The Casual Vacancy

a lamb into class for Show and Tell. Krystal had never forgotten the sensation of the lamb’s fleece under her hand. When she told Nana Cath about it, Nana Cath had said that their family had been farm labourers once.
    Krystal had loved the river, green and lush, where they had gone for nature walks. Best of all had been rounders and athletics. She was always first to be picked for any kind of sporting team, and she had delighted in the groan that went up from the other team whenever she was chosen. And she thought sometimes of the special teachers she had been given, especially Miss Jameson, who had been young and trendy, with long blonde hair. Krystal had always imagined Anne-Marie to be a little bit like Miss Jameson.
    Then there were snippets of information that Krystal had retained in vivid, accurate detail. Volcanoes: they were made by plates shifting in the ground; they had made model ones and filled them with bicarbonate of soda and washing-up liquid, and they had erupted onto plastic trays. Krystal had loved that. She knew about Vikings too: they had longships and horned helmets, though she had forgotten when they arrived in Britain, or why.
    But other memories of St Thomas’s included the muttered comments made about her by little girls in her class, one or two of whom she had slapped. When Social Services had allowed her to go back to her mother, her uniform became so tight, short and grubby that letters were sent from school, and Nana Cath and Terri had a big row. The other girls at school had not wanted her in their groups, except for their rounders teams. She could still remember Lexie Mollison handing everyone in the class a little pink envelope containing a party invitation, and walking past Krystal with – as Krystal remembered it – her nose in the air.
    Only a couple of people had asked her to parties. She wondered whether Fats or his mother remembered that she had once attended a birthday party at their house. The whole class had been invited, and Nana Cath had bought Krystal a party dress. So she knew that Fats’ huge back garden had a pond and a swing and an apple tree. They had eaten jelly and had sack races. Tessa had told Krystal offbecause, trying desperately hard to win a plastic medal, she had pushed other children out of the way. One of them had had a nosebleed.
    ‘You enjoyed St Thomas’s, though, did you?’ the journalist had asked.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Krystal, but she knew that she had not conveyed what Mr Fairbrother had wanted her to convey, and wished he could have been there with her to help. ‘Yeah, I enjoyed it.’)
    ‘How come they wanted to talk to you about the Fields?’ asked Fats.
    ‘It were Mr Fairbrother’s idea,’ said Krystal.
    After another few minutes, Fats asked, ‘D’you smoke?’
    ‘Wha’, like spliffs? Yeah, I dunnit with Dane.’
    ‘I’ve got some on me,’ said Fats.
    ‘Get it off Skye Kirby, didja?’ asked Krystal. He wondered whether he imagined a trace of amusement in her voice; because Skye was the soft, safe option, the place the middle-class kids went. If so, Fats liked her authentic derision.
    ‘Where d’you get yours, then?’ he asked, interested now.
    ‘I dunno, it were Dane’s,’ she said.
    ‘From Obbo?’ suggested Fats.
    ‘Tha’ fuckin’ tosser.’
    ‘What’s wrong with him?’
    But Krystal had no words for what was wrong with Obbo; and even if she had, she would not have wanted to talk about him. Obbo made her flesh crawl; sometimes he came round and shot up with Terri; at other times he fucked her, and Krystal would meet him on the stairs, tugging up his filthy fly, smiling at her through his bottle-bottom glasses. Often Obbo had little jobs to offer Terri, like hiding the computers, or giving strangers a place to stay for a night, or agreeing to perform services of which Krystal did not know the nature, but which took her mother out of the house for hours.
    Krystal had had a nightmare, not long ago, in which her mother had become stretched, spread and tied on a kind of frame; she was mostly a vast, gaping hole, like a giant, raw, plucked chicken; and in the dream, Obbo was walking in and out of this cavernous interior, and fiddling with things in there, while Terri’s tiny head wasfrightened and grim. Krystal had woken up feeling sick and angry and disgusted.
    ‘’E’s a fucker,’ said Krystal.
    ‘Is he a tall bloke with a shaved head and tattoos all up the back of his neck?’ asked Fats, who had truanted for