The Casual Vacancy

‘Bends-Your-Ear’.
    ‘Research indicates that illegal drug use increases during recessions,’ said Parminder.
    ‘It’s their choice,’ said Betty. ‘Nobody makes them take drugs.’
    She looked around the table for support. Shirley smiled at her.
    ‘We’re having to make some tough choices,’ said Aubrey.
    ‘So you’ve got together with Howard,’ Parminder talked over him, ‘and decided that you can give the clinic a little push by forcing them out of the building.’
    ‘I can think of better ways to spend money than on a bunch of criminals,’ said the accountant.
    ‘I’d cut off all their benefits, personally,’ said Betty.
    ‘I was invited to this meeting to put you all in the picture about what’s happening at District level,’ said Aubrey calmly. ‘Nothing more than that, Dr Jawanda.’
    ‘Helen,’ said Howard loudly, pointing to another councillor, whose hand was raised, and who had been trying to make her views heard for a minute.
    Parminder heard nothing of what the woman said. She had quite forgotten about the stack of papers lying underneath her agenda, on which Kay Bawden had spent so much time: the statistics, the profiles of successful cases, the explanation of the benefits of methadone as against heroin; studies showing the cost, financial and social, of heroin addiction. Everything around her had become slightly liquid, unreal; she knew that she was going to erupt as she had never erupted in her life, and there was no room to regret it, or to prevent it, or do anything except watch it happen; it was too late, far too late …
    ‘… culture of entitlement,’ said Aubrey Fawley. ‘People who have literally not worked a day in their lives.’
    ‘And, let’s face it,’ said Howard, ‘this is a problem with a simple solution.
Stop taking the drugs
.’
    He turned, smiling and conciliating, to Parminder. ‘They call it “cold turkey”, isn’t that right, Dr Jawanda?’
    ‘Oh, you think that they should take responsibility for their addiction and change their behaviour?’ said Parminder.
    ‘In a nutshell, yes.’
    ‘Before they cost the state any more money.’
    ‘Exact—’
    ‘And you,’ said Parminder loudly, as the silent eruption engulfed her, ‘do you know how many tens of thousands of pounds
you,
Howard Mollison, have cost the health service, because of your total inability to stop gorging yourself?’
    A rich, red claret stain was spreading up Howard’s neck into his cheeks.
    ‘Do you know how much your bypass cost, and your drugs, and your long stay in hospital? And the doctor’s appointments you take up with your asthma and your blood pressure and the nasty skin rash, which are all caused by your refusal to lose weight?’
    As Parminder’s voice became a scream, other councillors began to protest on Howard’s behalf; Shirley was on her feet; Parminder wasstill shouting, clawing together the papers that had somehow been scattered as she gesticulated.
    ‘What about patient confidentiality?’ shouted Shirley. ‘Outrageous! Absolutely outrageous!’
    Parminder was at the door of the hall and striding through it, and she heard, over her own furious sobs, Betty calling for her immediate expulsion from the council; she was half running away from the hall, and she knew that she had done something cataclysmic, and she wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the darkness and to disappear for ever.

IX
    The
Yarvil and District Gazette
erred on the side of caution in reporting what had been said during the most acrimonious Pagford Parish Council meeting in living memory. It made little difference; the bowdlerized report, augmented by the vivid eye-witness descriptions offered by all who had attended, still created widespread gossip. To make matters worse, a front-page story detailed the anonymous internet attacks in the dead man’s name that had, to quote Alison Jenkins,
‘caused considerable speculation and anger. See page four for full report.’
While the names of the accused and the details of their supposed misdemeanours were not given, the sight of ‘serious allegations’ and ‘criminal activity’ in newsprint disturbed Howard even more than the original posts.
    ‘We should have beefed up security on the site as soon as that first post appeared,’ he said, addressing his wife and business partner from in front of his gas fire.
    Silent spring rain sprinkled the window, and the back lawn glistened with tiny red pinpricks of light. Howard