And at the bottom of Church Row, Parminder Jawanda slipped a coat on over her nightdress and took her coffee into the back garden. Sitting in the chilly sunlight on a wooden bench, she saw that it was promising to be a beautiful day, but there seemed to be a blockage between her eyes and her heart. The heavy weight on her chest deadened everything.
The news that Miles Mollison had won Barry’s seat on the Parish Council had not been a surprise, but on seeing Shirley’s neat little announcement on the website, she had known another flicker of that madness that had overtaken her at the last meeting: a desire to attack, superseded almost at once by stifling hopelessness.
‘I’m going to resign from the council,’ she told Vikram. ‘What’s the point?’
‘But you like it,’ he had said.
She had liked it when Barry had been there too. It was easy to conjure him up this morning, when everything was quiet and still. A little, ginger-bearded man; she had been taller than him by half a head. She had never felt the slightest physical attraction towards him.
And it was the memory of laughter that, at last, made the tears flow from her eyes. They trickled down her nose and into her coffee, where they made little bullet holes, swiftly erased. She was crying because she never seemed to laugh any more, and also because the previous evening, while they had been listening to the jubilant distant thump of the disco in the church hall, Vikram had said, ‘Why don’t we visit Amritsar this summer?’
The Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the religion to which he was indifferent. She had known at once what Vikram was doing. Time lay slack and empty on her hands as never before in her life. Neither of them knew what the GMC would decide to do with her, once it had considered her ethical breach towards Howard Mollison.
‘Mandeep says it’s a big tourist trap,’ she had replied, dismissing Amritsar at a stroke.
Sukhvinder had crossed the lawn without Parminder noticing. She was dressed in jeans and a baggy sweatshirt. Parminder hastily wiped her face and squinted at Sukhvinder, who had her back to the sun.
‘I don’t want to go to work today.’
Parminder responded at once, in the same spirit of automatic contradiction that had made her turn down Amritsar. ‘You’ve made a commitment, Sukhvinder.’
‘I don’t feel well.’
‘You mean you’re tired. You’re the one who wanted this job. Now you fulfil your obligations.’
‘But—’
‘You’re going to work,’ snapped Parminder, and she might have been pronouncing sentence. ‘You’re not giving the Mollisons another reason to complain.’
After Sukhvinder walked back to the house Parminder felt guilty. She almost called her daughter back, but instead she made a mental note that she must try and find time to sit down with her and talk to her without arguing.
V
Krystal was walking along Foley Road in the early morning sunlight, eating a banana. It was an unfamiliar taste and texture, and she could not make up her mind whether she liked it or not. Terri and Krystal never bought fruit.
Nikki’s mother had just turfed her unceremoniously out of the house.
‘We got things to do, Krystal,’ she had said. ‘We’re going to Nikki’s gran’s for dinner.’
As an afterthought, she had handed Krystal the banana to eat for breakfast. Krystal had left without protest. There was barely enough room for Nikki’s family around the kitchen table.
The Fields were not improved by sunshine, which merely showed up the dirt and the damage, the cracks in the concrete walls, the boarded windows and the litter.
The Square in Pagford looked freshly painted whenever the sun shone. Twice a year, the primary school children had walked through the middle of town, crocodile fashion, on their way to church for Christmas and Easter services. (Nobody had ever wanted to hold Krystal’s hand. Fats had told them all that she had fleas. She wondered whether he remembered.) There had been hanging baskets full of flowers; splashes of purple, pink and green, and every time Krystal had passed one of the planted troughs outside the Black Canon, she had pulled off a petal. Each one had been cool and slippery in her fingers, swiftly becoming slimy and brown as she clutched it, and she usually wiped it off on the underside of a warm wooden pew in St Michael’s.
She let herself into her house and saw at once, through the open door to her left, that Terri had not gone to bed. She was sitting in her armchair with her eyes closed and her mouth open. Krystal closed the door with a snap, but Terri did not stir.
Krystal was at Terri’s side in four strides, shaking her thin arm. Terri’s head fell forwards onto her shrunken chest. She snored.
Krystal let go of her. The vision of a dead man in the bathroom swam back into her subconscious.
‘Silly bitch,’ she said.
Then it occurred to her that Robbie was not there. She pounded up the stairs, shouting for him.
‘’M’ere,’ she heard him say, from behind her own closed bedroom door.
When she shouldered it open, she saw Robbie standing there, naked. Behind him, scratching his bare chest, lying on her own mattress, was Obbo.
‘All righ’, Krys?’ he said, grinning.
She seized Robbie and pulled him into his own room. Her hands trembled so badly that it took her ages to dress him.
‘Did ’e do somethin’ to yer?’ she whispered to Robbie.
‘’M’ungry,’ said Robbie.
When he was dressed, she picked him up and ran downstairs. She could hear Obbo moving around in her bedroom.
‘Why’s ’e ’ere?’ she shouted at Terri, who was drowsily awake in her chair. ‘Why’s ’e with Robbie?’
Robbie fought to get out of her arms; he hated shouting.
‘An’ wha’ the fuck’s that?’ screamed Krystal, spotting, for the first time, two black holdalls lying beside Terri’s armchair.
‘S’nuthin’,’ said Terri vaguely.
But Krystal had already forced one of the zips open.
‘
Big, brick-like blocks of hashish wrapped neatly in sheets of polythene: Krystal, who could barely read, who could not have identified half the vegetables in a supermarket, who could not have named the Prime Minister, knew that the contents of the bag, if discovered on the premises, meant prison for her mother. Then she saw the tin, with the coachman and horses on the lid, half-protruding from the chair on which Terri was sitting.
‘Yeh’ve used,’ said Krystal breathlessly, as disaster rained invisibly around her and everything collapsed. ‘Yeh’ve fuckin’—’
She heard Obbo on the stairs and she snatched up Robbie again. He wailed and struggled in her arms, frightened by her anger, but Krystal’s grip was unbreakable.
‘Fuckin’ lerrim go,’ called Terri fruitlessly. Krystal had opened the front door and was running as fast as she could, encumbered by Robbie who was resisting and moaning, back along the road.
VI
