The Casual Vacancy

one of her calls, all day long.
    ‘She’ll be absolutely broken up,’ said Kay, her eyes unfocused.
    ‘But there’s nothing
you
can do,’ said Gaia. ‘Is there?’
    ‘Well …’ said Kay.
    ‘
Not again!
’ cried Gaia. ‘It’s always, always the same! You’re not her social worker any more!
What
,’ she shouted, stamping her foot as she had done when she was a little girl, ‘about
me
?’
    The police officer in Foley Road had already called a duty social worker. Terri was writhing and screaming and trying to beat at the front door, while from behind it came the sounds of furniture being dragged to form a barricade. Neighbours were coming out onto their doorsteps, a fascinated audience to Terri’s meltdown. Somehow the cause of it was transmitted through the watchers, from Terri’s incoherent shouts and the attitudes of the ominous police.
    ‘The boy’s dead,’ they told each other. Nobody stepped forward to comfort or calm. Terri Weedon had no friends.
    ‘Come with me,’ Kay begged her mutinous daughter. ‘I’ll go to the house and see if I can do anything. I got on with Krystal. She’s got nobody.’
    ‘I bet she was shagging Fats Wall when it happened!’ shouted Gaia; but it was her final protest, and a few minutes later she was buckling herself into Kay’s old Vauxhall, glad, in spite of everything, that Kay had asked her along.
    But by the time they had reached the bypass, Krystal had found what she was looking for: a bag of heroin concealed in the airing cupboard; the second of two that Obbo had given Terri in payment for Tessa Wall’s watch. She took it, with Terri’s works, into the bathroom, the only room that had a lock on the door.
    Her aunt Cheryl must have heard what had happened, because Krystal could hear her distinctive raucous yell, added to Terri’s screams, even through the two doors.
    ‘You little bitch, open the door! Letcha mother see ya!’
    And the police shouting, trying to shut the two women up.
    Krystal had never shot up before, but she had watched it happen many times. She knew about longboats, and how to make a model volcano, and she knew how to heat the spoon, and about the tiny little ball of cotton wool you used to soak up the dissolved smack, and act as a filter when you were filling the syringe. She knew that the crook of the arm was the best place to find a vein, and she knew to lay the needle as flat as possible against the skin. She knew, because she had heard it said, many times, that first-timers could not take what addicts could manage, and that was good, because she did not want to take it.
    Robbie was dead, and it was her fault. In trying to save him, she had killed him. Flickering images filled her mind as her fingers worked to achieve what must be done. Mr Fairbrother, running alongside the canal bank in his tracksuit as the crew rowed. Nana Cath’s face, fierce with pain and love. Robbie, waiting for her at the window of his foster home, unnaturally clean, jumping up and down with excitement as she approached the front door …
    She could hear the policeman calling to her through the letter box not to be a silly girl, and the policewoman trying to quieten Terri and Cheryl.
    The needle slid easily into Krystal’s vein. She pressed the plunger down hard, in hope and without regret.
    By the time Kay and Gaia arrived, and the police decided to force their way in, Krystal Weedon had achieved her only ambition: she had joined her brother where nobody could part them.

Relief of Poverty …
    13.5 Gifts to benefit the poor … are charitable, and a gift for the poor is charitable even if it happens incidentally to benefit the rich …
    Charles Arnold-Baker
Local Council Administration
,
Seventh Edition

Nearly three weeks after the sirens had wailed through sleepy Pagford, on a sunny morning in April, Shirley Mollison stood alone in her bedroom, squinting at her reflection in the mirrored wardrobe. She was making final adjustments to her dress before her now-daily drive to South West General. The belt buckle slid up a hole tighter than it had done a fortnight ago, her silver hair was in need of a trim and her grimace against the sunshine blazing into the room could have been a simple expression of her mood.
    When Miles accompanied her to the hospital, she could let him do all the talking to Howard, which he did, keeping up a steady monologue of Pagford news. She felt so much better – both more visible and more protected – with tall Miles