The Casual Vacancy

story of Guru Nanak short, desperate to get back to her seat. She had only ever visited a gurdwara a handful of times in her life; there was none in Pagford, and the one in Yarvil was tiny and dominated, according to her parents, by Chamars, a different caste from their own. Sukhvinder did not even know why that mattered, because she knew that Guru Nanak explicitly forbade caste distinctions. It was all very confusing, and she continued to enjoy Easter eggs and decorating the Christmas tree, and found the books that Parminder pressed upon her children, explaining the lives of the gurus and the tenets of Khalsa, extremely difficult to read.
    ‘Because my mother wanted to be near her twat of a boyfriend,’ muttered Gaia. ‘Gavin Hughes, d’you know him?’
    Sukhvinder shook her head.
    ‘You’ve probably heard them shagging,’ said Gaia. ‘The whole street hears when they’re at it. Just keep your windows open some night.’
    Sukhvinder tried not to look shocked, but the idea of overhearing her parents, her married parents, having sex was quite bad enough. Gaia herself was flushed; not, Sukhvinder thought, with embarrassment but with anger. ‘He’s going to ditch her. She’s so deluded. He can’t wait to leave after they’ve done it.’
    Sukhvinder would never have talked about her mother like this, and nor would the Fairbrother twins (still, in theory, her best friends). Niamh and Siobhan were working together at a microscope not far away. Since their father had died, they seemed to have closed in on themselves, choosing each other’s company, drifting away from Sukhvinder.
    Andrew Price was staring almost constantly at Gaia through a gap in the white faces all around them. Sukhvinder, who had noticed this, thought that Gaia had not, but she was wrong. Gaia was simply not bothering to stare back or preen herself, because she was used to boys staring at her; it had been happening since she was twelve. Two boys in the lower sixth kept turning up in the corridors as she moved between classes, far more often than the law of averages would seem to dictate, and both were better-looking than Andrew. However, none of them could compare to the boy to whom Gaia had lost her virginity shortly before moving to Pagford.
    Gaia could hardly bear that Marco de Luca was still physically alive in the universe, and separated from her by a hundred and thirty-two miles of aching, useless space.
    ‘He’s eighteen,’ she told Sukhvinder. ‘He’s half Italian. He plays football really well. He’s supposed to be getting a try-out for Arsenal’s youth squad.’
    Gaia had had sex with Marco four times before leaving Hackney, each time stealing condoms out of Kay’s bedside table. She had half wanted Kay to know to what lengths she was driven, to brand herself on Marco’s memory because she was being forced to leave him.
    Sukhvinder listened, fascinated, but not admitting to Gaia that she had already seen Marco on her new friend’s Facebook page. There was nobody like that in the whole of Winterdown: he looked like Johnny Depp.
    Gaia slumped against the desk, playing absent-mindedly with the focus on the microscope, and across the room Andrew Price continued to stare at Gaia whenever he thought Fats would not notice.
    ‘Maybe he’ll be faithful. Sherelle’s having a party on Saturday night. She’s invited him. She’s sworn she won’t let him get up to anything. But shit, I wish …’
    She stared at the desk with her flecked eyes out of focus and Sukhvinder watched her humbly, marvelling at her good looks, lost in admiration for her life. The idea of having another world where you belonged completely, where you had a footballer boyfriend and a gang of cool, devoted friends, seemed to her, even if you had been forcibly removed from it all, an awe-inspiring and enviable state of affairs.
    They walked together to the shops at lunchtime, something Sukhvinder almost never did; she and the Fairbrother twins usually ate in the canteen.
    As they hung about on the pavement outside the newsagent’s where they had bought sandwiches, they heard words uttered in a piercing scream.
    ‘Your fucking mum killed my Nan!’
    All the Winterdown students clustered by the newsagent’s looked around for the source of the shouting, puzzled, and Sukhvinder imitated them, as confused as everyone else. Then she spotted Krystal Weedon, who was standing on the other side of the road, pointing a stubby finger like a gun. She had four other