The Casual Vacancy

and a forest of signposts.

Krystal followed two old ladies out of the bus and stood with her hands in her tracksuit pockets, looking around. She had already forgotten what kind of ward Danielle had told her Nana Cath was on; she recalled only the number twelve. She approached the nearest signpost with a casual air, squinting at it almost incidentally: it bore line upon line of impenetrable print, with words as long as Krystal’s arm and arrows pointing left, right, diagonally. Krystal did not read well; being confronted with large quantities of words made her feel intimidated and aggressive. After several surreptitious glances at the arrows, she decided that there were no numbers there at all, so she followed the two old ladies towards the double glass doors at the front of the main building.

The foyer was crowded and more confusing than the signposts. There was a bustling shop, which was separated from the main hall by floor to ceiling windows; there were rows of plastic chairs, which seemed to be full of people eating sandwiches; there was a packed cafe in the corner; and a kind of hexagonal counter in the middle of the floor, where women were answering enquiries as they checked their computers. Krystal headed there, her hands still in her pockets.

‘Where’s ward twelve?’ Krystal asked one of the women in a surly voice.

‘Third floor,’ said the woman, matching her tone.

Krystal did not want to ask anything else out of pride, so she turned and walked away, until she spotted lifts at the far end of the foyer and entered one going up.

It took her nearly fifteen minutes to find the ward. Why didn’t they put up numbers and arrows, not these stupid long words? But then, walking along a pale green corridor with her trainers squeaking on the linoleum floor, someone called her name.

‘Krystal?’

It was her aunt Cheryl, big and broad in a denim skirt and tight white vest, with banana-yellow black-rooted hair. She was tattooed from her knuckles to the tops of her thick arms, and wore multiple gold hoops like curtain rings in each ear. There was a can of Coke in her hand.

‘She ain’ bothered, then?’ said Cheryl. Her bare legs were planted firmly apart, like a sentry guard.

‘’Oo?’

‘Terri. She din’ wanna come?’

‘She don’ know ye’. I on’y jus’ ’eard. Danielle called an’ tole me.’

Cheryl ripped off the ring-pull and slurped Coke, her tiny eyes sunken in a wide, flat face that was mottled like corned beef, scrutinizing Krystal over the top of the can.

‘I tole Danielle ter call yeh when it ’appened. Three days she were lyin’ in the ’ouse, and no one fuckin’ found ’er. The state of ’er. Fuckin’ ’ell.’

Krystal did not ask Cheryl why she herself had not walked the short distance to Foley Road to tell Terri the news. Evidently the sisters had fallen out again. It was impossible to keep up.

‘Where is she?’ asked Krystal.

Cheryl led the way, her flip-flops making a slapping noise on the floor.

‘Hey,’ she said, as they walked. ‘I ’ad a call fr’m a journalist about you.’

‘Didja?’

‘She give me a number.’

Krystal would have asked more questions, but they had entered a very quiet ward, and she was suddenly frightened. She did not like the smell.

Nana Cath was almost unrecognizable. One side of her face was terribly twisted, as though the muscles had been pulled with a wire. Her mouth dragged to one side; even her eye seemed to droop. There were tubes taped to her, a needle in her arm. Lying down, the deformity in her chest was much more obvious. The sheet rose and fell in odd places, as if the grotesque head on its scrawny neck protruded from a barrel.

When Krystal sat down beside her, Nana Cath made no movement. She simply gazed. One little hand trembled slightly.

‘She ain’ talkin’, bu’ she said yer name, twice, las’ nigh’,’ Cheryl told her, staring gloomily over the rim of her can.

There was a tightness in Krystal’s chest. She did not know whether it would hurt Nana Cath to hold her hand. She edged her own fingers to within a few inches of Nana Cath’s, but let them rest on the bedspread.

‘Rhiannon’s bin in,’ said Cheryl. ‘An’ John an’ Sue. Sue’s tryin’ ter get hold of Anne-Marie.’

Krystal’s spirits leapt.

‘Where is she?’ she asked Cheryl.

‘Somewhere out Frenchay way. Y’know she’s got a baby now?’

‘Yeah, I ’eard,’ said Krystal. ‘Wha’ was it?’

‘Dunno,’ said Cheryl, swigging Coke.

Someone at school had told her: Hey, Krystal, your sister’s up the duff! She had been excited by the news. She was going to be an auntie, even if she never saw the baby. All her life, she had been in love with the idea of Anne-Marie, who had been taken away before Krystal was born; spirited into another dimension, like a fairy-tale character, as beautiful and mysterious as the dead man in Terri’s bathroom.

Nana Cath’s lips moved.

‘Wha’?’ said Krystal, bending low, half scared, half elated.

‘D’yeh wan’ somethin’, Nana Cath?’ asked Cheryl, so loudly that whispering guests at other beds stared over.

Krystal could hear a wheezing, rattling noise, but Nana Cath seemed to be making a definite attempt to form a word. Cheryl was leaning over the other side, one hand gripping the metal bars at the head of the bed.

‘…Oh… mm,’ said Nana Cath.

‘Wha’?’ said Krystal and Cheryl together.

The eyes had moved millimetres: rheumy, filmy eyes, looking at Krystal’s smooth young face, her open mouth, as she leaned over her great-grandmother, puzzled, eager and fearful.

‘…owin…’ said the cracked old voice.

‘She dunno wha’ she’s sayin’,’ Cheryl shouted over her shoulder at the timid couple visiting at the next bed. ‘Three days lef’ on the fuckin’ floor, ’s’not surprisin’, is it?’

But tears had blurred Krystal’s eyes. The ward with its high windows dissolved into white light and shadow; she seemed to see a flash of bright sunlight on dark green water, fragmented into brilliant shards by the splashing rise and fall of oars.

‘Yeah,’ she whispered to Nana Cath. ‘Yeah, I goes rowin’, Nana.’

But it was no longer true, because Mr Fairbrother was dead.

VI

‘The fuck have you done to your face? Come off the bike again?’ asked Fats.

‘No,’ said Andrew. ‘Si-Pie hit me. I was trying to tell the stupid cunt he’d got it wrong about Fairbrother.’

He and his father had been in the woodshed, filling the baskets that sat on either side of the wood-burner in the sitting room. Simon had hit Andrew around the head with a log, knocking him into the pile of wood, grazing his acne-covered cheek.

D’you think you know more about what goes on than I do, you spotty little shit? If I hear you’ve breathed a word of what goes on in this house—

I haven’t—

I’ll fucking skin you alive, d’you hear me? How do you know Fairbrother wasn’t on the fiddle too, eh? And the other fucker was the only one dumb enough to get caught?

And then, whether out of pride or defiance, or because his fantasies of easy money had taken too strong a hold on his imagination to become dislodged by facts, Simon had sent in his application forms. Humiliation, for which the whole family would surely pay, was a certainty.