The Casual Vacancy Read Online Free PDF Page A

stamping as she ran.
    “Eggs,” she stated, at the kitchen door. “Like you make me every morning. Not. And thanks to him, ” with a venomous look at the back of Gavin’s head, “I’ve probably missed the bloody bus.”
    “Well, if you hadn’t spent so long doing your hair,” Kay shouted at the figure of her retreating daughter, who did not respond, but stormed down the hall, her bag bouncing off the walls, and slammed the front door behind her.
    “Kay, I’ve got to go,” said Gavin.
    “But look, I’ve got it all ready, you could have it before —”
    “I’ve got to change my shirt. And, shit, I did Barry’s will for him, I’ll need to look it out. No, I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. I can’t believe it,” he added, rereading Miles’ text. “I can’t believe it. We only played squash on Thursday. I can’t — Jesus.”
    A man had died; there was nothing she could say, not without putting herself in the wrong. He kissed her briefly on her unresponsive mouth, and then walked away, up the dark narrow hall.
    “Will I see you —?”
    “I’ll call you later,” he shouted over her, pretending not to hear.
    Gavin hurried across the road to his car, gulping the crisp, cold air, holding the fact of Barry’s death in his mind like a vial of volatile liquid that he dare not agitate. As he turned the key in the ignition, he imagined Barry’s twin daughters crying, facedown in their bunk beds. He had seen them lying like that, one above the other, each playing on a Nintendo DS, when he passed the door of their bedroom the very last time he had gone round for dinner.
    The Fairbrothers had been the most devoted couple he knew. He would never eat at their house again. He used to tell Barry how lucky he was. Not so lucky after all.
    Someone was coming down the pavement towards him; in a panic that it was Gaia, coming to shout at him or to demand a lift, he reversed too hard and hit the car behind him: Kay’s old Vauxhall Corsa. The passerby drew level with his window, and was revealed to be an emaciated, hobbling old woman in carpet slippers. Sweating, Gavin swung his steering wheel around and squeezed out of the space. As he accelerated, he glanced in the rearview mirror and saw Gaia letting herself back into Kay’s house.
    He was having difficulty getting enough air into his lungs. There was a tight knot in his chest. Only now did he realize that Barry Fairbrother had been his best friend.
    VI
    The school bus had reached the Fields, the sprawling estate that lay on the outskirts of the city of Yarvil. Dirty gray houses, some of them spray-painted with initials and obscenities; the occasional boarded window; satellite dishes and overgrown grass — none of it was any more worthy of Andrew’s sustained attention than the ruined abbey of Pagford, glittering with frost. Andrew had once been intrigued and intimidated by the Fields, but familiarity had long since rendered it all commonplace.
    The pavements swarmed with children and teenagers walking towards school, many of them in T-shirts, despite the cold. Andrew spotted Krystal Weedon, byword and dirty joke. She was bouncing along, laughing uproariously, in the middle of a mixed group of teenagers. Multiple earrings swung from each ear, and the string of her thong was clearly visible above her low-slung tracksuit bottoms. Andrew had known her since primary school, and she featured in many of the most highly colored memories of his extreme youth. They had jeered at her name, but instead of crying, as most of the little girls would have done, five-year-old Krystal had caught on, cackled and shrieked, “Weed-on! Krystal weed-on!” And she had pulled down her pants in the middle of class and pretended to do it. He retained a vivid memory of her bare pink vulva; it was as though Father Christmas had popped up in their midst; and he remembered Miss Oates, bright red in the face, marching Krystal from the room.
    By the age of twelve, transposed to the comprehensive,