The Casual Vacancy

zips open.
    ‘
S’nuthin’!
’ shouted Terri.
    Big, brick-like blocks of hashish wrapped neatly in sheets of polythene: Krystal, who could barely read, who could not have identified half the vegetables in a supermarket, who could not have named the Prime Minister, knew that the contents of the bag, if discovered on the premises, meant prison for her mother. Then she saw the tin, with the coachman and horses on the lid, half-protruding from the chair on which Terri was sitting.
    ‘Yeh’ve used,’ said Krystal breathlessly, as disaster rained invisibly around her and everything collapsed. ‘Yeh’ve fuckin’—’
    She heard Obbo on the stairs and she snatched up Robbie again. He wailed and struggled in her arms, frightened by her anger, but Krystal’s grip was unbreakable.
    ‘Fuckin’ lerrim go,’ called Terri fruitlessly. Krystal had opened the front door and was running as fast as she could, encumbered by Robbie who was resisting and moaning, back along the road.

VI
    Shirley showered and pulled clothes out of the wardrobe while Howard slept noisily on. The church bell of St Michael and All Saints, ringing for ten o’clock matins, reached her as she buttoned up her cardigan. She always thought how loud it must be for the Jawandas, living right opposite, and hoped that it struck them as a loud proclamation of Pagford’s adherence to the old ways and traditions of which they, so conspicuously, were not a part.
    Automatically, because it was what she so often did, Shirley walked along the hall, turned into Patricia’s old bedroom and sat down at the computer.
    Patricia ought to be here, sleeping on the sofa-bed that Shirley had made up for her. It was a relief not to have to deal with her thismorning. Howard, who had still been humming ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’ when they arrived at Ambleside in the early hours, had not realized that Patricia was absent until Shirley had had the key in the front door.
    ‘Where’s Pat?’ he had wheezed, leaning against the porch.
    ‘Oh, she was upset that Melly didn’t want to come,’ sighed Shirley. ‘They had a row or something … I expect she’s gone home to try and patch things up.’
    ‘Never a dull moment,’ said Howard, bouncing lightly off alternate walls of the narrow hallway as he navigated his way carefully towards the bedroom.
    Shirley brought up her favourite medical website. When she typed in the first letter of the condition she wished to investigate, the site offered its explanation of EpiPens again, so Shirley swiftly revised their use and content, because she might yet have an opportunity to save their potboy’s life. Next, she carefully typed in ‘eczema’, and learned, somewhat to her disappointment, that the condition was not infectious, and could not, therefore, be used as an excuse to sack Sukhvinder Jawanda.
    From sheer force of habit, she then typed in the address of the Pagford Parish Council website, and clicked onto the message board.
    She had grown to recognize at a glance the shape and length of the user name The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother, just as a besotted lover knows at once the back of their beloved’s head, or the set of their shoulders, or the tilt of their walk.
    A single glimpse at the topmost message sufficed: excitement exploded; he had not forsaken her. She had known that Dr Jawanda’s outburst could not go unpunished.
    Affair of the First Citizen of Pagford
    She read it, but did not, at first, understand: she had been expecting to see Parminder’s name. She read it again, and gave the suffocated gasp of a woman being hit by icy water.
    Howard Mollison, First Citizen of Pagford, and long-standingresident Maureen Lowe have been more than business partners for many years. It is common knowledge that Maureen holds regular tastings of Howard’s finest salami. The only person who appears not to be in on the secret is Shirley, Howard’s wife.
    Completely motionless in her chair, Shirley thought:
it’s not true.
    It could not be true.
    Yes, she had once or twice suspected … had hinted, sometimes, to Howard …
    No, she would not believe it. She could not believe it.
    But other people would. They would believe the Ghost. Everybody believed him.
    Her hands were like empty gloves, fumbling and feeble, as she tried, with many a blunder, to remove the message from the site. Every second that it remained there, somebody else might be reading it, believing it, laughing about it, passing it to the local newspaper