J. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy

He could see a house ahead that had a bald tyre lying on the grass in front of it. He had a strong suspicion that that was Krystal’s, and when he saw the number, he knew he was right. He had never been here before. He would never have agreed to meet her at her home during the lunch hour a couple of weeks ago, but things changed. He had changed.

They said that her mother was a prostitute. She was certainly a junkie. Krystal had told him that the house would be empty because her mother would be at Bellchapel Addiction Clinic, receiving her allotted amount of methadone. Fats walked up the garden path without slowing, but with unexpected trepidation.

Krystal had been on the watch for him, from her bedroom window. She had closed the doors of every room downstairs, so that all he would see was the hall; she had thrown everything that had spilt into it back into the sitting room and kitchen. The carpet was gritty and burnt in places, and the wallpaper stained, but she could do nothing about that. There had been none of the pine-scented disinfectant left, but she had found some bleach and sloshed that around the kitchen and bathroom, both of them sources of the worst smells in the house.

When he knocked, she ran downstairs. They did not have long; Terri would probably be back with Robbie at one. Not long to make a baby.

‘Hiya,’ she said, when she opened the door.

‘All right?’ said Fats, blowing out smoke through his nostrils.

He did not know what he had expected. His first glimpse of the interior of the house was of a grimy bare box. There was no furniture. The closed doors to his left and ahead were strangely ominous.

‘Are we the only ones here?’ he asked as he crossed the threshold.

‘Yeah,’ said Krystal. ‘We c’n go upstairs. My room.’

She led the way. The deeper inside they went, the worse the smell became: mingled bleach and filth. Fats tried not to care. All doors were closed on the landing, except one. Krystal went inside.

Fats did not want to be shocked, but there was nothing in the room except a mattress, which was covered with a sheet and a bare duvet, and a small pile of clothes heaped up in a corner. A few pictures ripped from tabloid newspapers were sellotaped to the wall; a mixture of pop stars and celebrities.

Krystal had made her collage the previous day, in imitation of the one on Nikki’s bedroom wall. Knowing that Fats was coming over, she had wanted to make the room more hospitable. She had drawn the thin curtains. They gave a blueish tinge to daylight.

‘Gimme a fag,’ she said. ‘I’m gasping.’

He lit it for her. She was more nervous than he had ever seen her; he preferred her cocky and worldly.

‘We ain’ got long,’ she told him, and with the cigarette in her mouth, she began to strip. ‘Me mum’ll be back.’

‘Yeah, at Bellchapel, isn’t she?’ said Fats, somehow trying to harden Krystal up again in his mind.

‘Yeah,’ said Krystal, sitting on the mattress and pulling off her tracksuit bottoms.

‘What if they close it?’ asked Fats, taking off his blazer. ‘I heard they’re thinking about it.’

‘I dunno,’ said Krystal, but she was frightened. Her mother’s willpower, fragile and vulnerable as a fledgling chick, could fail at the slightest provocation.

She had already stripped to her underwear. Fats was taking off his shoes when he noticed something nestled beside her heaped clothes: a small plastic jewellery box lying open, and curled inside, a familiar watch.

‘Is that my mum’s?’ he said, in surprise.

‘What?’ Krystal panicked. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘It was my Nana Cath’s. Don’t—!’

But he had already pulled it out of the box.

‘It is hers,’ he said. He recognized the strap.

‘It fuckin’ ain’t!’

She was terrified. She had almost forgotten that she had stolen it, where it had come from. Fats was silent, and she did not like it.

The watch in Fats’ hand seemed to be both challenging and reproaching him. In quick succession he imagined walking out, slipping it casually into his pocket, or handing it back to Krystal with a shrug.

‘It’s mine,’ she said.

He did not want to be a policeman. He wanted to be lawless. But it took the recollection that the watch had been Cubby’s gift to make him hand it back to her and carry on taking off his clothes. Scarlet in the face, Krystal tugged off bra and pants and slipped, naked, beneath the duvet.

Fats approached her in his boxer shorts, a wrapped condom in his hand.

‘We don’ need that,’ said Krystal thickly. ‘I’m takin’ the pill now.’

‘Are you?’

She moved over on the mattress for him. Fats slid under the duvet. As he pulled off his boxers, he wondered whether she was lying about the pill, like the watch. But he had wanted to try without a condom for a while.

‘Go on,’ she whispered, and she tugged the little foil square out of his hand and threw it on top of his blazer, crumpled on the floor.

He imagined Krystal pregnant with his child; the faces of Tessa and Cubby when they heard. His kid in the Fields, his flesh and blood. It would be more than Cubby had ever managed.

He climbed on top of her; this, he knew, was real life.

At half-past six that evening, Howard and Shirley Mollison entered Pagford Church Hall. Shirley was carrying an armful of papers and Howard was wearing the chain of office decorated with the blue and white Pagford crest.

The floorboards creaked beneath Howard’s massive weight as he moved to the head of the scratched tables that had already been set end to end. Howard was almost as fond of this hall as he was of his own shop. The Brownies used it on Tuesdays, and the Women’s Institute on Wednesdays. It had hosted jumble sales and Jubilee celebrations, wedding receptions and wakes, and it smelt of all of these things: of stale clothes and coffee urns, and the ghosts of home-baked cakes and meat salads; of dust and human bodies; but primarily of aged wood and stone. Beaten-brass lights hung from the rafters on thick black flexes, and the kitchen was reached through ornate mahogany doors.

Shirley bustled from place to place, setting out papers. She adored council meetings. Quite apart from the pride and enjoyment she derived from listening to Howard chair them, Maureen was necessarily absent; with no official role, she had to be content with the pickings Shirley deigned to share.

Howard’s fellow councillors arrived singly and in pairs. He boomed out greetings, his voice echoing from the rafters. The full complement of sixteen councillors rarely attended; he was expecting twelve of them today.

The table was half full when Aubrey Fawley arrived, walking, as he always did, as if into a high wind, with an air of reluctant forcefulness, slightly stooped, his head bowed.

‘Aubrey!’ called Howard joyfully, and for the first time he moved forward to greet the newcomer. ‘How are you? How’s Julia? Did you get my invitation?’

‘Sorry, I don’t—’

‘To my sixty-fifth? Here – Saturday – day after the election.’

‘Oh, yes, yes. Howard, there’s a young woman outside – she says she’s from the Yarvil and District Gazette . Alison something?’

‘Oh,’ said Howard. ‘Strange. I’ve just sent her my article, you know, the one answering Fairbrother’s… Maybe it’s something to do… I’ll go and see.’

He waddled away, full of vague misgivings. Parminder Jawanda entered as he approached the door; scowling as usual, she walked straight past without greeting him, and for once Howard did not ask ‘how’s Parminder?’.

Out on the pavement he found a young blonde woman, stocky and square, with an aura of impermeable cheerfulness that Howard recognized immediately as determination of his own brand. She was holding a notebook and looking up at the Sweetlove initials carved over the double doors.