The Casual Vacancy

disintegrate into fragile black flakes, which drifted onto the dirty pavement and vanished under passing feet.

X
    Andrew left Yarvil at half-past three, to be sure of getting back to Hilltop House before five. Fats accompanied him to the bus stop and then, apparently on a whim, told Andrew that he thought he would stay in town for a bit, after all.
    Fats had made a loose arrangement to meet Krystal in the shopping centre. He strolled back towards the shops, thinking about what Andrew had done in the internet café, and trying to disentangle his own reactions.
    He had to admit that he was impressed; in fact, he felt somewhat upstaged. Andrew had thought the business through, and kept it to himself, and executed it efficiently: all of this was admirable. Fats experienced a twinge of pique that Andrew had formulated the plan without saying a word to him, and this led Fats to wonder whether, perhaps, he ought not to deplore the undercover nature of Andrew’s attack on his father. Was there not something slippery and over-sophisticated about it; would it not have been more authentic to threaten Simon to his face or to take a swing at him?
    Yes, Simon was a shit, but he was undoubtedly an authentic shit; he did what he wanted, when he wanted, without submitting to societal constraints or conventional morality. Fats asked himself whether his sympathies ought not to lie with Simon, whom he liked entertaining with crude, crass humour focused mainly on people making tits of themselves or suffering slapstick injuries. Fats often told himself that he would rather have Simon, with his volatility, his unpredictable picking of fights – a worthy opponent, an engaged adversary – than Cubby.
    On the other hand, Fats had not forgotten the falling tin of creosote, Simon’s brutish face and fists, the terrifying noise he had made, the sensation of hot wet piss running down his own legs, and (perhaps most shameful of all) his whole-hearted, desperate yearning for Tessa to come and take him away to safety. Fats was not yet so invulnerable that he was unsympathetic to Andrew’s desire for retribution.
    So Fats came full circle: Andrew had done something daring, ingenious and potentially explosive in its consequences. Again Fats experienced a small pang of chagrin that it had not been he who had thought of it. He was trying to rid himself of his own acquired middle-class reliance on words, but it was difficult to forgo a sport at which he excelled, and as he trod the polished tiles of the shopping centre forecourt, he found himself turning phrases that wouldblow Cubby’s self-important pretensions apart and strip him naked before a jeering public …
    He spotted Krystal among a small crowd of Fields kids, grouped around the benches in the middle of the thoroughfare between shops. Nikki, Leanne and Dane Tully were among them. Fats did not hesitate, nor appear to gather himself in the slightest, but continued to walk at the same speed, his hands in his pockets, into the battery of curious critical eyes, raking him from the top of his head to his trainers.
    ‘All righ’, Fatboy?’ called Leanne.
    ‘All right?’ responded Fats. Leanne muttered something to Nikki, who cackled. Krystal was chewing gum energetically, colour high in her cheeks, throwing back her hair so that her earrings danced, tugging up her tracksuit bottoms.
    ‘All right?’ Fats said to her, individually.
    ‘Yeah,’ she said.
    ‘Duz yer mum know yer out, Fats?’ asked Nikki.
    ‘Yeah, she brought me,’ said Fats calmly, into the greedy silence. ‘She’s waiting outside in the car; she says I can have a quick shag before we go home for tea.’
    They all burst out laughing except Krystal, who squealed, ‘Fuck off, you cheeky bastard!’ but looked gratified.
    ‘You smokin’ rollies?’ grunted Dane Tully, his eyes on Fats’ breast pocket. He had a large black scab on his lip.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Fats.
    ‘Me uncle smokes them,’ said Dane. ‘Knackered his fuckin’ lungs.’
    He picked idly at the scab.
    ‘Where’re you two goin’?’ asked Leanne, squinting from Fats to Krystal.
    ‘Dunno,’ said Krystal, chewing her gum, glancing sideways at Fats.
    He did not enlighten either of them, but indicated the exit of the shopping centre with a jerk of his thumb.
    ‘Laters,’ Krystal said loudly to the rest.
    Fats gave them a careless half-raised hand in farewell and walked away, Krystal striding along beside him. He heard more laughter in their wake,