The Casual Vacancy

begin a surreptitious campaign for Barry’s seat on the council with this big audience of captive voters. Samantha made a mental note to drop a sarcastic allusion to the missed opportunity when a suitable occasion arose.
    ‘Gavin!’ called Miles, at the sight of a familiar, fair and narrow head.
    ‘Oh, hi, Miles. Hi, Sam.’
    Gavin’s new black tie shone against his white shirt. There were violet bags under his light eyes. Samantha leaned in on tiptoes, so that he could not decently avoid kissing her on the cheek and inhaling her musky perfume.
    ‘Big turnout, isn’t it?’ Gavin said, gazing around.
    ‘Gavin’s a pall-bearer,’ Miles told his wife, in precisely the way that he would have announced that a small and unpromising child had been awarded a book token for effort. In truth, he had been a little surprised when Gavin had told him he had been accorded this honour. Miles had vaguely imagined that he and Samantha would be privileged guests, surrounded by a certain aura of mystery and importance, having been at the deathbed. It might have been a nice gesture if Mary, or somebody close to Mary, had asked him, Miles, to read a lesson, or say a few words to acknowledge the important part he had played in Barry’s final moments.
    Samantha was deliberately unsurprised that Gavin had been singled out.
    ‘You and Barry were quite close, weren’t you, Gav?’
    Gavin nodded. He felt jittery and a little sick. He had had a very bad night’s sleep, waking in the early hours from horrible dreams in which, first, he had dropped the coffin, so that Barry’s body spilt out onto the church floor; and, secondly, he had overslept, missed the funeral, and arrived at St Michael and All Saints to find Mary alone in the graveyard, white-faced and furious, screaming at him that he had ruined the whole thing.
    ‘I’m not sure where I ought to be,’ he said, looking around. ‘I’ve never done this before.’
    ‘Nothing to it, mate,’ said Miles. ‘There’s only one requirement, really. Don’t drop anything, hehehe.’
    Miles’ girlish laugh contrasted oddly with his deep speaking voice. Neither Gavin nor Samantha smiled.
    Colin Wall loomed out of the mass of bodies. Big and awkward-looking, with his high, knobbly forehead, he always made Samantha think of Frankenstein’s monster.
    ‘Gavin,’ he said. ‘There you are. I think we should probably stand out on the pavement, they’ll be here in a few minutes.’
    ‘Right-ho,’ said Gavin, relieved to be ordered around.
    ‘Colin,’ said Miles, with a nod.
    ‘Yes, hello,’ said Colin, flustered, before turning away and forcing his way back through the mass of mourners.
    Then came another small flurry of movement, and Samanthaheard Howard’s loud voice: ‘Excuse me … so sorry … trying to join our family …’ The crowd parted to avoid his belly, and Howard was revealed, immense in a velvet-faced overcoat. Shirley and Maureen bobbed in his wake, Shirley neat and composed in navy blue, Maureen scrawny as a carrion bird, in a hat with a small black veil.
    ‘Hello, hello,’ said Howard, kissing Samantha firmly on both cheeks. ‘And how’s Sammy?’
    Her answer was swallowed up in a widespread, awkward shuffling, as everybody began retreating backwards off the path: there was a certain discreet jockeying for position; nobody wanted to relinquish their claim to a place near the church entrance. With this cleaving in two of the crowd, familiar individuals were revealed like separate pips along the break. Samantha spotted the Jawandas: coffee-brown faces among all the whey; Vikram, absurdly handsome in his dark suit; Parminder dressed in a sari (why did she do it? Didn’t she know she was playing right into the likes of Howard and Shirley’s hands?) and beside her, dumpy little Tessa Wall in a grey coat, which was straining at the buttons.
    Mary Fairbrother and the children were walking slowly up the path to the church. Mary was terribly pale, and appeared pounds thinner. Could she have lost so much weight in six days? She was holding one of the twins’ hands, with her other arm around the shoulders of her younger son, and the eldest, Fergus, marching behind. She walked with her eyes fixed straight ahead, her soft mouth pursed tight. Other family members followed Mary and the children; the procession moved over the threshold and was swallowed up in the dingy interior of the church.
    Everyone else moved towards the doors at once, which resulted in an