the teacher with questions about the hacking; she had merely gone home quietly and looked it all up online. Nearly every modern website was proof against a classic SQL injection, but when Sukhvinder had heard her mother discussing the anonymous attack on the Pagford Parish Council website, it had occurred to Sukhvinder that the security on that feeble old site was probably minimal.
Sukhvinder always found it much easier to type than to write, and computer code easier to read than long strings of words. It did not take very long for her to retrieve a site that gave explicit instructions for the simplest form of SQL injection. Then she brought up the Parish Council website.
It took her five minutes to hack the site, and then only because she had transcribed the code wrong the first time. To her astonishment, she discovered that whoever was administering the site had not removed the user details of The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother from the database, but merely deleted the post. It would be child’s play, therefore, to post in the same name.
It took Sukhvinder much longer to compose the message than it had to hack into the site. She had carried the secret accusation with her for months, ever since New Year’s Eve, when she had noticed with wonder her mother’s face, at ten to midnight, from the corner of the party where she was hiding. She typed slowly. Autocorrect helped with her spelling.
She was not afraid that Parminder would check her computer history; her mother knew so little about her, and about what went on in this bedroom, that she would never suspect her lazy, stupid, sloppy daughter.
Sukhvinder pressed the mouse like a trigger.
XI
Krystal did not take Robbie to nursery on Tuesday morning, but dressed him for Nana Cath’s funeral instead. As she pulled up his least ripped trousers, which were a good two inches too short in the leg, she tried to explain to him who Nana Cath had been, but she might as well have saved her breath. Robbie had no memory of Nana Cath; he had no idea what Nana meant; no concept of any relative other than mother and sister. In spite of her shifting hints and stories, Krystal knew that Terri had no idea who his father was.
Krystal heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.
‘Leave it,’ she snapped at Robbie, who had reached for an empty beer can lying beneath Terri’s usual armchair. ‘C’m’ere.’
She pulled Robbie by the hand into the hall. Terri was still wearing the pyjama bottoms and dirty T-shirt in which she had spent the night, and her feet were bare.
‘Why intcha changed?’ demanded Krystal.
‘I ain’t goin’,’ said Terri, pushing past her son and daughter into the kitchen. ‘Changed me mind.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’ wanna,’ said Terri. She was lighting a cigarette off the ring of the cooker. ‘Don’ fuckin’ ’ave to.’
Krystal was still holding Robbie’s hand, as he tugged and swung.
‘They’re all goin’,’ said Krystal. ‘Cheryl an’ Shane an’ all.’
‘So?’ said Terri aggressively.
Krystal had been afraid that her mother would pull out at the last minute. The funeral would bring her face to face with Danielle, the sister who pretended that Terri did not exist, not to mention all the other relatives who had disowned them. Anne-Marie might be there. Krystal had been holding on to that hope, like a torch in the darkness, through the nights she had sobbed for Nana Cath and Mr Fairbrother.
‘You gotta go,’ said Krystal.
‘No, I ain’.’
‘It’s Nana Cath, innit,’ said Krystal.
‘So?’ said Terri, again.
‘She done loads fer us,’ said Krystal.
‘No, she ain’,’ snapped Terri.
‘She did,’ said Krystal, her face hot and her hand clutching Robbie’s.
‘Fer you, maybe,’ said Terri. ‘She done fuck-all for me. Go an’ fuckin’ bawl all over ’er fuckin’ grave if yeh want. I’m waitin’ in.’
‘Wha’ for?’ said Krystal.
‘My bus’ness, innit.’
The old familiar shadow fell.
‘Obbo’s comin’ round, is ’e?’
‘My bus’ness,’ repeated Terri, with pathetic dignity.
‘Come to the funeral,’ said Krystal loudly.
‘You go.’
‘Don’ go fuckin’ usin’,’ said Krystal, her voice an octave higher.
‘I ain’,’ said Terri, but she turned away, looking out of the dirty back window over the patch of overgrown litter-strewn grass they called the back garden.
Robbie tugged his hand out of Krystal’s and disappeared into the sitting room. With her fists deep in her trackie pockets, shoulders squared, Krystal tried to decide what to do. She wanted to cry at the thought of not going to the funeral, but her distress was edged with relief that she would not have to face the battery of hostile eyes she had sometimes met at Nana Cath’s. She was angry with Terri, and yet felt strangely on her side.
‘All righ’, then, I’ll stay an’ all.’
‘You don’ ’ave ter. Go, if yeh wan’. I don’ fuckin’ care.’
But Krystal, certain that Obbo would appear, stayed. Obbo had been away for more than a week, for some nefarious purpose of his own. Krystal wished that he had died, that he would never come back.
For something to do, she began to tidy the house, while smoking one of the roll-ups Fats Wall had given her. She didn’t like them, but she liked that he had given them to her. She had been keeping them in Nikki’s plastic jewellery box, along with Tessa’s watch.
She had thought that she might not see Fats any more, after their shag in the cemetery, because he had been almost silent afterwards and left her with barely a goodbye, but they had since met up on the rec. She could tell that he had enjoyed this time more than the last; they had not been stoned, and he had lasted longer. He lay beside her in the grass beneath the bushes, smoking, and when she had told him about Nana Cath dying, he had told her that Sukhvinder Jawanda’s mother had given Nana Cath the wrong drugs or something; he was not clear exactly what had happened.
Krystal had been horrified. So Nana Cath need not have died; she might still have been in the neat little house on Hope Street, there in case Krystal needed her, offering a refuge with a comfortable clean-sheeted bed, the tiny kitchen full of food and mismatched china, and the little TV in the corner of the sitting room:
Krystal had liked Sukhvinder, but Sukhvinder’s mother had killed Nana Cath. You did not differentiate between members of an enemy tribe. It had been Krystal’s avowed intention to pulverize Sukhvinder; but then Tessa Wall had intervened. Krystal could not remember the details of what Tessa had told her; but it seemed that Fats had got the story wrong or, at least, not exactly right. She had given Tessa a grudging promise not to go after Sukhvinder, but such promises could only ever be stop-gaps in Krystal’s frantic ever-changing world.
‘Put it down!’ Krystal shouted at Robbie, because he was trying to prise the lid off the biscuit tin where Terri kept her works.
Krystal snatched the tin from him and held it in her hands like a living creature, something that would fight to stay alive, whose destruction would have tremendous consequences. There was a scratched picture on the lid: a carriage with luggage piled high on the roof, drawn through the snow by four chestnut horses, a coachman in a top hat carrying a bugle. She carried the tin upstairs with her, while Terri sat in the kitchen smoking, and hid it in her bedroom. Robbie trailed after her.
‘Wanna go play park.’
