Only Gaia seemed unperturbed. Still giggling, she said, ‘There’s a door, you know.’
‘No shit?’ said Fats. ‘Where’s the drink?’
‘This is ours,’ said Gaia, cradling the vodka in her arms. ‘Andy nicked it. You’ll have to get your own.’
‘Not a problem,’ said Fats coolly, and he walked through the doors into the hall.
‘Need the loo…’ mumbled Gaia, and she stowed the vodka bottle back under the sink, and left the kitchen too.
Andrew followed. Sukhvinder had returned to the bar area, Gaia was disappearing into the bathroom, and Fats was leaning against the trestle table with a beer in one hand and a sandwich in the other.
‘Didn’t think you’d want to come to this,’ said Andrew.
‘I was invited, mate,’ said Fats. ‘It was on the invitation. Whole Wall family.’
‘Does Cubby know you’re here?’
‘Dunno,’ said Fats. ‘He’s in hiding. Didn’t get ol’ Barry’s seat after all. The whole social fabric’ll collapse now Cubby’s not holding it together. Fucking hell, that’s horrible,’ he added, spitting out a mouthful of sandwich. ‘Wanna fag?’
The hall was so noisy, and the guests so raucously drunk, that nobody seemed to care where Andrew went any more. When they got outside, they found Patricia Mollison, alone beside her sports car, looking up at the clear starry sky, smoking.
‘You can have one of these,’ she said, offering her packet, ‘if you want.’
After she had lit their cigarettes, she stood at her ease with one hand balled deep in her pocket. There was something about her that Andrew found intimidating; he could not even bring himself to glance at Fats, to gauge his reaction.
‘I’m Pat,’ she told them, after a little while. ‘Howard and Shirley’s daughter.’
‘Hi,’ said Andrew. ‘’M Andrew.’
‘Stuart,’ said Fats.
She did not seem to need to prolong conversation. Andrew felt it as a kind of compliment and tried to emulate her indifference. The silence was broken by footsteps and the sound of muffled girls’ voices.
Gaia was dragging Sukhvinder outside by the hand. She was laughing, and Andrew could tell that the full effect of the vodka was still intensifying inside her.
‘You,’ said Gaia, to Fats, ‘are really horrible to Sukhvinder.’
‘Stop it,’ said Sukhvinder, tugging against Gaia’s hand. ‘I’m serious – let me—’
‘He is!’ said Gaia breathlessly. ‘You are! Do you put stuff on her Facebook?’
‘
‘You
‘Nothing wrong with being a lesbian,’ said Patricia, her eyes narrowed through the smoke she was inhaling. ‘But then, I would say that.’
Andrew saw Fats look at Pat sideways.
‘I never said there was anything wrong with it. It’s only jokes,’ he said.
Gaia slid down the rails to sit on the chilly pavement, her head in her arms.
‘You all right?’ Andrew asked. If Fats had not been there, he would have sat down too.
‘Pissed,’ she muttered.
‘Might do better to stick your fingers down your throat,’ suggested Patricia, looking down at her dispassionately.
‘Nice car,’ Fats said, eyeing the BMW.
‘Yeah,’ said Patricia. ‘New. I make double what my brother makes,’ she said, ‘but Miles is the Christ Child. Miles the Messiah… Parish Councillor Mollison the Second… of Pagford. Do you like Pagford?’ she asked Fats, while Andrew watched Gaia breathing deeply, her head between her knees.
‘No,’ said Fats. ‘It’s a shithole.’
‘Yeah, well… I couldn’t wait to leave, personally. Did you know Barry Fairbrother?’
‘A bit,’ said Fats.
Something in his voice made Andrew worried.
‘He was my reading mentor at St Thomas’s,’ said Patricia, with her eyes still on the end of the street. ‘Lovely bloke. I would have come back for the funeral, but Melly and I were in Zermatt. What’s all this stuff my mother’s been gloating about… this Barry’s Ghost stuff?’
‘Someone putting stuff on the Parish Council website,’ said Andrew hastily, afraid of what Fats might say, if he let him. ‘Rumours and stuff.’
‘Yeah, my mother would love that,’ said Patricia.
‘Wonder what the Ghost’ll say next?’ Fats asked, with a sidelong glance at Andrew.
‘Probably stop now the election’s over,’ muttered Andrew.
‘Oh, I dunno,’ said Fats. ‘If there’s stuff old Barry’s Ghost is still pissed off about…’
He knew that he was making Andrew anxious and he was glad of it. Andrew was spending all his time at his poxy job these days, and he would soon be moving. Fats did not owe Andrew anything. True authenticity could not exist alongside guilt and obligation.
‘You all right down there?’ Patricia asked Gaia, who nodded, with her face still hidden. ‘What was it, the drink or the duet that made you feel sick?’
Andrew laughed a little bit, out of politeness and because he wanted to keep the subject away from the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother.
‘Turned my stomach too,’ said Patricia. ‘Old Maureen and my father singing along together. Arm in arm.’ Patricia took a final fierce drag on her cigarette and threw the end down, grinding it beneath her heel. ‘I walked in on her blowing him when I was twelve,’ she said. ‘And he gave me a fiver not to tell my mother.’
Andrew and Fats stood transfixed, scared even to look at each other. Patricia wiped her face on the back of her hand: she was crying.
‘Shouldn’t have bloody come,’ she said. ‘Knew I shouldn’t.’
She got into the BMW, and the two boys watched, stunned, as she turned on the engine, reversed out of her parking space and drove away into the night.
‘Fuck me,’ said Fats.
‘I think I might be sick,’ whispered Gaia.
‘Mr Mollison wants you back inside – for the drinks.’
Her message delivered, Sukhvinder darted away again.
‘I can’t,’ whispered Gaia.
Andrew left her there. The din in the hall hit him as he opened the inner doors. The disco was in full swing. He had to move aside to allow Aubrey and Julia Fawley room to leave. Both, with their backs to the party, looked grimly pleased to be going.
Samantha Mollison was not dancing, but was leaning up against the trestle table where, so recently, there had been rows and rows of drinks. While Sukhvinder rushed around collecting glasses, Andrew unpacked the last box of clean ones, set them out and filled them.
‘Your bow tie’s crooked,’ Samantha told him, and she leaned across the table and straightened it for him. Embarrassed, he ducked into the kitchen as soon as she let go. Between each load of glasses he put in the dishwasher, Andrew took another swig of the vodka he had stolen. He wanted to be drunk like Gaia; he wanted to return to that moment when they had been laughing uncontrollably together, before Fats had appeared.
After ten minutes, he checked the drinks table again; Samantha was still propped up against it, glassy- eyed, and there were plenty of fresh-poured drinks left for her to enjoy. Howard was bobbing in the middle of the dance floor, sweat pouring down his face, roaring with laughter at something Maureen had said to him. Andrew wound his way through the crowd and back outside.
He could not see where she was at first: then he spotted them. Gaia and Fats were locked together ten yards away from the door, leaning up against the railings, bodies pressed tight against each other, tongues working in each other’s mouths.
‘Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t do it all,’ said Sukhvinder desperately from behind him. Then she spotted Fats
