The Casual Vacancy

stars and celebrities.
    Krystal had made her collage the previous day, in imitation of the one on Nikki’s bedroom wall. Knowing that Fats was coming over, she had wanted to make the room more hospitable. She had drawn the thin curtains. They gave a blueish tinge to daylight.
    ‘Gimme a fag,’ she said. ‘I’m gasping.’
    He lit it for her. She was more nervous than he had ever seen her; he preferred her cocky and worldly.
    ‘We ain’ got long,’ she told him, and with the cigarette in her mouth, she began to strip. ‘Me mum’ll be back.’
    ‘Yeah, at Bellchapel, isn’t she?’ said Fats, somehow trying to harden Krystal up again in his mind.
    ‘Yeah,’ said Krystal, sitting on the mattress and pulling off her tracksuit bottoms.
    ‘What if they close it?’ asked Fats, taking off his blazer. ‘I heard they’re thinking about it.’
    ‘I dunno,’ said Krystal, but she was frightened. Her mother’s willpower, fragile and vulnerable as a fledgling chick, could fail at the slightest provocation.
    She had already stripped to her underwear. Fats was taking off his shoes when he noticed something nestled beside her heaped clothes: a small plastic jewellery box lying open, and curled inside, a familiar watch.
    ‘Is that my mum’s?’ he said, in surprise.
    ‘What?’ Krystal panicked. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘It was my Nana Cath’s. Don’t—!’
    But he had already pulled it out of the box.
    ‘It is hers,’ he said. He recognized the strap.
    ‘It fuckin’ ain’t!’
    She was terrified. She had almost forgotten that she had stolen it, where it had come from. Fats was silent, and she did not like it.
    The watch in Fats’ hand seemed to be both challenging and reproaching him. In quick succession he imagined walking out, slipping it casually into his pocket, or handing it back to Krystal with a shrug.
    ‘It’s mine,’ she said.
    He did not want to be a policeman. He wanted to be lawless. But it took the recollection that the watch had been Cubby’s gift to make him hand it back to her and carry on taking off his clothes. Scarlet in the face, Krystal tugged off bra and pants and slipped, naked, beneath the duvet.
    Fats approached her in his boxer shorts, a wrapped condom in his hand.
    ‘We don’ need that,’ said Krystal thickly. ‘I’m takin’ the pill now.’
    ‘Are you?’
    She moved over on the mattress for him. Fats slid under the duvet.As he pulled off his boxers, he wondered whether she was lying about the pill, like the watch. But he had wanted to try without a condom for a while.
    ‘Go on,’ she whispered, and she tugged the little foil square out of his hand and threw it on top of his blazer, crumpled on the floor.
    He imagined Krystal pregnant with his child; the faces of Tessa and Cubby when they heard. His kid in the Fields, his flesh and blood. It would be more than Cubby had ever managed.
    He climbed on top of her; this, he knew, was real life.

VIII
    At half-past six that evening, Howard and Shirley Mollison entered Pagford Church Hall. Shirley was carrying an armful of papers and Howard was wearing the chain of office decorated with the blue and white Pagford crest.
    The floorboards creaked beneath Howard’s massive weight as he moved to the head of the scratched tables that had already been set end to end. Howard was almost as fond of this hall as he was of his own shop. The Brownies used it on Tuesdays, and the Women’s Institute on Wednesdays. It had hosted jumble sales and Jubilee celebrations, wedding receptions and wakes, and it smelt of all of these things: of stale clothes and coffee urns, and the ghosts of home-baked cakes and meat salads; of dust and human bodies; but primarily of aged wood and stone. Beaten-brass lights hung from the rafters on thick black flexes, and the kitchen was reached through ornate mahogany doors.
    Shirley bustled from place to place, setting out papers. She adored council meetings. Quite apart from the pride and enjoyment she derived from listening to Howard chair them, Maureen wasnecessarily absent; with no official role, she had to be content with the pickings Shirley deigned to share.
    Howard’s fellow councillors arrived singly and in pairs. He boomed out greetings, his voice echoing from the rafters. The full complement of sixteen councillors rarely attended; he was expecting twelve of them today.
    The table was half full when Aubrey Fawley arrived, walking, as he always did, as if into a high wind, with an air of reluctant