The Casual Vacancy

taken a large bite of soda bread and liver pâté, but he conveyed his agreement with an emphatic nod. He liked the idea that Aubrey Fawley was ‘right behind’ him. Samantha might jeer at his parents’ thraldom to the Fawleys, but Miles noticed that on those rare occasions when Samantha came face to face with either Aubrey or Julia, her accent changed subtly and her demeanour became markedly more demure.
    ‘Something else,’ said Howard, scratching his belly again. ‘Got an email from the
Yarvil and District Gazette
this morning. Asking for my views on the Fields. As chair of the Parish Council.’
    ‘You’re kidding? I thought Fairbrother had stitched that one up—’
    ‘Backfired, didn’t it?’ said Howard, with immense satisfaction. ‘They’re going to run his article, and they want someone to argue against the following week. Give them the other side of the story. I’d appreciate a hand. Lawyer’s turn of phrase, and all that.’
    ‘No problem,’ said Miles. ‘We could talk about that bloody addiction clinic. That’d make the point.’
    ‘Yes – very good idea – excellent.’
    In his enthusiasm, he had swallowed too much at once and Miles had to bang him on the back until his coughing had subsided. At last, dabbing his watering eyes with a napkin, Howard said breathlessly, ‘Aubrey’s recommending the District cuts funding from their end, and I’m going to put it to our lot that it’s time to terminate thelease on the building. It wouldn’t hurt to make the case in the press. How much time and money’s gone into that bloody place with nothing to show for it. I’ve got the figures.’ Howard burped sonorously. ‘Bloody disgraceful. Pardon me.’

III
    Gavin cooked for Kay at his house that evening, opening tins and crushing garlic with a sense of ill-usage.
    After a row, you had to say certain things to secure a truce: those were the rules, everyone knew that. Gavin had telephoned Kay from his car on the way back from Barry’s burial and told her that he wished she had been there, that the whole day had been horrible and that he hoped he could see her that night. He considered these humble admissions no more or less than the price he had to pay for an evening of undemanding companionship.
    But Kay seemed to consider them more in the light of a down payment on a renegotiated contract.
You missed me. You needed me when you were upset. You’re sorry we didn’t go as a couple. Well, let’s not make that mistake again.
There had been a certain complacency about the way she had treated him since; a briskness, a sense of renewed expectation.
    He was making spaghetti Bolognese tonight; he had deliberately omitted to buy a pudding or to lay the table in advance; he was at pains to show her that he had not made much of an effort. Kay seemed oblivious, even determined to take this casual attitude as a compliment. She sat at his small kitchen table, talking to him over the pitter-patter of rain on the skylight, her eyes wandering over the fixtures and fittings. She had not often been here.
    ‘I suppose Lisa chose this yellow, did she?’
    She was doing it again: breaking taboos, as though they hadrecently passed to a deeper level of intimacy. Gavin preferred not to talk about Lisa if he could avoid it; surely she knew that by now? He shook oregano onto the mince in his frying pan and said, ‘No, this was all the previous owner. I haven’t got round to changing it yet.’
    ‘Oh,’ she said, sipping wine. ‘Well, it’s quite nice. A bit bland.’
    This rankled with Gavin, as, in his opinion, the interior of the Smithy was superior in every way to that of Ten Hope Street. He watched the pasta bubbling, keeping his back to her.
    ‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘I met Samantha Mollison this afternoon.’
    Gavin wheeled around; how did Kay even know what Samantha Mollison looked like?
    ‘Just outside the deli in the Square; I was on my way in to get this,’ said Kay, clinking the wine bottle beside her with a flick of her nail. ‘She asked me whether I was
Gavin’s girlfriend
.’
    Kay said it archly, but actually she had been heartened by Samantha’s choice of words, relieved to think that this was how Gavin described her to his friends.
    ‘And what did you say?’
    ‘I said – I said yes.’
    Her expression was crestfallen. Gavin had not meant to ask the question quite so aggressively. He would have given a lot to prevent Kay and Samantha ever meeting.
    ‘Anyway,’ Kay proceeded