The Casual Vacancy

Miles has just been elected to the Parish Council!’
    There was a smattering of applause and Miles raised his drink high above his head to acknowledge it. Andrew was startled to hear Samantha say quite clearly under her breath, ‘Hoo-fucking-ray.’
    Nobody was coming for drinks now. Andrew slipped back into the kitchen. Gaia and Sukhvinder were alone in there, drinking and laughing, and when they saw Andrew they both shouted, ‘
Andy!
’
    He laughed too.
    ‘Are you both pissed?’
    ‘Yes,’ said Gaia, and ‘no,’ said Sukhvinder. ‘
She
is, though.’
    ‘I don’t care,’ said Gaia. ‘Mollison can sack me if he wants. No point saving up for a ticket to Hackney any more.’
    ‘He won’t sack you,’ said Andrew, helping himself to some of the vodka. ‘You’re his favourite.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said Gaia. ‘Creepy old bastard.’
    And the three of them laughed again.
    Through the glass doors, amplified by the microphone, came Maureen’s croaky voice.
    ‘Come on, then, Howard! Come on – a duet for your birthday! Go on – ladies and gentlemen – Howard’s favourite song!’
    The teenagers gazed at each other in tantalized horror. Gaia tripped forward, giggling, and pushed the door open.
    The first few bars of ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’ blared out, and then, in Howard’s bass and Maureen’s gravelly alto:
    The old home town looks the same,
    As I step down from the train …
    Gavin was the only one who heard the giggles and snorts, but when he turned around all he saw were the double doors to the kitchen, swinging a little on their hinges.
    Miles had left to chat with Aubrey and Julia Fawley, who hadarrived late, wreathed in polite smiles. Gavin was in the grip of a familiar mixture of dread and anxiety. His brief sunlit haze of freedom and happiness had been overcast by the twin threats of Gaia blabbing what he had said to her mother, and of Mary leaving Pagford for ever. What was he going to do?
    Down the lane I walk, with my sweet Mary,
    Hair of gold and lips like cherries …
    ‘Kay not here?’
    Samantha had arrived, leaning against the table beside him, smirking.
    ‘You already asked me that,’ said Gavin. ‘No.’
    ‘Everything OK with you two?’
    ‘Is that really any of your business?’
    It slipped out of him before he could stop it; he was sick of her constant probing and jeering. For once, it was just the two of them; Miles was still busy with the Fawleys.
    She over-acted being taken aback. Her eyes were bloodshot and her speech was deliberate; for the first time, Gavin felt more dislike than intimidation.
    ‘I’m sorry. I was only—’
    ‘Asking. Yeah,’ he said, as Howard and Maureen swayed, arm in arm.
    ‘I’d like to see you settled down. You and Kay seemed good together.’
    ‘Yeah, well, I like my freedom,’ said Gavin. ‘I don’t know many happily married couples.’
    Samantha had drunk too much to feel the full force of the dig, but she had the impression that one had been made.
    ‘Marriages are always a mystery to outsiders,’ she said carefully. ‘Nobody can ever really know except the two people involved. So you shouldn’t judge, Gavin.’
    ‘Thanks for the insight,’ he said, and irritated past endurance he set down his empty beer can and headed towards the cloakroom.
    Samantha watched him leave, sure that she had had the best of theencounter, and turned her attention to her mother-in-law, whom she could see through a gap in the crowd, watching Howard and Maureen sing. Samantha relished Shirley’s anger, which was expressed in the tightest, coldest smile she had worn all evening. Howard and Maureen had performed together many a time over the years; Howard loved to sing, and Maureen had once performed backing vocals for a local skiffle band. When the song finished, Shirley clapped her hands together once; she might have been summoning a flunkey, and Samantha laughed out loud and moved along to the bar end of the table, which she was disappointed to find unmanned by the boy in the bow tie.
    Andrew, Gaia and Sukhvinder were still convulsed in the kitchen. They laughed because of Howard and Maureen’s duet, and because they had finished two-thirds of the vodka, but mostly they laughed because they laughed, feeding off each other until they could barely stand.
    The little window over the sink, propped ajar so that the kitchen did not become too steamy, rattled and clattered, and Fats’ head appeared through it.
    ‘Evening,’ he said. Evidently