The Casual Vacancy

night we had you, Dad slipped out of bed and went to the garage, put a hosepipe on the exhaust of the car and tried to kill himself, because he was convinced he’d smothered you. And he almost died.
    ‘So you can blame me,’ said Tessa, ‘for your and Dad’s bad start, and maybe you can blame me for everything that’s come since. But I’ll tell you this, Stuart. Your father’s spent his life facing up to things he never did. I don’t expect you to understand his kind of courage. But,’ her voice broke at last, and he heard the mother he knew, ‘he loves you, Stuart.’
    She added the lie because she could not help herself. Tonight, for the first time, Tessa was convinced that it
was
a lie, and also that everything she had done in her life, telling herself that it was for the best, had been no more than blind selfishness, generating confusion and mess all around.
But who could bear to know which stars were already dead
, she thought, blinking up at the night sky;
could anybody stand to know that they all were?
    She turned the key in the ignition, crashed the gears and they pulled out again onto the bypass.
    ‘I don’t want to go to the Fields,’ said Fats in terror.
    ‘We’re not going to the Fields,’ she said. ‘I’m taking you home.’

IV
    The police had picked up Krystal Weedon at last as she ran hopelessly along the river bank on the very edge of Pagford, still calling her brother in a cracked voice. The policewoman who approached her addressed her by name, and tried to break the news to her gently, but she still tried to beat the woman away from her, and in the end the policewoman had almost to wrestle her into the car. Krystal had not noticed Fats melting away into the trees; he did not exist to her any more.
    The police drove Krystal home, but when they knocked on the front door Terri refused to answer. She had glimpsed them through an upstairs window, and thought that Krystal had done the one unthinkable and unforgivable thing, and told the pigs about the hold-alls full of Obbo’s hash. She dragged the heavy bags upstairs while the police hammered at the door, and only opened up when she considered that it had become unavoidable.
    ‘Whatcha wan’?’ she shouted, through an inch-wide gap in the door.
    The policewoman asked to come in three times and Terri refused, still demanding to know what they wanted. A few neighbours had begun to peer through windows. Even when the policewoman said, ‘It’s about your son, Robbie,’ Terri did not realize.
    ‘’E’s fine. There’s nuthin’ wrong with ’im. Krystal’s got ’im.’
    But then she saw Krystal, who had refused to stay in the car, and had walked halfway up the garden path. Terri’s gaze trickled down her daughter’s body to the place where Robbie should have been clinging to her, frightened by the strange men.
    Terri flew from her house like a fury, with her hands outstretched like claws, and the policewoman had to catch her round the middle and swing her away from Krystal, whose face she was trying to lacerate.
    ‘Yeh little bitch, yeh little bitch, what’ve yeh done ter Robbie?’
    Krystal dodged the struggling pair, darted into the house and slammed the front door behind her.
    ‘For fuck’s sake,’ muttered the policeman under his breath.
    Miles away in Hope Street, Kay and Gaia Bawden faced each other in the dark hallway. Neither of them was tall enough to replace the light bulb that had been dead for days, and they had no ladder. All day long, they had argued and almost made up, then argued again. Finally, at the moment when reconciliation seemed within touching distance, when Kay had agreed that she too hated Pagford, that it had all been a mistake, and that she would try and get them both back to London, her mobile had rung.
    ‘Krystal Weedon’s brother’s drowned,’ whispered Kay, as she cut Tessa’s call.
    ‘Oh,’ said Gaia. Knowing that she ought to express pity, but frightened to let discussion of London drop before she had her mother’s firm commitment, she added, in a tight little voice, ‘That’s sad.’
    ‘It happened here in Pagford,’ said Kay. ‘Along the road. Krystal was with Tessa Wall’s son.’
    Gaia felt even more ashamed of letting Fats Wall kiss her. He had tasted horrible, of lager and cigarettes, and he had tried to feel her up. She was worth much more than Fats Wall, she knew that. If it had even been Andy Price, she would have felt better about it. Sukhvinder had not returned