The Casual Vacancy

a second time that week, and sat on a wall for an hour in the Fields, watching. The bald man had interested him, fiddling around in the back of an old white van.
    ‘Nah, tha’s Pikey Pritchard,’ said Krystal, ‘if yeh saw him down Tarpen Road.’
    ‘What does he do?’
    ‘I dunno,’ said Krystal. ‘Ask Dane, ’e’s mates with Pikey’s brother.’
    But she liked his genuine interest; he had never shown this much inclination to talk to her before.
    ‘Pikey’s on probation.’
    ‘What for?’
    ‘He glassed a bloke down the Cross Keys.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘’Ow the fuck do I know? I weren’t there,’ said Krystal.
    She was happy, which always made her cocky. Setting aside her worry about Nana Cath (who was, after all, still alive, so might yet recover), it had been a good couple of weeks. Terri was adhering to the Bellchapel regime again, and Krystal was making sure that Robbie went to nursery. His bottom had mostly healed over. The social worker seemed as pleased as her sort ever did. Krystal had been to school every day too, though she had not attended either her Monday or her Wednesday morning guidance sessions with Tessa. She did not know why. Sometimes you got out of the habit.
    She glanced sideways at Fats again. She had never once thought of fancying him; not until he had targeted her at the disco in the drama hall. Everyone knew Fats; some of his jokes were passed around like funny stuff that happened on the telly. (Krystal pretended to everyone that they had a television at home. She watched enough at friends’ houses, and at Nana Cath’s, to be able to bluff her way through. ‘Yeah, it were shit, weren’t it?’ ‘I know, I nearly pissed meself,’ she would say, when the others talked about programmes they had seen.)
    Fats was imagining how it would feel to be glassed, how the jagged shard would slice through the tender flesh on his face; he could feel the searing nerves and the sting of the air against his ripped skin; the warm wetness as blood gushed. He felt a tickly over-sensitivity in the skin around his mouth, as if it was already scarred.
    ‘Is he still carrying a blade, Dane?’ he asked.
    ‘’Ow d’you know ’e’s gotta blade?’ demanded Krystal.
    ‘He threatened Kevin Cooper with it.’
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ Krystal conceded. ‘Cooper’s a twat, innee?’
    ‘Yeah, he is,’ said Fats.
    ‘Dane’s on’y carryin’ ’cos o’ the Riordon brothers,’ said Krystal.
    Fats liked the matter-of-factness of Krystal’s tone; her acceptance of the need for a knife, because there was a grudge and a likelihood of violence. This was the raw reality of life; these were things that actually mattered … before Arf had arrived at the house that day, Cubby had been importuning Tessa to give him an opinion on whether his campaign leaflet should be printed on yellow or white paper …
    ‘What about in there?’ suggested Fats, after a while.
    To their right was a long stone wall, its gates open to reveal a glimpse of green and stone.
    ‘Yeah, all righ’,’ said Krystal. She had been in the cemetery once before, with Nikki and Leanne; they had sat on a grave and split a couple of cans, a little self-conscious about what they were doing, until a woman had shouted at them and called them names. Leanne had lobbed an empty can back at the woman as they left.
    But it was too exposed, Fats thought, as he and Krystal walked up the broad concreted walkway between the graves: green and flat, the headstones offering virtually no cover. Then he saw barberry hedges along the wall on the far side. He cut a path right across the cemetery, and Krystal followed, hands in her pockets, as they picked their way between rectangular gravel beds, headstones cracked and illegible. It was a large cemetery, wide and well tended. Gradually they reached the newer graves of highly polished black marble with gold lettering, places where fresh flowers had been laid for the recently dead.
    To Lyndsey Kyle, September 15 1960–March 26 2008,
Sleep Tight Mum.
    ‘Yeah, we’ll be all right in there,’ said Fats, eyeing the dark gap between the prickly, yellow-flowered bushes and the cemetery wall.
    They crawled into the damp shadows, onto the earth, their backs against the cold wall. The headstones marched away from them between the bushes’ trunks, but there were no human forms among them. Fats skinned up expertly, hoping that Krystal was watching, and was impressed.
    But she was gazing out under the canopy of