The Casual Vacancy

with a slight edge to her voice, ‘she’s asked us for dinner next Friday. Week today.’
    ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ said Gavin crossly.
    A lot of Kay’s cheerfulness deserted her.
    ‘What’s the problem?’
    ‘Nothing. It’s – nothing,’ he said, prodding the bubbling spaghetti. ‘It’s just that I see enough of Miles during work hours, to be honest.’
    It was what he had dreaded all along: that she would worm her way in and they would become Gavin-and-Kay, with a shared social circle, so that it would become progressively more difficult to excise her from his life. How had he let this happen? Why had he allowed her to move down here? Fury at himself mutated easily into anger with her. Why couldn’t she realize how little he wanted her, and take herself off without forcing him to do the dirty? He drained thespaghetti in the sink, swearing under his breath as he speckled himself with boiling water.
    ‘You’d better call Miles and Samantha and tell them “no”, then,’ said Kay.
    Her voice had hardened. As was Gavin’s deeply ingrained habit, he sought to deflect an imminent conflict and hoped that the future would look after itself.
    ‘No, no,’ he said, dabbing at his wet shirt with a tea towel. ‘We’ll go. It’s fine. We’ll go.’
    But in his undisguised lack of enthusiasm, he sought to put down a marker to which he could refer, retrospectively.
You knew I didn’t want to go. No, I didn’t enjoy it. No, I don’t want it to happen again.
    They ate for several minutes in silence. Gavin was afraid that there would be another row, and that Kay would force him to discuss underlying issues again. He cast around for something to say, and so started telling her about Mary Fairbrother and the life insurance company.
    ‘They’re being real bastards,’ he said. ‘He was heavily insured, but their lawyers are looking for a way not to pay out. They’re trying to make out he didn’t make a full disclosure.’
    ‘In what way?’
    ‘Well, an uncle died of an aneurysm, too. Mary swears Barry told the insurance agent that when he signed the policy, but it’s nowhere in the notes. Presumably the bloke didn’t realize it can be a genetic thing. I don’t know that Barry did, come to …’
    Gavin’s voice broke. Horrified and embarrassed, he bowed his flushing face over his plate. There was a hard chunk of grief in his throat and he couldn’t shift it. Kay’s chair legs scraped on the floor; he hoped that she was off to the bathroom, but then felt her arms around his shoulders, drawing him to her. Without thinking, he put a single arm around her, too.
    It was so good to be held. If only their relationship could be distilled into simple, wordless gestures of comfort. Why had humans ever learned to talk?
    He had dribbled snot onto the back of her top.
    ‘Sorry,’ he said thickly, wiping it away with his napkin.
    He withdrew from her and blew his nose. She dragged her chair to sit beside him and put a hand on his arm. He liked her so much better when she was silent, and her face was soft and concerned, as it was now.
    ‘I still can’t … he was a good bloke,’ he said. ‘Barry. He was a good bloke.’
    ‘Yes, everyone says that about him,’ said Kay.
    She had never been allowed to meet this famous Barry Fairbrother, but she was intrigued by the show of emotion from Gavin, and by the person who had caused it.
    ‘Was he funny?’ she asked, because she could imagine Gavin in thrall to a comedian, to a rowdy ringleader, propping up the bar.
    ‘Yeah, I s’pose. Well, not particularly. Normal. He liked a laugh … but he was just such a … such a
nice
bloke. He liked people, you know?’
    She waited, but Gavin did not seem able to elucidate further on the niceness of Barry.
    ‘And the kids … and Mary … poor Mary … God, you’ve got no idea.’
    Kay continued to pat his arm gently, but her sympathy had chilled a little. No idea, she thought, what it was to be alone? No idea how hard it was to be left in sole charge of a family? Where was his pity for her, Kay?
    ‘They were really happy,’ said Gavin, in a cracked voice. ‘She’s in pieces.’
    Wordlessly, Kay stroked his arm, reflecting that she had never been able to afford to go to pieces.
    ‘I’m all right,’ he said, wiping his nose on his napkin and picking up his fork. By the smallest of twitches, he indicated that she should remove her hand.

IV
    Samantha’s dinner invitation to Kay had been motivated by a mixture of