The Casual Vacancy

it would feel to get into a fight. He suspected that the state of authenticity he sought would include violence; or, at least, would not preclude violence. To be prepared to hit, and to take a hit, seemed to him to be a form of courage to which he ought to aspire. He had never needed his fists: his tongue had sufficed; but the emergent Fats was starting to despise his own articulacy and to admire authentic brutality. The matter of knives, Fats debated with himself more gingerly. To buy a blade now, and let it be known he was carrying it, would be an act of crashing inauthenticity, a pitiful aping of the likes of Dane Tully; Fats’ insides crawled at the thought of it. If ever the time came when he needed to carry a knife, that would be different. Fats did not rule out the possibility that such a time would come, though he admitted to himself that the idea was frightening. Fats was scared of things that pierced flesh, of needles and blades. He had been the only one to faint when they had had their meningitis vaccinations back at St Thomas’s. One of the few ways that Andrew had found to discompose Fats was to unsheath his EpiPen around him; the adrenalin-filled needle that Andrew was supposed to carry with him at all times because of his dangerous nut allergy. It made Fats feel sick when Andrew brandished it at him or pretended to jab him with it.

Wandering without any particular destination, Fats caught sight of the sign to Foley Road. That was where Krystal Weedon lived. He was unsure whether she was in school today, and it was not his intention to make her think that he had come looking for her.

They had an agreement to meet on Friday evening. Fats had told his parents that he was going to Andrew’s because they were collaborating on an English project. Krystal seemed to understand what they were going to do; she seemed up for it. She had so far allowed him to insert two fingers inside her, hot and firm and slippery; he had unhooked her bra and been permitted to place his hands on her warm, heavy breasts. He had sought her out deliberately at the Christmas disco; led her out of the hall under Andrew’s and the others’ incredulous gazes, round the back of the drama hall. She had seemed quite as surprised as anybody else, but had offered, as he had hoped and expected, virtually no resistance. His targeting of Krystal had been a deliberate act; and he had had his cool and brazen retort ready, when it had come to facing down his mates’ jeers and taunts.

‘If you want chips, you don’t go to a fucking salad bar.’

He had thought out that analogy in advance, but he had still had to spell it out for them.

‘You boys keep wanking. I want a shag.’

That had wiped the smiles off their faces. He could tell that all of them, Andrew included, were forced to choke down their jeers at his choice, in admiration of his unabashed pursuit of the one, the only true goal. Fats had undoubtedly chosen the most direct route to get there; none of them could argue with his common-sense practicality, and Fats could tell that every single one of them was asking himself why he had not had the guts to consider this means to a most satisfactory end.

‘Do me a favour, and don’t mention this to my mother, all right?’ Fats had muttered to Krystal, coming up for air in between long, wet explorations of each other’s mouths, while his thumbs had rubbed backwards and forwards over her nipples.

She had half sniggered, then kissed him with more aggression. She had not asked him why he had picked her, had not asked him anything really; she seemed, like him, to be pleased by the reactions of their entirely separate tribes, to glory in the watchers’ confusion; even in his friends’ pantomime of disgust. He and Krystal had barely spoken to each other during three further bouts of carnal exploration and experimentation. Fats had engineered all of them, but she had made herself more readily available than usual, choosing to hang about in places he might find her easily. Friday night was the first time they would meet by pre-arrangement. He had bought condoms.

The prospect of finally going all the way had something to do with him truanting today and coming to the Fields, although he had not thought of Krystal herself (as opposed to her splendid breasts and that miraculously unguarded vagina) until he saw the name of her street.

Fats doubled back, lighting another cigarette. Something about seeing the name of Foley Road had given him a strange sense that his timing was wrong. The Fields today were banal and inscrutable, and that which he sought, the thing he hoped to recognize when he found it, was curled up somewhere, out of sight. And so he walked back to school.

IV

Nobody was answering their telephone. Back in the Child Protection team’s room, Kay had been punching in numbers on and off for nearly two hours, leaving messages, asking everyone to call her back: the Weedons’ health visitor, their family doctor, the Cantermill Nursery and the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic. Terri Weedon’s file lay open on the desk in front of her, bulging and battered.

‘Using again, is she?’ said Alex, one of the women with whom Kay shared an office. ‘Bellchapel’ll kick her out for good this time. She claims she’s terrified Robbie’ll be taken off her, but she can’t keep off the smack.’

‘It’s the third time she’s been through Bellchapel,’ said Una.

On the basis of what she had seen that afternoon, Kay thought the time was right for a case review, to pull together those professionals who shared responsibility for individual fragments of Terri Weedon’s life. She continued to press redial between dealing with other work, while in the corner of the office their own telephone rang repeatedly and clicked immediately onto the answering machine. The Child Protection team’s room was cramped and cluttered, and it smelt of spoilt milk, because Alex and Una had a habit of emptying the dregs of their coffee cups into the pot of a depressed-looking yucca plant in the corner.

Mattie’s most recent notes were untidy and chaotic, peppered with crossings out, misdated and partial. Several key documents were missing from the file, including a letter sent by the addiction clinic a fortnight previously. It was quicker to ask Alex and Una for information.

‘Last case review woulda been…’ said Alex, frowning at the yucca plant, ‘over a year ago, I reckon.’

‘And they thought Robbie was OK to stay with her then, obviously,’ said Kay, the receiver pressed between ear and shoulder as she tried and failed to find the notes of the review in the bulging folder.

‘It wasn’t a case of him staying with her; it was whether he was going to go back to her or not. He was put out to a foster mother, because Terri was beaten up by a client and ended up in hospital. She got clean, got out, and was mad to get Robbie back. She went back on the Bellchapel programme, she was off the game and makin’ a proper effort. Her mother was saying she’d help. So she got him home and a few months later she’d started shooting up again.’

‘It’s not Terri’s mother who helps, though, is it?’ said Kay, whose head was starting to ache, as she tried to decipher Mattie’s big, untidy writing. ‘It’s her grandmother, the kids’ great-grandmother. So she must be knocking on, and Terri said something about her being ill, this morning. If Terri’s the only carer now…’

‘The daughter’s sixteen,’ said Una. ‘She mostly takes care of Robbie.’

‘Well, she’s not doing a great job,’ said Kay. ‘He was in a pretty bad state when I got there this morning.’

But she had seen far worse: welts and sores, gashes and burns, tar-black bruises; scabies and nits; babies lying on carpets covered in dog shit; kids crawling on broken bones; and once (she dreamed of it, still), a child who had been locked in a cupboard for five days by his psychotic stepfather. That one had made the national news. The most immediate danger to Robbie Weedon’s safety had been the pile of heavy boxes in his mother’s sitting room, which he had attempted to climb when he realized that it attracted Kay’s full attention. Kay had carefully restacked them into two lower piles before leaving. Terri had not liked her touching the boxes; nor had she liked Kay telling her that she ought to take off Robbie’s sodden nappy. Terri had been roused, in fact, to foul- mouthed, though still slightly hazy, fury, and had told Kay to fuck off and stay away.

Kay’s mobile rang and she picked it up. It was Terri’s key drug worker.

‘I’ve been trying to get you for days,’ said the woman crossly. It took several minutes for Kay to explain that she was not Mattie, but this did not much reduce the woman’s antagonism.

‘Yeah, we’re still seeing her, but she tested positive last week. If she uses again, she’s out. We’ve got twenty people right now who could take her place on the programme and maybe get some benefit from it. This is the third time she’s been through.’