The Casual Vacancy

at the grave, sweet visage of Guru Nanak pinned to the cork board.
    (Vikram did not like the picture.
    ‘What’s that doing there?’
    ‘I like it,’ she had said defiantly.)
    Barry, dead.
    She tamped down the awful urge to cry with a fierceness that her mother had always deplored, especially in the wake of her father’s death, when her other daughters, and the aunts and cousins, were all wailing and beating their breasts. ‘And you were his favourite too!’ But Parminder kept her unwept tears locked tightly inside where they seemed to undergo an alchemical transformation, returning to the outer world as lava slides of rage, disgorged periodically at her children and the receptionists at work.
    She could still see Howard and Maureen behind the counter, the one immense, the other scrawny, and in her mind’s eye they were looking down at her from a height as they told her that her friend was dead. With an almost welcome gush of fury and hatred she thought,
They’re glad. They think they’ll win now
.
    She jumped up again, strode back into the sitting room and took down, from the top shelf, one volume of the
Sainchis
, her brand-new holy book. Opening it at random, she read, with no surprise, but rather a sense of looking at her own devastated face in a mirror:
    O mind, the world is a deep, dark pit. On every side, Death casts forward his net.

IX
    The room set aside for the guidance department at Winterdown Comprehensive opened off the school library. It had no windows and was lit by a single strip light.
    Tessa Wall, head of guidance and wife of the deputy headmaster, entered the room at half-past ten, numb with fatigue and carrying a cup of strong instant coffee that she had brought up from the staff room. She was a short stout woman with a plain wide face, who cut her own greying hair – the blunt fringe was often a little lop-sided – wore clothes of a homespun, crafty variety, and liked jewellery of beads and wood. Today’s long skirt might have been made of hessian, and she had teamed it with a thick lumpy cardigan in pea-green. Tessa hardly ever looked at herself in full-length mirrors, and boycotted shops where this was unavoidable.
    She had attempted to soften the guidance room’s resemblance to a cell by pinning up a Nepalese hanging she had owned since her student days: a rainbow sheet with a bright yellow sun and moon that emitted stylised, wavy rays. The rest of the bare painted surfaces were covered with a variety of posters that either gave helpful tips on boosting self-esteem or telephone numbers to call for anonymous help on a variety of health and emotional issues. The headmistress had made a slightly sarcastic remark about these the last time she had visited the guidance room.
    ‘And if all else fails, they call ChildLine, I see,’ she had said, pointing to the most prominent poster.
    Tessa sank into her chair with a low groan, took off her wristwatch, which pinched, and placed it on the desk beside various printed sheets and notes. She doubted that progress along the prearranged lines would be possible today; she doubted even whether Krystal Weedon would turn up. Krystal frequently walked out of school when upset, angry or bored. She was sometimes apprehended before she reached the gates and frog-marched back inside, swearing and shouting; at other times, she successfully evaded capture and escaped into days of truancy. Ten forty arrived, the bell sounded, and Tessa waited.
    Krystal burst in through the door at ten fifty-one and slammed it behind her. She slumped down in front of Tessa with her arms folded across her ample bosom, her cheap earrings swinging.
    ‘You can tell your ’usband,’ she said, her voice trembling, ‘that I never fuckin’ laughed, all right?’
    ‘Don’t swear at me, please, Krystal,’ said Tessa.
    ‘
I never laughed – all right?
’ screamed Krystal.
    A group of sixth-formers carrying folders had arrived in the library. They glanced through the glass pane in the door; one of them grinned at the sight of the back of Krystal’s head. Tessa got up and let down the roller-blind over the window, then returned to her seat in front of the moon and sun.
    ‘All right, Krystal. Why don’t you tell me what happened?’
    ‘Your
’usband
said sumthin’ abou’ Mister Fairbrother, right, an’ I couldn’t hear what he was saying, right, so Nikki tole me, and I couldn’t fucking—’
    ‘Krystal!—’
    ‘—couldn’t believe it, right, an’ I shouted