The Casual Vacancy

striding down the hall, wearing an immense velvet dinner jacket; he resembled a conjuror. There were only five or six other people dotted around: the party would not start for twenty minutes. Blue, white and gold balloons had been fastened up everywhere. There was a massive trestle table largely covered in plates draped with tea-towels, and at the top of the hall a middle-aged DJ setting up his equipment.

‘Go help Maureen, Andy, will you?’

She was laying out glasses at one end of the long table, caught gaudily in a stream of light from an overhead lamp.

‘Don’t you look handsome!’ she croaked as he approached.

She was wearing a scant, stretchy shiny dress that revealed every contour of the bony body to which unexpected little rolls and pads of flesh still clung, exposed by the unforgiving fabric. From somewhere out of sight came a small ‘hi’; Gaia was crouching over a box of plates on the floor.

‘Glasses out of boxes, please, Andy,’ said Maureen, ‘and set them up here, where we’re having the bar.’

He did as he was told. As he unpacked the box, a woman he had never seen before approached, carrying several bottles of champagne.

‘These should go in the fridge, if there is one.’

She had Howard’s straight nose, Howard’s big blue eyes and Howard’s curly fair hair, but whereas his features were womanish, softened by fat, his daughter – she had to be his daughter – was unpretty yet striking, with low brows, big eyes and a cleft chin. She was wearing trousers and an open-necked silk shirt. After dumping the bottles onto the table she turned away. Her demeanour, and something about the quality of her clothing, made Andrew sure that she was the owner of the BMW outside.

‘That’s Patricia,’ whispered Gaia in his ear, and his skin tingled again as though she carried an electric charge. ‘Howard’s daughter.’

‘Yeah, I thought so,’ he said, but he was much more interested to see that Gaia was unscrewing the cap of a bottle of vodka and pouring out a measure. As he watched, she drank it straight off with a little shudder. She had barely replaced the top when Maureen reappeared beside them with an ice bucket.

‘Bloody old slapper,’ said Gaia, as Maureen walked away, and Andrew smelt the spirits on her breath. ‘Look at the state of her.’

He laughed, turned and stopped abruptly, because Shirley was right beside them, smiling her pussycat smile.

‘Has Miss Jawanda not arrived yet?’ she asked.

‘She’s on her way, she just texted me,’ said Gaia.

But Shirley did not really care where Sukhvinder was. She had overheard Andrew and Gaia’s little exchange about Maureen, and it had completely restored the good mood that had been dented by Maureen’s evident delight in her own toilette. It was difficult to satisfactorily puncture self-esteem so obtuse, so deluded, but as Shirley walked away from the teenagers towards the DJ, she planned what she would say to Howard the next time she saw him alone.

I’m afraid the young ones were, well, laughing at Maureen… it’s such a pity she wore that dress… I hate seeing her make a fool of herself.

There was plenty to be pleased about, Shirley reminded herself, for she needed a little bolstering tonight. She and Howard and Miles were all going to be on the council together; it would be marvellous, simply marvellous.

She checked that the DJ knew that Howard’s favourite song was ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’, Tom Jones’ version, and looked around for more little jobs to do: but instead her gaze fell upon the reason that her happiness, tonight, had not quite that perfect quality she had anticipated.

Patricia was standing alone, staring up at the Pagford coat of arms on the wall, and making no effort to talk to anybody. Shirley wished that Patricia would wear a skirt sometimes; but at least she had arrived alone. Shirley had been afraid that the BMW might contain another person, and that absence was something gained.

You weren’t supposed to dislike your own child; you were supposed to like them no matter what, even if they were not what you wanted, even if they turned out to be the kind of person that you would have crossed the street to avoid had you not been related. Howard took a large view of the whole matter; he even joked about it, in a mild way, beyond Patricia’s hearing. Shirley could not rise to those heights of detachment. She felt compelled to join Patricia, in the vague, unconscious hope that she might dilute the strangeness she was afraid everyone else would smell by her own exemplary dress and behaviour.

‘Do you want a drink, darling?’

‘Not yet,’ said Patricia, still staring up at the Pagford arms. ‘I had a heavy night last night. Probably still over the limit. We were out drinking with Melly’s office pals.’

Shirley smiled vaguely up at the crest above them.

‘Melly’s fine, thanks for asking,’ said Patricia.

‘Oh, good,’ said Shirley.

‘I liked the invitation,’ said Patricia. ‘Pat and guest.’

‘I’m sorry, darling, but that’s just what you put, you know, when people aren’t married—’

‘Ah, that’s what it says in Debrett’s, does it? Well, Melly didn’t want to come if she wasn’t even named on the invitation, so we had a massive row, and here I am, alone. Result, eh?’

Patricia stalked away towards the drinks, leaving Shirley a little shaken behind her. Patricia’s rages had been frightening even as a child.

‘You’re late, Miss Jawanda,’ she called, recovering her composure as a flustered Sukhvinder came hurrying towards her. In Shirley’s opinion, the girl was demonstrating a kind of insolence turning up at all, after what her mother had said to Howard, here, in this very hall. She watched her hurry to join Andrew and Gaia, and thought that she would tell Howard that they ought to let Sukhvinder go. She was tardy, and there was probably a hygiene issue with the eczema she was hiding under the long-sleeved black T-shirt; Shirley made a mental note to check whether it was contagious, on her favourite medical website.

Guests began to arrive promptly at eight o’clock. Howard told Gaia to come and stand beside him and collect coats, because he wanted everyone to see him ordering her around by name, in that little black dress and frilly apron. But there were soon too many coats for her to carry alone, so he summoned Andrew to help.

‘Nick a bottle,’ Gaia ordered Andrew, as they hung coats three and four deep in the tiny cloakroom, ‘and hide it in the kitchen. We can take it in turns to go and have some.’

‘OK,’ said Andrew, elated.

‘Gavin!’ cried Howard, as his son’s partner came through the door alone at half-past eight.

‘Kay not with you, Gavin?’ asked Shirley swiftly (Maureen was changing into sparkly stilettos behind the trestle table, so there was very little time to steal a march on her).

‘No, she couldn’t make it, unfortunately,’ said Gavin; then, to his horror, he came face to face with Gaia, who was waiting to take his coat.

‘Mum could have made it,’ said Gaia, in a clear, carrying voice, as she glared at him. ‘But Gavin’s dumped her, haven’t you, Gav?’

Howard clapped Gavin on the shoulder, pretending he had not heard, and boomed, ‘Great to see you, go get yourself a drink.’

Shirley’s expression remained impassive, but the thrill of the moment did not subside quickly, and she was a little dazed and dreamy, greeting the next few guests. When Maureen tottered over in her awful dress to join the greeting party, Shirley took immense pleasure in telling her quietly: ‘We’ve had a very awkward little scene. Very awkward. Gavin and Gaia’s mother… oh, dear… if we’d known…’

‘What? What’s happened?’

But Shirley shook her head, savouring the exquisite pleasure of Maureen’s frustrated curiosity, and opened her arms wide as Miles, Samantha and Lexie entered the hall.

‘Here he is! Parish Councillor Miles Mollison!’

Samantha watched Shirley hugging Miles as though from a great distance. She had moved so abruptly from happiness and anticipation to shock and disappointment that her thoughts had become white noise, against which she had to fight to take in the exterior world.