The Casual Vacancy

shadowy man standing behind herself and Howard, on their side, cutting a path for them through the opponents who crumpled as he slayed them with their own ugly truths.
    Somehow, none of the men in Pagford seemed worthy to be the Ghost; she would have felt disappointed to learn that it was any of the anti-Fielders she knew.
    ‘That’s
if
it’s a man,’ said Maureen.
    ‘Good point,’ said Howard.
    ‘I think it’s a man,’ said Shirley coolly.
    When Howard left for the café on Sunday morning, Shirley, still in her dressing gown, and holding her cup of tea, padded automatically to the study and brought up the website.
    Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster posted by The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother .
    She set down her tea with trembling hands, clicked on the post and read it, open-mouthed. Then she ran to the lounge, seized the telephone and called the café, but the number was engaged.
    A mere five minutes later, Parminder Jawanda, who had also developed a habit of looking at the council message boards much more frequently than usual, opened up the site and saw the post. Like Shirley, her immediate reaction was to seize a telephone.
    The Walls were breakfasting without their son, who was still asleep upstairs. When Tessa picked up, Parminder cut across her friend’s greeting.
    ‘There’s a post about Colin on the council website. Don’t let him see it, whatever you do.’
    Tessa’s frightened eyes swivelled to her husband, but he was a merethree feet from the receiver and had already heard every word that Parminder had spoken so loudly and clearly.
    ‘I’ll call you back,’ said Tessa urgently. ‘Colin,’ she said, fumbling to replace the receiver, ‘Colin, wait—’
    But he had already stalked out of the room, bobbing up and down, his arms stiff by his side, and Tessa had to jog to catch him up.
    ‘Perhaps it’s better not to look,’ she urged him, as his big, knobble-knuckled hand moved the mouse across the desk, ‘or I can read it and—’
    Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster
    One of the men hoping to represent the community at Parish Council level is Colin Wall, Deputy Headmaster at Winterdown Comprehensive School. Voters might be interested to know that Wall, a strict disciplinarian, has a very unusual fantasy life. Mr Wall is so frightened that a pupil might accuse him of inappropriate sexual behaviour that he has often needed time off work to calm himself down again. Whether Mr Wall has actually fondled a first year, the Ghost can only guess. The fervour of his feverish fantasies suggests that, even if he hasn’t, he would like to.
    Stuart wrote that
, thought Tessa, at once.
    Colin’s face was ghastly in the light pouring out of the monitor. It was how she imagined he would look if he had had a stroke.
    ‘Colin—’
    ‘I suppose Fiona Shawcross has told people,’ he whispered.
    The catastrophe he had always feared was upon him. It was the end of everything. He had always imagined taking sleeping tablets. He wondered whether they had enough in the house.
    Tessa, who had been momentarily thrown by the mention of the headmistress, said, ‘Fiona wouldn’t – anyway, she doesn’t know—’
    ‘She knows I’ve got OCD.’
    ‘Yes, but she doesn’t know what you – what you’re afraid of—’
    ‘She does,’ said Colin. ‘I told her, before the last time I needed sick leave.’
    ‘Why?’ Tessa burst out. ‘What on earth did you tell her for?’
    ‘I wanted to explain why it was so important I had time off,’ said Colin, almost humbly. ‘I thought she needed to know how serious it was.’
    Tessa fought down a powerful desire to shout at him. The tinge of distaste with which Fiona treated him and talked about him was explained; Tessa had never liked her, always thought her hard and unsympathetic.
    ‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘I don’t think Fiona’s got anything to do—’
    ‘Not directly,’ said Colin, pressing a trembling hand to his sweating upper lip. ‘But Mollison’s heard gossip from somewhere.’
    It wasn’t Mollison. Stuart wrote that, I know he did.
Tessa recognized her son in every line. She was even astonished that Colin could not see it, that he had not connected the message with yesterday’s row, with hitting his son.
He couldn’t even resist a bit of alliteration. He must have done all of them – Simon Price. Parminder.
Tessa was horror-struck.
    But Colin was not thinking about Stuart. He was recalling thoughts that were as vivid as memories, as