

Gaia’s music came to an abrupt halt overhead. The throbbing quiet was dreadful to Gavin; he wished that Gaia would put something else on, quickly.

“You don’t even try,” Kay said miserably. “You don’t even pretend to care, Gavin.”

He attempted to take the easy way out.

“Kay, I’ve had a long day,” he said. “I’m sorry if I’m not up to the minutiae of local politics the second I walk —”

“I’m not talking about local politics,” she said. “You sit there looking as if you’d rather be anywhere else — it’s — it’s offensive. What do you want, Gavin?”

He saw Mary’s kitchen, and her sweet face.

“I have to beg to see you,” Kay said, “and when you come round here you couldn’t make it clearer that you don’t want to come.”

She wanted him to say “That’s not true.” The last point at which a denial might have counted slunk past. They were sliding, at increasing speed, towards that crisis which Gavin both urgently desired and dreaded.

“Tell me what you want,” she said wearily. “Just tell me.”

Both could feel the relationship crumbling to pieces beneath the weight of everything that Gavin refused to say. It was with a sense of putting them both out of their misery that he reached for words that he had not intended to speak aloud, perhaps ever, but which, in some way, seemed to excuse both of them.

“I didn’t want this to happen,” Gavin said earnestly. “I didn’t mean it to. Kay, I’m really sorry, but I think I’m in love with Mary Fairbrother.”

He saw from her expression that she had not been prepared for this.

“Mary Fairbrother?” she repeated.

“I think,” he said (and there was a bittersweet pleasure in talking about it, even though he knew he was wounding her; he had not been able to say it to anyone else), “it’s been there for a long time. I never acknowledged — I mean, when Barry was alive I’d never have —”

“I thought he was your best friend,” whispered Kay.

“He was.”

“He’s only been dead a few weeks!”

Gavin did not like hearing that.

“Look,” he said, “I’m trying to be honest with you. I’m trying to be fair.”

“You’re trying to be
fair?
”

He had always imagined it ending in a blaze of fury, but she simply watched him putting on his coat with tears in her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and walked out of her house for the last time.

On the pavement, he experienced a rush of elation, and hurried to his car. He would be able to tell Mary about the insurance company tonight, after all.

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“They’re closin’ it?” she repeated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You gotta,” said Krystal.

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

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

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

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

“See?” both women shouted at each other.

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

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

Krystal spat at her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she slammed the door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“’Ow’s Ter?” he said.

“N’bad,” she lied. “Robbie, leggo.”

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

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

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

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

“’Ow long for?”

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

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

“Yeah, go on then,” said Terri.

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

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

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

“Yeah, all righ’ then.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

II

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

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

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

Miles grinned at the kitchen door.

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

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

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

“Thanks, Mum,” said Miles.

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” said Samantha, startled.

“Please will you call Harriet’s mum?”

“Why?”

“Please will you?”

“But why, Libby?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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