The Casual Vacancy

moved to Yarvil!’ said Betty.
    ‘There was no housing here,’ said Parminder, fighting her own temper, ‘none of you wanted a new development on the outskirts of town.’
    ‘You weren’t here, I’m sorry,’ said Betty, pink in the face, looking ostentatiously away from Parminder. ‘You don’t know the history.’
    Talk had become general: the meeting had broken into several little knots of conversation, and Parminder could not make out any of it. Her throat was tight and she did not dare meet anyone’s eyes.
    ‘Shall we have a show of hands?’ Howard shouted down the table, and silence fell again. ‘Those in favour of telling the District Council that Pagford will be happy for the parish boundary to be redrawn, to take the Fields out of our jurisdiction?’
    Parminder’s fists were clenched in her lap and the nails of both her hands were embedded in their palms. There was a rustle of sleeves all around her.
    ‘Excellent!’ said Howard, and the jubilation in his voice rang triumphantly from the rafters. ‘Well, I’ll draft something with Tony and Helen and we’ll send it round for everyone to see, and we’ll get it off. Excellent!’
    A couple of councillors clapped. Parminder’s vision blurred and she blinked hard. The agenda swam in and out of focus. The silence went on so long that finally she looked up: Howard, in his excitement, had had recourse to his inhaler, and most of the councillors were watching solicitously.
    ‘All right, then,’ wheezed Howard, putting the inhaler away again, red in the face and beaming, ‘unless anyone’s got anything else to add –’ an infinitesimal pause ‘– item nine. Bellchapel. And Aubrey’s got something to tell us here too.’
    Barry wouldn’t have let it happen. He’d have argued. He’d have made John laugh and vote with us. He ought to have written about himself, not Krystal … I’ve let him down
.
    ‘Thank you, Howard,’ said Aubrey, as the blood pounded in Parminder’s ears, and she dug her nails still more deeply into her palms. ‘As you know, we’re having to make some pretty drastic cuts at District level …’
    She was in love with me, which she could barely hide whenever she laid eyes on me …
    ‘… and one of the projects we’ve got to look at is Bellchapel,’ said Aubrey. ‘I thought I’d have a word, because, as you all know, it’s the Parish that owns the building—’
    ‘—and the lease is almost up,’ said Howard. ‘That’s right.’
    ‘But nobody else is interested in that old place, are they?’ asked a retired accountant from the end of the table. ‘It’s in a bad state, from what I’ve heard.’
    ‘Oh, I’m sure we could find a new tenant,’ said Howard comfortably, ‘but that’s not really the issue. The point is whether we think the clinic is doing a good—’
    ‘That’s not the point at all,’ said Parminder, cutting across him. ‘It isn’t the Parish Council’s job to decide whether or not the clinic’s doing a good job. We don’t fund their work. They’re not our responsibility.’
    ‘But we own the building,’ said Howard, still smiling, still polite, ‘so I think it’s natural for us to want to consider—’
    ‘If we’re going to look at information on the clinic’s work, I think it’s very important that we get a balanced picture,’ said Parminder.
    ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ said Shirley, blinking down the table at Parminder, ‘but could you try not to interrupt the Chair, Dr Jawanda? It’s awfully difficult to take notes if people talk over other people. And now I’ve interrupted,’ she added with a smile. ‘Sorry!’
    ‘I presume the Parish wants to keep getting revenue from the building,’ said Parminder, ignoring Shirley. ‘And we have no other potential tenant lined up, as far as I know. So I’m wondering why we are even considering terminating the clinic’s lease.’
    ‘They don’t cure them,’ said Betty. ‘They just give them more drugs. I’d be very happy to see them out.’
    ‘We’re having to make some very difficult decisions at District Council level,’ said Aubrey Fawley. ‘The government’s looking for more than a billion in savings from local government. We cannot continue to provide services the way we have done. That’s the reality.’
    Parminder hated the way that her fellow councillors acted around Aubrey, drinking in his deep modulated voice, nodding gently as he talked. She was well aware that some of them called her