The Casual Vacancy

returned to the machine.
    But at the end of the exhibition, when Barry asked those who were interested in trying out for the team to raise their hands, Krystal kept her arms folded. Tessa watched her shake her head, sneering, as Nikki muttered to her. Barry carefully noted down the names of the interested girls, then looked up.
    ‘And
you
, Krystal Weedon,’ he said, pointing at her. ‘You’re coming too. Don’t you shake your head at me. I’ll be very annoyed if I don’t see
you
. That’s natural talent you’ve got there. I don’t like seeing natural talent wasted. Krys – tal,’ he said loudly, inscribing her name, ‘Wee –
don
.’
    Had Krystal thought about her natural talent as she showered at the end of the lesson? Had she carried the thought of her new aptitude around with her that day, like an unexpected Valentine? Tessa did not know; but to the amazement of all, except perhaps Barry, Krystal had turned up at try-outs.)
    Colin was nodding vigorously as Kay took him through relapse rates at Bellchapel.
    ‘Parminder should see this,’ he said. ‘I’ll make sure she gets a copy. Yes, yes, very useful indeed.’
    Feeling slightly sick, Tessa took a fourth biscuit.

X
    Parminder worked late on Monday evenings, and as Vikram was usually at the hospital, the three Jawanda children laid the table and cooked for themselves. Sometimes they squabbled; occasionally they had a laugh; but today, each was absorbed in their own particular thoughts, and the job was completed with unusual efficiency in near silence.
    Sukhvinder had not told her brother or her sister that she had tried to truant, or about Krystal Weedon’s threat to beat her up. The habit of secrecy was very strong in her these days. She was actively frightened of imparting confidences, because she feared that they might betray the world of oddness that lived inside her, the world that Fats Wall seemed able to penetrate with such terrifying ease. All the same, she knew that the events of the day could not be kept quiet indefinitely. Tessa had told her that she intended to telephone Parminder.
    ‘I’m going to have to call your mum, Sukhvinder, it’s what we always do, but I’m going to explain to her why you did it.’
    Sukhvinder had felt almost warm towards Tessa, even though she was Fats Wall’s mother. Frightened though she was of her mother’s reaction, a tiny little glow of hope had kindled inside her at the thought of Tessa interceding for her. Would the realization of Sukhvinder’s desperation lead, at last, to some crack in her mother’s implacable disapproval, her disappointment, her endless stone-faced criticism?
    When the front door opened at last, she heard her mother speaking Punjabi.
    ‘Oh, not the bloody farm again,’ groaned Jaswant, who had cocked an ear to the door.
    The Jawandas owned a patch of ancestral land in the Punjab, which Parminder, the oldest, had inherited from their father in the absence of sons. The farm occupied a place in the family consciousness that Jaswant and Sukhvinder had sometimes discussed. To their slightly amused astonishment, a few of their older relativesseemed to live in the expectation that the whole family would move back there one day. Parminder’s father had sent money back to the farm all his life. It was tenanted and worked by second cousins, who seemed surly and embittered. The farm caused regular arguments among her mother’s family.
    ‘Nani’s gone off on one again,’ interpreted Jaswant, as Parminder’s muffled voice penetrated the door.
    Parminder had taught her first-born some Punjabi, and Jaz had picked up a lot more from their cousins. Sukhvinder’s dyslexia had been too severe to enable her to learn two languages and the attempt had been abandoned.
    ‘… Harpreet still wants to sell off that bit for the road …’
    Sukhvinder heard Parminder kicking off her shoes. She wished that her mother had not been bothered about the farm tonight of all nights; it never put her into a good mood; and when Parminder pushed open the kitchen door and she saw her mother’s tight mask-like face, her courage failed her completely.
    Parminder acknowledged Jaswant and Rajpal with a slight wave of her hand, but she pointed at Sukhvinder and then towards a kitchen chair, indicating that she was to sit down and wait for the call to end.
    Jaswant and Rajpal drifted back upstairs. Sukhvinder waited beneath the wall of photographs, in which her relative inadequacy was displayed for the