The Casual Vacancy

but I never laughed! I never fuck—’
    ‘—Krystal—’
    ‘
I never laughed, all right?
’ shouted Krystal, arms tight across her chest, legs twisted together.
    ‘All right, Krystal.’
    Tessa was used to the anger of students she saw most often in guidance. Many of them were devoid of workaday morals; they lied, misbehaved and cheated routinely, and yet their fury when wrongly accused was limitless and genuine. Tessa thought she recognized this as authentic outrage, as opposed to the synthetic kind that Krystal was adept at producing. In any case, the squawk Tessa had heard during assembly had struck her at the time as one of shock and dismay rather than amusement; Tessa had been filled with dread when Colin had publicly identified it as laughter.
    ‘I seen Cubby—’
    ‘Krystal!—’
    ‘I tole your fuckin’ ’usband—’
    ‘Krystal, for the last time, please do not swear at me—’
    ‘I told ’im I never laughed, I told ’im! An’ he’s still gave me fucking detention!’
    Tears of fury gleamed in the girl’s heavily pencilled eyes. Blood had flowed into her face; peony pink, she glared at Tessa, poised to run, to swear, to give Tessa the finger too. Nearly two years of gossamer-fine trust, laboriously spun between them, was stretching, on the point of tearing.
    ‘I believe you, Krystal. I believe you didn’t laugh, but please do not swear at me.’
    Suddenly, stubby fingers were rubbing the smeary eyes. Tessa pulled a wad of tissues from out of her desk drawer and handed them across to Krystal, who grabbed them without thanks, pressed them to each eye and blew her nose. Krystal’s hands were the most touching part of her: the fingernails were short and broad, untidily painted, and all her hand movements were as naive and direct as a small child’s.
    Tessa waited until Krystal’s snorting breaths had slowed down. Then she said, ‘I can tell you’re upset that Mr Fairbrother has died—’
    ‘Yer, I am,’ said Krystal, with considerable aggression. ‘So?’
    Tessa had a sudden mental image of Barry listening in to this conversation. She could see his rueful smile; she heard him, quite clearly, saying ‘bless her heart’. Tessa closed her stinging eyes, unable to speak. She heard Krystal fidget, counted slowly to ten, and opened her eyes again. Krystal was staring at her, arms still folded, flushed and defiant-looking.
    ‘I’m very sorry about Mr Fairbrother too,’ said Tessa. ‘He was an old friend of ours, actually. That’s the reason Mr Wall is a bit—’
    ‘I told ’im I never—’
    ‘Krystal, please let me finish. Mr Wall is very upset today, and that’s probably why he … why he misinterpreted what you did. I’ll speak to him.’
    ‘He won’t change his fuck—’
    ‘
Krystal!
’
    ‘Well, he won’.’
    Krystal banged the leg of Tessa’s desk with her foot, beating outa rapid rhythm. Tessa removed her elbows from the desk, so as not to feel the vibration, and said, ‘I’ll speak to Mr Wall.’
    She adopted what she believed was a neutral expression and waited patiently for Krystal to come to her. Krystal sat in truculent silence, kicking the table leg, swallowing regularly.
    ‘What was wrong with Mr Fairbrother?’ she said at last.
    ‘They think an artery burst in his brain,’ said Tessa.
    ‘Why did it?’
    ‘He was born with a weakness he didn’t know about,’ said Tessa.
    Tessa knew that Krystal’s familiarity with sudden death was greater than her own. People in Krystal’s mother’s circle died prematurely with such frequency that they might have been involved in some secret war of which the rest of the world knew nothing. Krystal had told Tessa how, when she was six years old, she had found the corpse of an unknown young man in her mother’s bathroom. It had been the catalyst for one of her many removals into the care of her Nana Cath. Nana Cath loomed large in many of Krystal’s stories about her childhood; a strange mixture of saviour and scourge.
    ‘Our crew’ll be fucked now,’ said Krystal.
    ‘No, it won’t,’ said Tessa. ‘And don’t swear, Krystal, please.’
    ‘It will,’ said Krystal.
    Tessa wanted to contradict her, but the impulse was squashed by exhaustion. Krystal was right, anyway, said a disconnected, rational part of Tessa’s brain. The rowing eight
would
be finished. Nobody except Barry could have brought Krystal Weedon into any group and kept her there. She would leave, Tessa knew it; probably Krystal knew it