J. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy

‘He’s not answering,’ said Colin calmly; he had already dialled Fats on his mobile. ‘We’ll need to go and look for him.’

Colin had rehearsed for calamity all his life. He was ready. He took down his coat.

‘I’ll try Arf,’ said Tessa, running to the telephone.

Isolated above the little town, no news of the calamities had yet reached Hilltop House. Andrew’s mobile rang in the kitchen.

‘’Lo,’ he said, his mouth full of toast.

‘Andy, it’s Tessa Wall. Is Stu with you?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

But he was not at all sorry that Fats was not with him.

‘Something’s happened, Andy. Stu was down at the river with Krystal Weedon, and she had her little brother with her, and the boy’s drowned. Stu’s run – run off somewhere. Can you think where he might be?’

‘No,’ said Andrew automatically, because that was his and Fats’ code. Never tell the parents.

But the horror of what she had just told him crept through the phone like a clammy fog. Everything was suddenly less clear, less certain. She was about to hang up.

‘Wait, Mrs Wall,’ he said. ‘I might know… there’s a place down by the river…’

‘I don’t think he’d go near the river now,’ said Tessa.

Seconds flicked by, and Andrew was more and more convinced that Fats was in the Cubby Hole.

‘It’s the only place I can think of,’ he said.

‘Tell me where—’

‘I’d have to show you.’

‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ she shouted.

Colin was already patrolling the streets of Pagford on foot. Tessa drove the Nissan up the winding hill road, and found Andrew waiting for her on the corner, where he usually caught the bus. He directed her down through the town. The street lights were feeble by twilight.

They parked by the trees where Andrew usually threw down Simon’s racing bike. Tessa got out of the car and followed Andrew to the edge of the water, puzzled and frightened.

‘He’s not here,’ she said.

‘It’s along there,’ said Andrew, pointing at the sheer dark face of Pargetter Hill, running straight down to the river with barely a lip of bank before the rushing water.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Tessa, horrified.

Andrew had known from the first that she would not be able to come with him, short and dumpy as she was.

‘I’ll go and see,’ he said. ‘If you wait here.’

‘But it’s too dangerous!’ she cried over the roar of the powerful river.

Ignoring her, he reached for the familiar hand and footholds. As he inched away along the tiny ledge, the same thought came to both of them; that Fats might have fallen, or jumped, into the river thundering so close to Andrew’s feet.

Tessa remained at the water’s edge until she could not make Andrew out any longer, then turned away, trying not to cry in case Stuart was there, and she needed to talk to him calmly. For the first time, she wondered where Krystal was. The police had not said, and her terror for Fats had obliterated every other concern…

Please God, let me find Stuart , she prayed. Let me find Stuart, please, God.

Then she pulled her mobile from her cardigan pocket and called Kay Bawden.

‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard,’ she shouted, over the rushing water, and she told Kay the story.

‘But I’m not her social worker any more,’ said Kay.

Twenty feet away, Andrew had reached the Cubby Hole. It was pitch black; he had never been here this late. He swung himself inside.

‘Fats?’

He heard something move at the back of the hole.

‘Fats? You there?’

‘Got a light, Arf?’ said an unrecognizable voice. ‘I dropped my bloody matches.’

Andrew thought of shouting out to Tessa, but she did not know how long it took to reach the Cubby Hole. She could wait a few more moments.

He passed over his lighter. By its flickering flame, Andrew saw that his friend’s appearance was almost as changed as his voice. Fats’ eyes were swollen; his whole face looked puffy.

The flame went out. Fats’ cigarette tip glowed bright in the darkness.

‘Is he dead? Her brother?’

Andrew had not realized that Fats did not know.

‘Yeah,’ he said, and then he added, ‘I think so. That’s what I – what I heard.’

There was a silence, and then a soft, piglet-like squeal reached him through the darkness.

‘Mrs Wall,’ yelled Andrew, sticking his head out of the hole as far as it would go, so that he could not hear Fats’ sobs over the sound of the river. ‘Mrs Wall, he’s here!’

The policewoman had been gentle and kind, in the cluttered cottage by the river, where dank water now covered blankets, chintzy chairs and worn rugs. The old lady who owned the place had brought a hot-water bottle and a cup of boiling tea, which Sukhvinder could not lift because she was shaking like a drill. She had disgorged chunks of information: her own name, and Krystal’s name, and the name of the dead little boy that they were loading onto an ambulance. The dog-walker who had pulled her from the river was rather deaf; he gave a statement to the police in the next room, and Sukhvinder hated the sound of his bellowed account. He had tethered his dog to a tree outside the window, and it whined persistently.

Then the police had called her parents and they had come, Parminder knocking over a table and smashing one of the old lady’s ornaments as she crossed the room with clean clothes in her arms. In the tiny bathroom, the deep dirty gash on Sukhvinder’s leg was revealed, peppering the fluffy bath mat with black spots, and when Parminder saw the wound she shrieked at Vikram, who was thanking everyone loudly in the hall, that they must take Sukhvinder to the hospital.

She had vomited again in the car, and her mother, who was beside her in the back seat, had mopped her up, and all the way there Parminder and Vikram had kept up a flow of loud talk; her father kept repeating himself, saying things like ‘she’ll need a sedative’ and ‘that cut will definitely need stitches’; and Parminder, who was in the back seat with the shaking and retching Sukhvinder, kept saying, ‘You might have died. You might have died.’

It was as if she was still underwater. Sukhvinder was somewhere she could not breathe. She tried to cut through it all, to be heard.

‘Does Krystal know he’s dead?’ she asked through chattering teeth, and Parminder had to ask her to repeat the question several times.

‘I don’t know,’ she answered at last. ‘You might have died, Jolly.’

At the hospital, they made her undress again, but this time her mother was with her in the curtained cubicle, and she realized her mistake too late when she saw the expression of horror on Parminder’s face.

‘My God,’ she said, grabbing Sukhvinder’s forearm. ‘My God. What have you done to yourself?’

Sukhvinder had no words, so she allowed herself to subside into tears and uncontrollable shaking, and Vikram shouted at everyone, including Parminder, to leave her alone, but also to damn well hurry up, and that her cut needed cleaning and she needed stitches and sedatives and X-rays…

Later, they put her in a bed with a parent on each side of her, and both of them stroked her hands. She was warm and numb, and there was no pain in her leg any more. The sky beyond the windows was dark.

‘Howard Mollison’s had another heart attack,’ she heard her mother tell her father. ‘Miles wanted me to go to him.’

‘Bloody nerve,’ said Vikram.

To Sukhvinder’s drowsy surprise, they talked no more about Howard Mollison. They merely continued to stroke her hands until, shortly afterwards, she fell asleep.

On the far side of the building, in a shabby blue room with plastic chairs and a fish tank in the corner, Miles and Samantha were sitting on either side of Shirley, waiting for news from theatre. Miles was still wearing his slippers.