The Casual Vacancy (43 page)

“Not too upset by that nasty business on the council website?”

“No,” said Sukhvinder, her eyes watering.

Andrew proceeded out into the dank yard, which, in the early afternoon, had become warm and sunny. He had hoped that Gaia might be there, taking a breath of fresh air, but she must have gone into the staff room in the deli. Disappointed, he lit up a cigarette. He had barely inhaled when Gaia emerged from the café, finishing her lunch with a can of fizzy drink.

“Hi,” said Andrew, his mouth dry.

“Hi,” she said. Then, after a moment or two: “Hey, why’s that friend of yours such a shit to Sukhvinder? Is it personal or is he racist?”

“He isn’t racist,” said Andrew. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, trying to keep his hands from trembling, but could not think of anything else to say. The sunshine reflected off the bins warmed his sweaty back; close proximity to her in the tight black dress was almost overwhelming, especially now that he had glimpsed what lay beneath. He took another drag of the cigarette, not knowing when he had felt so bedazzled or so alive.

“What’s she ever done to him, though?”

The curve of her hips to her tiny waist; the perfection of her wide, flecked eyes over the can of Sprite. Andrew felt like saying,
Nothing, he’s a bastard, I’ll hit him if you let me touch you…

Sukhvinder emerged into the yard, blinking in the sunlight; she looked uncomfortable and hot in Gaia’s top.

“He wants you back in,” she said to Gaia.

“He can wait,” said Gaia coolly. “I’m finishing this. I’ve only had forty minutes.”

Andrew and Sukhvinder contemplated her as she sipped her drink, awed by her arrogance and her beauty.

“Was that old bitch saying something to you just then, about your mum?” Gaia asked Sukhvinder.

Sukhvinder nodded.

“I think it might’ve been
his
mate,” she said, staring at Andrew again, and he found her emphasis on
his
positively erotic, even if she meant it to be derogatory, “who put that message about your mum on that website.”

“Can’t’ve been,” said Andrew, and his voice wobbled slightly. “Whoever did it went after my old man, too. Couple of weeks ago.”

“What?” asked Gaia. “The same person posted something about your dad?”

He nodded, relishing her interest.

“Something about stealing, wasn’t it?” asked Sukhvinder, with considerable daring.

“Yeah,” said Andrew. “And he got the sack for it yesterday. So her mum,” he met Gaia’s blinding gaze almost steadily, “isn’t the only one who’s suffered.”

“Bloody hell,” said Gaia, upending the can and throwing it into a bin. “People round here are effing mental.”

IV

The post about Parminder on the council website had driven Colin Wall’s fears to a nightmarish new level. He could only guess how the Mollisons were getting their information, but if they knew that about Parminder…

“For God’s sake, Colin!” Tessa had said. “It’s just malicious gossip! There’s nothing in it!”

But Colin did not dare believe her. He was constitutionally prone to believing that others too lived with secrets that drove them half-demented. He could not even take comfort in knowing that he had spent most of his adult life in dread of calamities that had not materialized, because, by the law of averages, one of them was bound to come true one day.

He was thinking about his imminent exposure, as he thought about it constantly, while walking back from the butcher’s at half past two, and it was not until the hubbub from the new café caught his startled attention that he realized where he was. He would have crossed to the other side of the Square if he had not been already level with the Copper Kettle’s windows; mere proximity to any Mollison frightened him now. Then he saw something through the glass that made him do a double take.

When he entered their kitchen ten minutes later, Tessa was on the telephone to her sister. Colin deposited the leg of lamb in the fridge and marched upstairs, all the way to Fats’ loft conversion. Flinging open the door, he saw, as he had expected, a deserted room.

He could not remember the last time he had been in here. The floor was covered in dirty clothes. There was an odd smell, even though Fats had left the skylight propped open. Colin noticed a large matchbox on Fats’ desk. He slid it open, and saw a mass of twisted cardboard stubs. A packet of Rizlas lay brazenly on the desk beside the computer.

Colin’s heart seemed to have toppled down out of his chest to thump against his guts.

“Colin?” came Tessa’s voice, from the landing below. “Where are you?”

“Up here!” he roared.

She appeared at Fats’ door looking frightened and anxious. Wordlessly, he picked up the matchbox and showed her the contents.

“Oh,” said Tessa weakly.

“He said he was going out with Andrew Price today,” said Colin. Tessa was frightened by the muscle working in Colin’s jaw, an angry little bump moving from side to side. “I’ve just been past that new café in the Square, and Andrew Price is working in there, mopping tables. So where’s Stuart?”

For weeks, Tessa had been pretending to believe Fats whenever he said that he was going out with Andrew. For days she had been telling herself that Sukhvinder must be mistaken in thinking that Fats was going out (would condescend, ever, to go out) with Krystal Weedon.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Come down and have a cup of tea. I’ll ring him.”

“I think I’ll wait here,” said Colin, and he sat down on Fats’ unmade bed.

“Come on, Colin — come downstairs,” said Tessa.

She was scared of leaving him here. She did not know what he might find in the drawers or in Fats’ schoolbag. She did not want him to look on the computer or under the bed. Refusing to probe dark corners had become her sole modus operandi.

“Come downstairs, Col,” she urged him.

“No,” said Colin, and he crossed his arms like a mutinous child, but with that muscle working in his jaw. “Drugs in his bin. The son of the deputy headmaster.”

Tessa, who had sat down on Fats’ computer chair, felt a familiar thrill of anger. She knew that self-preoccupation was an inevitable consequence of his illness, but sometimes…

“Plenty of teenagers experiment,” she said.

“Still defending him, are you? Doesn’t it ever occur to you that it’s your constant excuses for him that make him think he can get away with blue murder?”

She was trying to keep a curb on her temper, because she must be a buffer between them.

“I’m sorry, Colin, but you and your job aren’t the be-all and end —”

“I see — so if I get the sack —”

“Why on earth would you get the sack?”

“For God’s sake!” shouted Colin, outraged. “It all reflects on me — it’s already bad enough — he’s already one of the biggest problem students in the —”

“That’s not true!” shouted Tessa. “Nobody but you thinks Stuart’s anything other than a normal teenager. He’s not Dane Tully!”

“He’s going the same way as Tully — drugs in his bin —”

“I told you we should have sent him to Paxton High! I
knew
you’d make everything he did all about you, if he went to Winterdown! Is it any wonder he rebels, when his every movement is supposed to be a credit to you? I never wanted him to go to your school!”

“And I,” bellowed Colin, jumping to his feet, “never bloody wanted him at all!”

“Don’t say that!” gasped Tessa. “I know you’re angry — but don’t say that!”

The front door slammed two floors below them. Tessa looked around, frightened, as though Fats might materialize instantly beside them. It wasn’t merely the noise that had made her start. Stuart never slammed the front door; he usually slipped in and out like a shape-shifter.

His familiar tread on the stairs; did he know, or suspect they were in his room? Colin was waiting, with his fists clenched by his sides. Tessa heard the creak of the halfway step, and then Fats stood before them. She was sure he had arranged his expression in advance: a mixture of boredom and disdain.

“Afternoon,” he said, looking from his mother to his rigid, tense father. He had all the self-possession that Colin had never had. “This is a surprise.”

Desperate, Tessa tried to show him the way.

“Dad was worried about where you are,” she said, with a plea in her voice. “You said you were going to be with Arf today, but Dad saw —”

“Yeah, change of plan,” said Fats.

He glanced towards the place where the matchbox had been.

“So, do you want to tell us where you’ve been?” asked Colin. There were white patches around his mouth.

“Yeah, if you like,” said Fats, and he waited.

“Stu,” said Tessa, half whisper, half groan.

“I’ve been out with Krystal Weedon,” said Fats.

Oh God, no,
thought Tessa.
No, no, no…

“You’ve what?” said Colin, so taken aback that he forgot to sound aggressive.

“I’ve been out with Krystal Weedon,” Fats repeated, a little more loudly.

“And since when,” said Colin, after an infinitesimal pause, “has she been a friend of yours?”

“A while,” said Fats.

Tessa could see Colin struggling to formulate a question too grotesque to utter.

“You should have told us, Stu,” she said.

“Told you what?” he said.

She was frightened that he was going to push the argument to a dangerous place.

“Where you were going,” she said, standing up and trying to look matter-of-fact. “Next time, call us.”

She looked toward Colin in the hope that he might follow her lead and move towards the door. He remained fixed in the middle of the room, staring at Fats in horror.

“Are you…involved with Krystal Weedon?” Colin asked.

They faced each other, Colin taller by a few inches, but Fats holding all the power.

“‘Involved’?” Fats repeated. “What d’you mean, ‘involved’?”

“You know what I mean!” said Colin, his face growing red.

“D’you mean, am I shagging her?” asked Fats.

Tessa’s little cry of “Stu!” was drowned by Colin shouting, “How bloody dare you!”

Fats merely looked at Colin, smirking. Everything about him was a taunt and a challenge.

“What?” said Fats.

“Are you — ” Colin was struggling to find the words, growing redder all the time, “ — are you sleeping with Krystal Weedon?”

“It wouldn’t be a problem if I was, would it?” Fats asked, and he glanced at his mother as he said it. “You’re all for helping Krystal, aren’t you?”

“Helping —”

“Aren’t you trying to keep that addiction clinic open so you can help Krystal’s family?”

“What’s that got to do —?”

“I can’t see what the problem is with me going out with her.”

“And
are
you going out with her?” asked Tessa sharply. If Fats wanted to take the row into this territory, she would meet him there. “Do you actually
go
anywhere with her, Stuart?”

His smirk sickened her. He was not prepared even to pretend to some decency.

“Well, we don’t do it in either of our houses, do —”

Colin had raised one of his stiff, clench-fisted arms and swung it. He connected with Fats’ cheek, and Fats, whose attention had been on his mother, was caught off guard; he staggered sideways, hit the desk and slid, momentarily, to the floor. A moment later he had jumped to his feet again, but Tessa had already placed herself between the pair of them, facing her son.

Behind her, Colin was repeating, “You little bastard. You little bastard.”

“Yeah?” said Fats, and he was no longer smirking. “I’d rather be a little bastard than be you, you arsehole!”

“No!” shouted Tessa. “Colin, get out.
Get out!
”

Horrified, furious and shaken, Colin lingered for a moment, then marched from the room; they heard him stumble a little on the stairs.

“How could you?” Tessa whispered to her son.

“How could I fucking what?” said Stuart, and the look on his face alarmed her so much that she hurried to close and bar the bedroom door.

“You’re taking advantage of that girl, Stuart, and you know it, and the way you just spoke to your —”

“The fuck I am,” said Fats, pacing up and down, every semblance of cool gone. “The fuck I’m taking advantage of her. She knows exactly what she wants — just because she lives in the fucking Fields, it doesn’t — the truth is, you and Cubby don’t want me to shag her because you think she’s beneath —”

“That’s not true!” said Tessa, even though it was, and for all her concern about Krystal, she would still have been glad to know that Fats had sense enough to wear a condom.

“You’re fucking hypocrites, you and Cubby,” he said, still pacing the length of the bedroom. “All the bollocks the pair of you spout about wanting to help the Weedons, but you don’t want —”

“That’s enough!” shouted Tessa. “Don’t you dare speak to me like that! Don’t you realize — don’t you understand — are you so damn selfish…?”

Words failed her. She turned, tugged open his door and was gone, slamming it behind her.

Her exit had an odd effect on Fats, who stopped pacing and stared at the closed door for several seconds. Then he searched his pockets, drew out a cigarette and lit it, not bothering to blow the smoke out of the skylight. Round and round his room he walked, and he had no control of his own thoughts: jerky, unedited images filled his brain, sweeping past on a tide of fury.

He remembered the Friday evening, nearly a year previously, when Tessa had come up here to his bedroom to tell him that his father wanted to take him out to play football with Barry and his sons next day.

(“What?” Fats had been staggered. The suggestion was unprecedented.

“For fun. A kick-around,” Tessa had said, avoiding Fats’ glare by scowling down at the clothes littering the floor.

“Why?”

“Because Dad thought it might be nice,” said Tessa, bending to pick up a school shirt. “Declan wants a practice, or something. He’s got a match.”

Fats was quite good at football. People found it surprising; they expected him to dislike sport, to disdain teams. He played as he talked, skillfully, with many a feint, fooling the clumsy, daring to take chances, unconcerned if they did not come off.

“I didn’t even know he could play.”