Robbie wriggled through the hole and contemplated the wide green space with its spreading chestnut tree and goal posts. Robbie knew what they were, because his cousin Dane had showed him how to kick a football at the play park. He had never seen so much greenness.
A woman came striding across the field, with her arms folded and her head bowed.
(Samantha had been walking at random, walking and walking, anywhere as long as it was nowhere near Church Row. She had been asking herself many questions and coming up with few answers; and one of the questions she asked herself was whether she might not have gone too far in telling Miles about that stupid, drunken letter, which she had sent out of spite, and which seemed much less clever now…
She glanced up and her eyes met Robbie’s. Children often wriggled through the hole in the hedge to play in the field at weekends. Her own girls had done it when they were younger.
She climbed over the gate and turned away from the river towards the Square. Self-disgust clung to her, no matter how hard she tried to outrun it.)
Robbie went back through the hole in the hedge and walked a little way along the road after the striding lady, but she was soon out of sight. The half-packet of remaining Rolos were melting in his hand, and he did not want to put them down, but he was so thirsty. Maybe Krystal had finished. He wandered back in the opposite direction.
When he reached the first patch of bushes on the bank, he saw that they were not moving, so he thought it was all right to approach.
‘Krystal,’ he said.
But the bushes were empty. Krystal was gone.
Robbie started to wail and shout for Krystal. He clambered back up the bank and looked wildly up and down the road, but there was no sign of her.
‘Krystal!’ he yelled.
A woman with short silver hair glanced at him, frowning, as she trotted briskly along the opposite pavement.
Shirley had left Lexie at the Copper Kettle, where she seemed happy, but a short way across the Square she had caught a glimpse of Samantha, who was the very last person she wanted to meet, so she had taken off in the opposite direction.
The boy’s wails and squawks echoed behind her as she hurried along. Shirley’s fist was clutched tightly around the EpiPen in her pocket. She would not be a dirty joke. She wanted to be pure and pitied, like Mary Fairbrother. Her rage was so enormous, so dangerous, that she could not think coherently: she wanted to act, to punish, to finish.
Just before the old stone bridge, a patch of bushes shivered to Shirley’s left. She glanced down and caught a disgusting glimpse of something sordid and vile, and it drove her on.
XIII
Sukhvinder had been walking around Pagford longer than Samantha. She had left the Old Vicarage shortly after her mother had told her she must go to work, and since then had been wandering the streets, observing invisible exclusion zones around Church Row, Hope Street and the Square.
She had nearly fifty pounds in her pocket, which represented her wages from the cafe and the party, and the razor blade. She had wanted to take her building society pass book, which resided in a little filing cabinet in her father’s study, but Vikram had been at his desk. She had waited for a while at the bus stop where you could catch a bus into Yarvil, but then she had spotted Shirley and Lexie Mollison coming down the road, and dived out of sight.
Gaia’s betrayal had been brutal and unexpected. Pulling Fats Wall… he would drop Krystal now that he had Gaia. Any boy would drop any girl for Gaia, she knew that. But she could not bear to go to work and hear her one ally trying to tell her that Fats was all right, really.
Her mobile buzzed. Gaia had already texted her twice.
How pissed was I last nite?
R u going 2 work?
Nothing about Fats Wall. Nothing about snogging Sukhvinder’s torturer. The new message said, R u OK?
Sukhvinder put the mobile back into her pocket. She might walk towards Yarvil and catch a bus outside town, where nobody would see her. Her parents would not miss her until five thirty, when they expected her home from the cafe.
A desperate plan formed as she walked, hot and tired: if she could find a place to stay that cost less than fifty pounds… all she wanted was to be alone and ply her razor blade.
She was on the river road with the Orr flowing beside her. If she crossed the bridge, she would be able to take a back street all the way round to the start of the bypass.
‘Robbie!
It was Krystal Weedon, running up and down the river bank. Fats Wall was smoking, with one hand in his pocket, watching Krystal run.
Sukhvinder took a sharp right onto the bridge, terrified that one of them might notice her. Krystal’s yells were echoing off the rushing water.
Sukhvinder caught sight of something in the river below.
Her hands were already on the hot stone ledge before she had thought about what she was doing, and then she had hoisted herself onto the edge of the bridge; she yelled, ‘
XIV
When Shirley opened the bedroom door, she saw nothing but two empty beds. Justice required a sleeping Howard; she would have to advise him to return to bed.
But there was no sound from either the kitchen or the bathroom. Shirley was worried that, by taking the river road home, she had missed him. He must have got dressed and set off for work; he might already be with Maureen in the back room, discussing Shirley; planning, perhaps, to divorce her and marry Maureen instead, now that the game was up, and pretence was ended.
She half ran into the sitting room, intending to telephone the Copper Kettle. Howard was lying on the carpet in his pyjamas.
His face was purple and his eyes were popping. A faint wheezing noise came from his lips. One hand was clutching feebly at his chest. His pyjama top had ridden up. Shirley could see the very patch of scabbed raw skin where she had planned to plunge the needle.
Howard’s eyes met hers in mute appeal.
Shirley stared at him, terrified, then darted out of the room. At first she hid the EpiPen in the biscuit barrel; then she retrieved it and shoved it down the back of the cookery books.
She ran back into the sitting room, seized the telephone receiver and dialled 999.
‘Pagford? This is for Orrbank Cottage, is it? There’s one on the way.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank God,’ said Shirley, and she had almost hung up when she realized what she had said and screamed, ‘no, no, not Orrbank Cottage…’
But the operator had gone and she had to dial again. She was panicking so much that she dropped the receiver. On the carpet beside her, Howard’s wheezing was becoming fainter and fainter.
