VI.

Shirley showered and pulled clothes out of the wardrobe while Howard slept noisily on. The church bell of St. Michael and All Saints, ringing for ten o'clock matins, reached her as she buttoned up her cardigan. She always thought how loud it must be for the Jawandas, living right opposite, and hoped that it struck them as a loud proclamation of Pagford's adherence to the old ways and traditions of which they, so conspicuously, were not a part.

Automatically, because it was what she so often did, Shirley walked along the hall, turned into Patricia's old bedroom and sat down at the computer.

Patricia ought to be here, sleeping on the sofa bed that Shirley had made up for her. It was a relief not to have to deal with her this morning. Howard, who had still been humming "The Green, Green Grass of Home" when they arrived at Ambleside in the early hours, had not realized that Patricia was absent until Shirley had had the key in the front door.

"Where's Pat?" he had wheezed, leaning against the porch.

"Oh, she was upset that Melly didn't want to come," sighed Shirley. "They had a row or something...I expect she's gone home to try and patch things up."

"Never a dull moment," said Howard, bouncing lightly off alternate walls of the narrow hallway as he navigated his way carefully toward the bedroom.

Shirley brought up her favorite medical website. When she typed in the first letter of the condition she wished to investigate, the site offered its explanation of EpiPens again, so Shirley swiftly revised their use and content, because she might yet have an opportunity to save their potboy's life. Next, she carefully typed in "eczema," and learned, somewhat to her disappointment, that the condition was not infectious, and could not, therefore, be used as an excuse to sack Sukhvinder Jawanda.

From sheer force of habit, she then typed in the address of the Pagford Parish Council website, and clicked onto the message board.

She had grown to recognize at a glance the shape and length of the user name The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother, just as a besotted lover knows at once the back of their beloved's head, or the set of their shoulders, or the tilt of their walk.

A single glimpse at the topmost message sufficed: excitement exploded; he had not forsaken her. She had known that Dr. Jawanda's outburst could not go unpunished.

Affair of the First Citizen of Pagford She read it, but did not, at first, understand: she had been expecting to see Parminder's name. She read it again, and gave the suffocated gasp of a woman being hit by icy water.

Howard Mollison, First Citizen of Pagford, and long-standing resident Maureen Lowe have been more than business partners for many years. It is common knowledge that Maureen holds regular tastings of Howard's finest salami. The only person who appears not to be in on the secret is Shirley, Howard's wife.

Completely motionless in her chair, Shirley thought: it's not true.

It could not be true.

Yes, she had once or twice suspected...had hinted, sometimes, to Howard...

No, she would not believe it. She could not believe it.

But other people would. They would believe the Ghost. Everybody believed him.

Her hands were like empty gloves, fumbling and feeble, as she tried, with many a blunder, to remove the message from the site. Every second that it remained there, somebody else might be reading it, believing it, laughing about it, passing it to the local newspaper...Howard and Maureen, Howard and Maureen...

The message was gone. Shirley sat and stared at the computer monitor, her thoughts scurrying like mice in a glass bowl, trying to escape, but there was no way out, no firm foothold, no way of climbing back to the happy place she had occupied before she saw that dreadful thing, written in public for the world to see...

He had laughed at Maureen.

No, she had laughed at Maureen. Howard had laughed at Kenneth.

Always together: holidays and workdays and weekend excursions...

...only person who appears not to be in on the secret...

...she and Howard did not need sex: separate beds for years, they had a silent understanding...

...holds regular tastings of Howard's finest salami...

(Shirley's mother was alive in the room with her: cackling and jeering, a glass slopping wine...Shirley could not bear dirty laughter. She had never been able to bear ribaldry or ridicule.) She jumped up, tripping over the chair legs, and hurried back to the bedroom. Howard was still asleep, lying on his back, making rumbling, porcine noises.

"Howard," she said. "Howard."

It took a whole minute to rouse him. He was confused and disoriented, but as she stood over him, she saw him still as a knight protector who could save her.

"Howard, the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother's put up another message."

Disgruntled at his rude awakening, Howard made a growling groaning noise into the pillow.

"About you," said Shirley.

They did very little plain speaking, she and Howard. She had always liked that. But today she was driven to it.

"About you," she repeated, "and Maureen. It says you've been - having an affair."

His big hand slid up over his face and he rubbed his eyes. He rubbed them longer, she was convinced, than he needed.

"What?" he said, his face shielded.

"You and Maureen, having an affair."

"Where's he get that from?"

No denial, no outrage, no scathing laughter. Merely a cautious request for a source.

Ever afterwards, Shirley would remember this moment as a death; a life truly ended.

VII.

"Fuckin' shurrup, Robbie! Shurrup!"

Krystal had dragged Robbie to a bus stop several streets away, so that neither Obbo nor Terri could find them. She was not sure she had enough money for the fare, but she was determined to get to Pagford. Nana Cath was gone, Mr. Fairbrother was gone, but Fats Wall was there, and she needed to make a baby.

"Why wuz 'e in the room with yeh?" Krystal shouted at Robbie, who grizzled and did not answer.

There was only a tiny amount of battery power left on Terri's mobile phone. Krystal called Fats' number, but it went to voice mail.

In Church Row, Fats was busy eating toast and listening to his parents having one of their familiar, bizarre conversations in the study across the hall. It was a welcome distraction from his own thoughts. The mobile in his pocket vibrated but he did not answer it. There was nobody he wanted to talk to. It would not be Andrew. Not after last night.

"Colin, you know what you're supposed to do," his mother was saying. She sounded exhausted. "Please, Colin -"

"We had dinner with them on Saturday night. The night before he died. I cooked. What if -"

"Colin, you didn't put anything in the food - for God's sake, now I'm doing it - I'm not supposed to do this, Colin, you know I'm not supposed to get into it. This is your OCD talking."

"But I might've, Tess, I suddenly thought, what if I put something -"

"Then why are we alive, you, me and Mary? They did a post-mortem, Colin!"

"Nobody told us the details. Mary never told us. I think that's why she doesn't want to talk to me anymore. She suspects."

"Colin, for Christ's sake -"

Tessa's voice became an urgent whisper, too quiet to hear. Fats' mobile vibrated again. He pulled it out of his pocket. Krystal's number. He answered.

"Hiya," said Krystal, over what sounded like a kid shouting. "D'you wanna meet up?"

"Dunno," yawned Fats. He had been intending to go to bed.

"I'm comin' into Pagford on the bus. We could hook up."

Last night he had pressed Gaia Bawden into the railings outside the town hall, until she had pulled away from him and thrown up. Then she had started to berate him again, so he had left her there and walked home.

"I dunno," he said. He felt so tired, so miserable.

"Go on," she said.

From the study, he heard Colin. "You say that, but would it show up? What if I -"

"Colin, we shouldn't be going into this - you're not supposed to take these ideas seriously."

"How can you say that to me? How can I not take it seriously? If I'm responsible -"

"Yeah, all right," said Fats to Krystal. "I'll meet you in twenty, front of the pub in the Square."

VIII.

Samantha was driven from the spare room at last by her urgent need to pee. She drank cold water from the tap in the bathroom until she felt sick, gulped down two paracetamol from the cabinet over the sink, then took a shower.

She dressed without looking at herself in the mirror. Through everything she did, she was alert for some noise that would indicate the whereabouts of Miles, but the house seemed to be silent. Perhaps, she thought, he had taken Lexie out somewhere, away from her drunken, lecherous, cradle-snatching mother...

("He was in Lexie's class at school!" Miles had spat at her, once they were alone in their bedroom. She had waited for him to move away from the door, then wrenched it back open and run to the spare room.) Nausea and mortification came over her in waves. She wished she could forget, that she had blacked out, but she could still see the boy's face as she launched herself at him...she could remember the feel of his body pressed against her, so skinny, so young...

If it had been Vikram Jawanda, there might have been some dignity in it...She had to get coffee. She could not stay in the bathroom forever. But as she turned to open the door, she saw herself in the mirror, and her courage almost failed. Her face was puffy, her eyes hooded, the lines in her face etched more deeply by pressure and dehydration.

Oh God, what must he have thought of me...

Miles was sitting in the kitchen when she entered. She did not look at him, but crossed straight to the cupboard where the coffee was. Before she had touched the handle, he said, "I've got some here."

"Thanks," she muttered, and poured herself out a mug, avoiding eye contact.

"I've sent Lexie over to Mum and Dad's," said Miles. "We need to talk."

Samantha sat down at the kitchen table.

"Go on, then," she said.

"Go on - is that all you can say?"

"You're the one who wants to talk."

"Last night," said Miles, "at my father's birthday party, I came to look for you, and I found you snogging a sixteen-year -"

"Sixteen-year-old, yes," said Samantha. "Legal. One good thing."

He stared at her, appalled.

"You think this is funny? If you'd found me so drunk that I didn't even realize -"

"I did realize," said Samantha.

She refused to be Shirley, to cover everything up with a frilly little tablecloth of polite fiction. She wanted to be honest, and she wanted to penetrate that thick coating of complacency through which she no longer recognized a young man she had loved.

"You did realize - what?" said Miles.

He had so plainly expected embarrassment and contrition that she almost laughed.

"I did realize that I was kissing him," she said.

He stared at her, and her courage seeped away, because she knew what he was going to say next.

"And if Lexie had walked in?"

Samantha had no answer to that. The thought of Lexie knowing what had happened made her want to run away and not come back - and what if the boy told her? They had been at school together. She had forgotten what Pagford was like...