The Casual Vacancy

we visit Amritsar this summer?’
    The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the religion to which he was indifferent. She had known at once what Vikram was doing. Time lay slack and empty on her hands as never before in her life. Neither of them knew what the GMC would decide to do with her, once it had considered her ethical breach towards Howard Mollison.
    ‘Mandeep says it’s a big tourist trap,’ she had replied, dismissing Amritsar at a stroke.
    Sukhvinder had crossed the lawn without Parminder noticing. She was dressed in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. Parminder hastily wiped her face and squinted at Sukhvinder, who had her back to the sun.
    ‘I don’t want to go to work today.’
    Parminder responded at once, in the same spirit of automatic contradiction that had made her turn down Amritsar. ‘You’ve made a commitment, Sukhvinder.’
    ‘I don’t feel well.’
    ‘You mean you’re tired. You’re the one who wanted this job. Now you fulfil your obligations.’
    ‘But—’
    ‘You’re going to work,’ snapped Parminder, and she might have been pronouncing sentence. ‘You’re not giving the Mollisons another reason to complain.’
    After Sukhvinder walked back to the house Parminder felt guilty. She almost called her daughter back, but instead she made a mental note that she must try and find time to sit down with her and talk to her without arguing.

V
    Krystal was walking along Foley Road in the early morning sunlight, eating a banana. It was an unfamiliar taste and texture, and she could not make up her mind whether she liked it or not. Terri and Krystal never bought fruit.
    Nikki’s mother had just turfed her unceremoniously out of the house.
    ‘We got things to do, Krystal,’ she had said. ‘We’re going to Nikki’s gran’s for dinner.’
    As an afterthought, she had handed Krystal the banana to eat for breakfast. Krystal had left without protest. There was barely enough room for Nikki’s family around the kitchen table.
    The Fields were not improved by sunshine, which merely showed up the dirt and the damage, the cracks in the concrete walls, the boarded windows and the litter.
    The Square in Pagford looked freshly painted whenever the sun shone. Twice a year, the primary school children had walked through the middle of town, crocodile fashion, on their way to church for Christmas and Easter services. (Nobody had ever wanted to hold Krystal’s hand. Fats had told them all that she had fleas. She wondered whether he remembered.) There had been hanging baskets fullof flowers; splashes of purple, pink and green, and every time Krystal had passed one of the planted troughs outside the Black Canon, she had pulled off a petal. Each one had been cool and slippery in her fingers, swiftly becoming slimy and brown as she clutched it, and she usually wiped it off on the underside of a warm wooden pew in St Michael’s.
    She let herself into her house and saw at once, through the open door to her left, that Terri had not gone to bed. She was sitting in her armchair with her eyes closed and her mouth open. Krystal closed the door with a snap, but Terri did not stir.
    Krystal was at Terri’s side in four strides, shaking her thin arm. Terri’s head fell forwards onto her shrunken chest. She snored.
    Krystal let go of her. The vision of a dead man in the bathroom swam back into her subconscious.
    ‘Silly bitch,’ she said.
    Then it occurred to her that Robbie was not there. She pounded up the stairs, shouting for him.
    ‘’M’ere,’ she heard him say, from behind her own closed bedroom door.
    When she shouldered it open, she saw Robbie standing there, naked. Behind him, scratching his bare chest, lying on her own mattress, was Obbo.
    ‘All righ’, Krys?’ he said, grinning.
    She seized Robbie and pulled him into his own room. Her hands trembled so badly that it took her ages to dress him.
    ‘Did ’e do somethin’ to yer?’ she whispered to Robbie.
    ‘’M’ungry,’ said Robbie.
    When he was dressed, she picked him up and ran downstairs. She could hear Obbo moving around in her bedroom.
    ‘Why’s ’e ’ere?’ she shouted at Terri, who was drowsily awake in her chair. ‘Why’s ’e with Robbie?’
    Robbie fought to get out of her arms; he hated shouting.
    ‘An’ wha’ the fuck’s that?’ screamed Krystal, spotting, for the first time, two black holdalls lying beside Terri’s armchair.
    ‘S’nuthin’,’ said Terri vaguely.
    But Krystal had already forced one of the