The Casual Vacancy

little shit?’
    ‘No.’
    Simon glared at Andrew, not eating, but holding a cooling forkful of shepherd’s pie in mid-air. Andrew switched his attention back to his food, determined not to offer further provocation. The air pressure within the kitchen seemed to have increased. Paul’s knife rattled against his plate.
    ‘Shirley says,’ Ruth piped up again, her voice high-pitched, determined to pretend all was well until this became impossible, ‘that it’ll be on the council website, Simon. About how you put your name forward.’
    Simon did not respond.
    Her last, best attempt thwarted, Ruth fell silent too. She was afraid that she might know what was at the root of Simon’s bad mood. Anxiety gnawed at her; she was a worrier, she always had been; shecouldn’t help it. She knew that it drove Simon mad when she begged him for reassurance. She must not say anything.
    ‘Si?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘It’s all right, isn’t it? About the computer?’
    She was a dreadful actress. She tried to make her voice casual and calm, but it was brittle and high-pitched.
    This was not the first time stolen goods had entered their home. Simon had found a way of fiddling the electricity meter too, and did small jobs on the side, at the printworks, for cash. All of it gave her little pains in the stomach, kept her awake at night; but Simon was contemptuous of people who did not dare take the shortcuts (and part of what she had loved about him, from the beginning, was that this rough and wild boy, who was contemptuous, rude and aggressive to nearly everyone, had taken the trouble to attract her; that he, who was so difficult to please, had selected her, alone, as worthy).
    ‘What are you talking about?’ Simon asked quietly. The full focus of his attention shifted from Andrew to Ruth, and was expressed by the same unblinking, venomous stare.
    ‘Well, there won’t be any … any trouble about it, will there?’
    Simon was seized with a brutal urge to punish her for intuiting his own fears and for stoking them with her anxiety.
    ‘Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to say anything,’ he said, speaking slowly, giving himself time to make up a story; ‘but there was a bit of trouble when they were nicked, as it turns out.’ Andrew and Paul paused in their eating and stared. ‘Some security guard got beaten up. I didn’t know anything about it till it was too late. I only hope there’s no comeback.’
    Ruth could barely breathe. She could not believe the evenness of his tone, the calmness with which he spoke of violent robbery. This explained his mood when he had come home; this explained everything.
    ‘That’s why it’s essential nobody mentions we’ve got it,’ said Simon.
    He subjected each of them to a fierce glare, to impress the dangers on them by sheer force of personality.
    ‘We won’t,’ Ruth breathed.
    Her rapid imagination was already showing her the police at the door; the computer examined; Simon arrested, wrongly accused of aggravated assault – jailed.
    ‘Did you hear Dad?’ she said to her sons, in a voice barely louder than a whisper. ‘You mustn’t tell anybody we’ve got a new computer.’
    ‘It should be all right,’ said Simon. ‘It should be fine. As long as everyone keeps their traps shut.’
    He turned his attention back to his shepherd’s pie. Ruth’s eyes flittered from Simon to her sons and back again. Paul was pushing food around his plate, silent, frightened.
    But Andrew had not believed a word his father said.
    You’re a lying fucking bastard. You just like scaring her.
    When the meal was finished, Simon got up and said, ‘Well, let’s see whether the bloody thing works, at least. You,’ he pointed at Paul, ‘go and get it out of the box and put it carefully –
carefully
– on the stand. You,’ he pointed at Andrew, ‘you do computing, don’t you? You can tell me what to do.’
    Simon led the way into the sitting room. Andrew knew that he was trying to catch them out, that he wanted them to mess up: Paul, who was small and nervous, might drop the computer, and he, Andrew, was sure to blunder. Behind them in the kitchen, Ruth was clattering around, clearing away the dinner things. She, at least, was out of the immediate line of fire.
    Andrew went to assist Paul as he lifted the hard drive.
    ‘He can do it, he’s not that much of a pussy!’ snapped Simon.
    By a miracle, Paul, his arms trembling, set it down on the stand without mishap, then waited with his arms dangling