The Casual Vacancy

and pulled her towards him, kissing her, sticking his tongue into her mouth. With his other hand, he groped for her breast. His brain was fuzzy and his limbs were heavy; even his sense of touch seemed affected. He fumbled a little to get his hand inside her T-shirt, to force it under her bra. Her mouth was hot and tasted of tobacco and dope; her lips were dry and chapped. His excitement was slightly blunted; he seemed to be receiving all sensory information through an invisible blanket. It took longer than the last time to prise her clothes loose from her body, and the condom was difficult, because his fingers had become stiff and slow; then he accidentally placed his elbow, with all his weight behind it, on her soft fleshy underarm and she shrieked in pain.
    She was drier than before; he forced his way inside her, determined to accomplish what he had come for. Time was glue-like and slow, but he could hear his own rapid breathing, and it made him edgy, because he imagined someone else, crouching in the dark space with them, watching, panting in his ear. Krystal moaned a little. With her head thrown back, her nose became broad and snout-like. He pushed up her T-shirt to look at the smooth white breasts, jiggling a little, beneath the loose constraint of the undone bra. He came without expecting it, and his own grunt of satisfaction seemed to belong to the crouching eavesdropper.
    He rolled off her, peeled off the condom and threw it aside, then zipped himself up, feeling jittery, looking around to check that they were definitely alone. Krystal was dragging her pants up with one hand, pulling down her T-shirt with the other, reaching behind herself to do up her bra.
    It had become cloudy and darker while they had sat behind the bushes. There was a distant buzzing in Fats’ ears; he was very hungry; his brain was working slowly, while his ears were hypersensitive. The fear that they had been watched, perhaps over the top of the wall behind them, would not leave him. He wanted to go.
    ‘Let’s …’ he muttered, and without waiting for her, he crawled out between the bushes and got to his feet, brushing himself down. There was an elderly couple a hundred yards away, crouching at a graveside. He wanted to get right away from phantom eyes that might, or might not, have watched him screw Krystal Weedon; but at the same time, the process of finding the right bus stop and getting on the bus to Pagford seemed almost unbearably onerous. He wished he could simply be transported, this instant, to his attic bedroom.
    Krystal had staggered out behind him. She was pulling down the bottom of her T-shirt and staring down at the grassy ground at her feet.
    ‘Fuck,’ she mumbled.
    ‘What?’ said Fats. ‘C’mon, let’s go.’
    ‘’S Mr Fairbrother,’ she said, without moving.
    ‘What?’
    She pointed at the mound in front of them. There was no headstone yet; but fresh flowers lay all along it.
    ‘See?’ she said, crouching over and indicating cards stapled to the cellophane. ‘Tha’ sez Fairbrother.’ She recognized the name easily from all those letters that had gone home from school, asking her mother to give permission for her to go away on the minibus. ‘“Ter Barry”,’ she read carefully, ‘an’ this sez, “Ter Dad”,’ she sounded out the words slowly, ‘“from … ”’
    But Niamh and Siobhan’s names defeated her.
    ‘So?’ demanded Fats; but in truth, the news gave him the creeps.That wickerwork coffin lay feet below them, and inside it the short body and cheery face of Cubby’s dearest friend, so often seen in their house, rotting away in the earth.
The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother …
he was unnerved. It seemed like some kind of retribution.
    ‘C’mon,’ he said, but Krystal did not move. ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘I rowed for ’im, di’n I?’ snapped Krystal.
    ‘Oh, yeah.’
    Fats was fidgeting like a restive horse, edging backwards.
    Krystal stared down at the mound, hugging herself. She felt empty, sad and dirty. She wished they had not done it there, so close to Mr Fairbrother. She was cold. Unlike Fats, she had no jacket.
    ‘C’mon,’ said Fats again.
    She followed him out of the cemetery, and they did not speak to each other once. Krystal was thinking about Mr Fairbrother. He had always called her ‘Krys’, which nobody else had ever done. She had liked being Krys. He had been a good laugh. She wanted to cry.
    Fats was thinking about how he would be able to work this