The Casual Vacancy

Wednesday. She would not have been able to look it up: she was dyslexic. But he had been kind enough to explain what it meant, so there was no need.
    The hairy man-woman …
    He was worse than Dane Tully, whose taunts had no variety. Fats Wall’s evil tongue fashioned a fresh, tailor-made torture every time he saw her, and she could not shut her ears. His every insult and jibe was branded on Sukhvinder’s memory, sticking there as no useful fact had ever done. If she could have been examined on the things he had called her, she would have achieved the first A grade of her life.
Tash ’N’ Tits. Hermaphrodite. The Bearded Dumb-bell.
    Hairy, heavy and stupid. Plain and clumsy. Lazy, according to her mother, whose criticism and exasperation rained down upon her daily. A bit slow, according to her father, who said it with an affection that did not mitigate his lack of interest. He could afford to be nice about her bad grades. He had Jaswant and Rajpal, both top of every class they took.
    ‘Poor old Jolly,’ Vikram would say carelessly, after glancing through her report.
    But her father’s indifference was preferable to her mother’s anger. Parminder did not seem able to comprehend or accept that she had produced a child who was not gifted. If any of the subject teachers made the slightest hint that Sukhvinder might try harder, Parminder seized upon it in triumph.
    ‘“Sukhvinder is easily discouraged and needs to have more faith in her abilities.” There! You see? Your teacher is saying you don’t try hard enough, Sukhvinder.’
    Of the only class in which Sukhvinder had reached the second set, computing – Fats Wall was not there, so she sometimes dared put up her hand to answer questions – Parminder said dismissively, ‘The amount of time you children spend on the internet, I’m surprised you’re not in set one.’
    Never would it have occurred to Sukhvinder to tell either of her parents about the ape grunts or about Stuart Wall’s endless stream of malice. It would mean confessing that people beyond the family also saw her as sub-standard and worthless. In any case, Parminder was friends with Stuart Wall’s mother. Sukhvinder sometimes wondered why Stuart Wall did not worry about their mothers’ connection, but concluded that he knew that she would not give him away. He saw through her. He saw her cowardice, as he knew her every worst thought about herself, and was able to articulate it for the amusement of Andrew Price. She had fancied Andrew Price once, before she realized that she was utterly unfit to fancy anyone; before she realized that she was laughable and strange.
    Sukhvinder heard her father’s voice and Rajpal’s, growing louder as they came up the stairs. Rajpal’s laughter reached a crescendo right outside her door.
    ‘It’s late,’ she heard her mother call from her bedroom. ‘Vikram, he should be in bed.’
    Vikram’s voice came through Sukhvinder’s door, close by, loud and warm.
    ‘Are you asleep already, Jolly?’
    It was her childhood nickname, bestowed in irony. Jaswant had been Jazzy, and Sukhvinder, a grizzling, unhappy baby, rarely smiling, had become Jolly.
    ‘No,’ Sukhvinder called back. ‘I’ve only just gone to bed.’
    ‘Well, it might interest you to know that your brother, here—’
    But what Rajpal had done was lost in his shouting protests, his laughter; she heard Vikram moving away, still teasing Rajpal.
    Sukhvinder waited for the house to fall silent. She clung to the prospect of her only consolation, as she would have hugged a life-belt, waiting, waiting, for them all to go to bed …
    (And as she waited, she remembered that evening not long ago,at the end of rowing training, when they had been walking through the darkness towards the car park by the canal. You were so tired after rowing. Your arms and your stomach muscles ached, but it was a good clean pain. She always slept properly after rowing. And then Krystal, bringing up the rear of the group with Sukhvinder, had called her a silly Paki bitch.
    It had come out of nowhere. They had all been messing around with Mr Fairbrother. Krystal thought she was being funny. She used ‘fucking’ interchangeably with ‘very’, and seemed to see no difference between them. Now she said ‘Paki’ as she would have said ‘dozy’ or ‘dim’. Sukhvinder was conscious of her face falling, and experienced the familiar sliding, scalding sensation in her stomach.
    ‘
What
did you say?’
    Mr Fairbrother