The Casual Vacancy

stuff?’
    ‘Someone putting stuff on the Parish Council website,’ said Andrew hastily, afraid of what Fats might say, if he let him. ‘Rumours and stuff.’
    ‘Yeah, my mother would love that,’ said Patricia.
    ‘Wonder what the Ghost’ll say next?’ Fats asked, with a sidelong glance at Andrew.
    ‘Probably stop now the election’s over,’ muttered Andrew.
    ‘Oh, I dunno,’ said Fats. ‘If there’s stuff old Barry’s Ghost is still pissed off about …’
    He knew that he was making Andrew anxious and he was glad of it. Andrew was spending all his time at his poxy job these days, and he would soon be moving. Fats did not owe Andrew anything. True authenticity could not exist alongside guilt and obligation.
    ‘You all right down there?’ Patricia asked Gaia, who nodded, with her face still hidden. ‘What was it, the drink or the duet that made you feel sick?’
    Andrew laughed a little bit, out of politeness and because he wanted to keep the subject away from the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother.
    ‘Turned my stomach too,’ said Patricia. ‘Old Maureen and my father singing along together. Arm in arm.’ Patricia took a final fierce drag on her cigarette and threw the end down, grinding it beneath her heel. ‘I walked in on her blowing him when I was twelve,’ she said. ‘And he gave me a fiver not to tell my mother.’
    Andrew and Fats stood transfixed, scared even to look at each other. Patricia wiped her face on the back of her hand: she was crying.
    ‘Shouldn’t have bloody come,’ she said. ‘Knew I shouldn’t.’
    She got into the BMW, and the two boys watched, stunned, as she turned on the engine, reversed out of her parking space and drove away into the night.
    ‘Fuck me,’ said Fats.
    ‘I think I might be sick,’ whispered Gaia.
    ‘Mr Mollison wants you back inside – for the drinks.’
    Her message delivered, Sukhvinder darted away again.
    ‘I can’t,’ whispered Gaia.
    Andrew left her there. The din in the hall hit him as he opened the inner doors. The disco was in full swing. He had to move aside to allow Aubrey and Julia Fawley room to leave. Both, with their backs to the party, looked grimly pleased to be going.
    Samantha Mollison was not dancing, but was leaning up against the trestle table where, so recently, there had been rows and rows of drinks. While Sukhvinder rushed around collecting glasses, Andrew unpacked the last box of clean ones, set them out and filled them.
    ‘Your bow tie’s crooked,’ Samantha told him, and she leaned across the table and straightened it for him. Embarrassed, he ducked into the kitchen as soon as she let go. Between each load of glasses he put in the dishwasher, Andrew took another swig of the vodka he had stolen. He wanted to be drunk like Gaia; he wanted to return to that moment when they had been laughing uncontrollably together, before Fats had appeared.
    After ten minutes, he checked the drinks table again; Samantha was still propped up against it, glassy-eyed, and there were plenty of fresh-poured drinks left for her to enjoy. Howard was bobbing in the middle of the dance floor, sweat pouring down his face, roaring with laughter at something Maureen had said to him. Andrew wound his way through the crowd and back outside.
    He could not see where she was at first: then he spotted them. Gaia and Fats were locked together ten yards away from the door, leaning up against the railings, bodies pressed tight against each other, tongues working in each other’s mouths.
    ‘Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it all,’ said Sukhvinder desperately from behind him. Then she spotted Fats and Gaia and let out something between a yelp and a sob. Andrew walked back into the hall with her, completely numb. In the kitchen, he poured the remainder of the vodka into a glass and downed it in one. Mechanically he filled the sink and set to washing out the glasses that could not fit in the dishwasher.
    The alcohol was not like dope. It made him feel empty, but also keen to hit someone: Fats, for instance.
    After a while, he realized that the plastic clock on the kitchen wall had leapt from midnight to one and that people were leaving.
    He was supposed to find coats. He tried for a while, but then lurched off to the kitchen again, leaving Sukhvinder in charge.
    Samantha was leaning up against the fridge, on her own, with a glass in her hand. Andrew’s vision was strangely jerky, like a series ofstills. Gaia had not come back. She was doubtless