The Casual Vacancy

‘Miles! I need to change. Can you mash the potatoes for me? Miles?’

But he had disappeared upstairs, so Samantha pounded the potatoes herself, while her daughters ate at the island in the middle of the kitchen. Libby had propped the DVD cover against her glass of Diet Pepsi, and was ogling it.

‘Mikey’s so lush,’ she said, with a carnal groan that took Samantha aback; but the muscular boy was called Jake. Samantha was glad they did not like the same one.

Loud and confident Lexie was jabbering about school; a machine-gun torrent of information about girls whom Samantha did not know, with whose antics and feuds and regroupings she could not keep up.

‘All right, you two, I’ve got to change. Clear away when you’re done, all right?’

She turned down the heat under the casserole and hurried upstairs. Miles was buttoning up his shirt in the bedroom, watching himself in the wardrobe mirror. The whole room smelt of soap and aftershave.

‘Everything under control, hon?’

‘Yes, thanks. So glad you’ve had time to shower,’ spat Samantha, pulling out her favourite long skirt and top, slamming the wardrobe door.

‘You could have one now.’

‘They’ll be here in ten minutes; I won’t have time to dry my hair and put on make-up.’ She kicked off her shoes; one of them hit the radiator with a loud clang. ‘When you’ve finished preening, could you please go downstairs and sort out drinks?’

After Miles had left the room, she tried to untangle her thick hair and repair her make-up. She looked awful. Only when she had changed did she realize that she was wearing the wrong bra for her clinging top. After a frantic search, she remembered that the right one was drying in the utility room; she hurried out onto the landing but the doorbell rang. Swearing, she scuttled back to the bedroom. The boy band’s music was blaring out of Libby’s room.

Gavin and Kay had arrived on the dot of eight because Gavin was afraid of what Samantha might say if they turned up late; he could imagine her suggesting that they had lost track of time because they were shagging or that they must have had a row. She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people’s love lives. She also thought that her crass, uninhibited way of talking, especially when drunk, constituted trenchant humour.

‘Hello-ello-ello,’ said Miles, moving back to let Gavin and Kay inside. ‘Come in, come in. Welcome to Casa Mollison.’

He kissed Kay on both cheeks and relieved her of the chocolates she was holding.

‘For us? Thanks very much. Lovely to meet you properly at last. Gav’s been keeping you under wraps for far too long.’

Miles shook the wine out of Gavin’s hand, then clapped him on the back, which Gavin resented.

‘Come on through, Sam’ll be down in a mo. What’ll you have to drink?’

Kay would ordinarily have found Miles rather smooth and over-familiar, but she was determined to suspend judgement. Couples had to mix with each other’s circles, and manage to get along in them. This evening represented significant progress in her quest to infiltrate the layers of his life to which Gavin had never admitted her, and she wanted to show him that she was at home in the Mollisons’ big, smug house, that there was no need to exclude her any more. So she smiled at Miles, asked for a red wine, and admired the spacious room with its stripped pine floorboards, its over-cushioned sofa and its framed prints.

‘Been here for, ooh, getting on for fourteen years,’ said Miles, busy with the corkscrew. ‘You’re down in Hope Street, aren’t you? Nice little houses, some great fixer-upper opportunities down there.’

Samantha appeared, smiling without warmth. Kay, who had previously seen her only in an overcoat, noted the tightness of her orange top, beneath which every detail of her lacy bra was clearly visible. Her face was even darker than her leathery chest; her eye make-up was thick and unflattering and her jangling gold earrings and high-heeled golden mules were, in Kay’s opinion, tarty. Samantha struck her as the kind of woman who would have raucous girls’ nights out, and find stripograms hilarious, and flirt drunkenly with everyone else’s partner at parties.

‘Hi there,’ said Samantha. She kissed Gavin and smiled at Kay. ‘Great, you’ve got drinks. I’ll have the same as Kay, Miles.’

She turned away to sit down, having already taken stock of the other woman’s appearance: Kay was small-breasted and heavy-hipped, and had certainly chosen her black trousers to minimize the size of her bottom. She would have done better, in Samantha’s opinion, to wear heels, given the shortness of her legs. Her face was attractive enough, with even-toned olive skin, large dark eyes and a generous mouth; but the closely cropped boy’s hair and the resolutely flat shoes were undoubtedly pointers to certain sacrosanct Beliefs. Gavin had done it again: he had gone and picked another humourless, domineering woman who would make his life a misery.

‘So!’ said Samantha brightly, raising her glass. ‘Gavin-and-Kay!’

She saw, with satisfaction, Gavin’s hangdog wince of a smile; but before she could make him squirm more or weasel private information out of them both to dangle over Shirley’s and Maureen’s heads, the doorbell rang again.

Mary appeared fragile and angular, especially beside Miles, who ushered her into the room. Her T-shirt hung from protruding collarbones.

‘Oh,’ she said, coming to a startled halt on the threshold. ‘I didn’t realize you were having—’

‘Gavin and Kay just dropped in,’ said Samantha a little wildly. ‘Come in, Mary, please… have a drink…’

‘Mary, this is Kay,’ said Miles. ‘Kay, this is Mary Fairbrother.’

‘Oh,’ said Kay, thrown; she had thought that it would only be the four of them. ‘Yes, hello.’

Gavin, who could tell that Mary had not meant to drop in on a dinner party and was on the point of walking straight back out again, patted the sofa beside him; Mary sat down with a weak smile. He was overjoyed to see her. Here was his buffer; even Samantha must realize that her particular brand of prurience would be inappropriate in front of a bereaved woman; plus, the constrictive symmetry of a foursome had been broken up.

‘How are you?’ he said quietly. ‘I was going to give you a ring, actually… there’ve been developments with the insurance…’

‘Haven’t we got any nibbles, Sam?’ asked Miles.

Samantha walked from the room, seething at Miles. The smell of scorched meat met her as she opened the kitchen door.

‘Oh shit, shit, shit…’

She had completely forgotten the casserole, which had dried out. Desiccated chunks of meat and vegetables sat, forlorn survivors of the catastrophe, on the singed bottom of the pot. Samantha sloshed in wine and stock, chiselling the adhering bits off the pan with her spoon, stirring vigorously, sweating in the heat. Miles’ high-pitched laugh rang out from the sitting room. Samantha put on long-stemmed broccoli to steam, drained her glass of wine, ripped open a bag of tortilla chips and a tub of hummus, and upended them into bowls.

Mary and Gavin were still conversing quietly on the sofa when she returned to the sitting room, while Miles was showing Kay a framed aerial photograph of Pagford, and giving her a lesson in the town’s history. Samantha set down the bowls on the coffee table, poured herself another drink and settled into the armchair, making no effort to join either conversation. It was awfully uncomfortable to have Mary there; with her grief hanging so heavily around her she might as well have walked in trailing a shroud. Surely, though, she would leave before dinner.

Gavin was determined that Mary should stay. As they discussed the latest developments in their ongoing battle with the insurance company, he felt much more relaxed and in control than he usually did in Miles and Samantha’s presence. Nobody was chipping away at him, or patronizing him, and Miles was absolving him temporarily of all responsibility for Kay.

‘…and just here, just out of sight,’ Miles was saying, pointing to a spot two inches past the frame of the picture, ‘you’ve got Sweetlove House, the Fawley place. Big Queen Anne manor house, dormers, stone quoins… stunning, you should visit, it’s open to the public on Sundays in the summer. Important family locally, the Fawleys.’

‘Stone quoins?’ ‘Important family, locally?’ God, you are an arse, Miles.

Samantha hoisted herself out of her armchair and returned to the kitchen. Though the casserole was