The Casual Vacancy

sleeve of his school shirt and onto the kitchen floor. Colin had let out an inchoate shout of annoyance as Fats spat his mouthful of cornflakes back into his bowl, and demanded of his mother, ‘Have you got to do that at the bloody table?’
    ‘Don’t be so damn rude and disgusting!’ shouted Colin. ‘Sit up properly! Wipe up that mess! How dare you speak to your mother like that? Apologize!’
    Tessa withdrew the needle too fast; she had made herself bleed.
    ‘I’m sorry that you shooting up at breakfast makes me want to puke, Tess,’ said Fats from under the table, where he was wiping the floor with a bit of kitchen roll.
    ‘Your mother isn’t “shooting up”, she’s got a medical condition!’ shouted Colin. ‘And don’t call her “Tess”!’
    ‘I know you don’t like needles, Stu,’ said Tessa, but her eyes were stinging; she had hurt herself, and felt shaken and angry with both of them, feelings that were still with her this evening.)
    Tessa wondered why Parminder did not appreciate Vikram’s concern. Colin never noticed when
she
was stressed.
Perhaps
, Tessa thought angrily,
there’s something in this arranged marriage business … my mother certainly wouldn’t have chosen Colin for me …
    Parminder was shoving bowls of cut fruit across the table for pudding. Tessa wondered a little resentfully what she would have offered a guest who was not diabetic, and comforted herself with the thought of a bar of chocolate lying at home in the fridge.
    Parminder, who had talked five times as much as anybody else all through supper, had started ranting about her daughter, Sukhvinder. She had already told Tessa on the telephone about the girl’s betrayal; she went through it all again at the table.
    ‘Waitressing with Howard Mollison. I don’t, I really
don’t
know what she’s thinking. But Vikram—’
    ‘They don’t think, Minda,’ Colin proclaimed, breaking his long silence. ‘That’s teenagers. They don’t care. They’re all the same.’
    ‘Colin, what rubbish,’ snapped Tessa. ‘They aren’t all the same at all. We’d be delighted if Stu went and got himself a Saturday job – not that there’s the remotest chance of that.’
    ‘—but Vikram doesn’t mind,’ Parminder pressed on, ignoring the interruption. ‘He can’t see anything wrong with it, can you?’
    Vikram answered easily: ‘It’s work experience. She probably won’t make university; there’s no shame in it. It’s not for everyone. I can see Jolly married early, quite happy.’
    ‘
Waitressing 
…’
    ‘Well, they can’t all be academic, can they?’
    ‘No, she certainly isn’t academic,’ said Parminder, who was almost quivering with anger and tension. ‘Her marks are absolutely atrocious – no aspiration, no ambition –
waitressing
– “let’s face it, I’m not going to get into uni” – no, you certainly
won’t
, with that attitude – with
Howard Mollison …
oh, he must have absolutely loved it – my daughter going cap in hand for a job. What was she thinking –
what
was she thinking?’
    ‘You wouldn’t like it if Stu took a job with someone like Mollison,’ Colin told Tessa.
    ‘I wouldn’t care,’ said Tessa. ‘I’d be thrilled he was showing any kind of work ethic. As far as I can tell, all he seems to care about is computer games and—’
    But Colin did not know that Stuart smoked; she broke off, and Colin said, ‘Actually, this would be exactly the kind of thing Stuart would do. Insinuate himself with somebody he knew we didn’t like, to get at us. He’d love that.’
    ‘For goodness sake, Colin, Sukhvinder isn’t trying to
get at
Minda,’ said Tessa.
    ‘So you think I’m being unreasonable?’ Parminder shot at Tessa.
    ‘No, no,’ said Tessa, appalled at how quickly they had been sucked into the family row. ‘I’m just saying, there aren’t many places for kids to work in Pagford, are there?’
    ‘And why does she need to work at all?’ said Parminder, raising her hands in a gesture of furious exasperation. ‘Don’t we give her enough money?’
    ‘Money you earn yourself is always different, you know that,’ said Tessa.
    Tessa’s chair faced a wall that was covered in photographs of the Jawanda children. She had sat here often, and had counted howmany appearances each child made: Jaswant, eighteen; Rajpal, nineteen; and Sukhvinder, nine. There was only one photograph on the wall celebrating Sukhvinder’s individual achievements: the picture of the