The Casual Vacancy

was like a fiddling pair of tweezers in the way that it seized on poor choices of word, yet so often failed to grasp the bigger picture. What could she say that he would understand? That she found Howard and Shirley’s endless talk about the council boring as hell? That he was quite tedious enough already, with his endlessly retold anecdotes about the good old days back at the rugby club and his self-congratulatory stories about work, without adding pontifications about the Fields?
    ‘Well, I was under the impression,’ said Samantha, in their dimly lit sitting room, ‘that we had other plans.’
    ‘Like what?’ said Miles. ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘We said,’ Samantha articulated carefully over the rim of her trembling glass, ‘that once the girls were out of school, we’d go travelling. We promised each other that, remember?’
    The formless rage and misery that had consumed her since Miles announced his intention to stand for the council had not once led her to mourn the year’s travelling she had missed, but at this moment it seemed to her that that was the real problem; or at least, that it came closest to expressing both the antagonism and the yearning inside her.
    Miles seemed completely bewildered.
    ‘What
are
you talking about?’
    ‘When I got pregnant with Lexie,’ Samantha said loudly, ‘and we couldn’t go travelling, and your bloody mother made us get marriedin double-quick time, and your father got you a job with Edward Collins, you said,
we agreed
, that we’d do it when the girls were grown up; we said we’d go away and do all the things we missed out on.’
    He shook his head slowly.
    ‘This is news to me,’ he said. ‘Where the hell has this come from?’
    ‘Miles, we were in the Black Canon. I told you I was pregnant, and you said – for Christ’s sake, Miles – I told you I was pregnant, and you promised me, you
promised—
’
    ‘You want a holiday?’ said Miles. ‘Is that it? You want a holiday?’
    ‘No, Miles, I don’t want a bloody holiday, I want – don’t you remember? We said we’d take a year out and do it later, when the kids were grown up!’
    ‘Fine, then.’ He seemed unnerved, determined to brush her aside. ‘Fine. When Libby’s eighteen; in four years’ time, we’ll talk about it again. I don’t see how me becoming a councillor affects any of this.’
    ‘Well, apart from the bloody
boredom
of listening to you and your parents whining about the Fields for the rest of our natural lives—’
    ‘Our
natural
lives?’ he smirked. ‘As opposed to—?’
    ‘Piss off,’ she spat. ‘Don’t be such a bloody smartarse, Miles, it might impress your mother—’
    ‘Well, frankly, I still don’t see what the problem—’
    ‘The
problem
,’ she shouted, ‘is that this is about our
future
, Miles.
Our
future. And I don’t want to bloody talk about it in four years’ time, I want to talk about it
now
!’
    ‘I think you’d better eat something,’ said Miles. He got to his feet. ‘You’ve had enough to drink.’
    ‘Screw you, Miles!’
    ‘Sorry, if you’re going to be abusive …’
    He turned and walked out of the room. She barely stopped herself throwing her wine glass after him.
    The council: if he got on it, he would never get off; he would never renounce his seat, the chance to be a proper Pagford big shot, like Howard. He was committing himself anew to Pagford, retaking his vows to the town of his birth, to a future quite different from the one he had promised his distraught new fiancée as she sat sobbing on his bed.
    When had they last talked about travelling the world? She was not sure. Years and years ago, perhaps, but tonight Samantha decided that she, at least, had never changed her mind. Yes, she had always expected that some day they would pack up and leave, in search of heat and freedom, half the globe away from Pagford, Shirley, Mollison and Lowe, the rain, the pettiness and the sameness. Perhaps she had not thought of the white sands of Australia and Singapore with longing for many years, but she would rather be there, even with her heavy thighs and her stretch marks, than here, trapped in Pagford, forced to watch as Miles turned slowly into Howard.
    She slumped back down on the sofa, groped for the controls, and switched back to Libby’s DVD. The band, now in black and white, was walking slowly along a long empty beach, singing. The broad-shouldered boy’s shirt was flapping open in the breeze. A fine trail