"News travels fast in Pagford," she said. "It's just an idea. Theresa wants me to move back to Liverpool."

"And how do the kids feel about that?"

"Well, I'd wait for the girls and Fergus to do their exams in June. Declan's not so much of a problem. I mean, none of us wants to leave..."

She melted into tears in front of him, but he was so happy that he reached out to touch her delicate wrist.

"Of course you don't..."

"...Barry's grave."

"Ah," said Gavin, his happiness snuffed out like a candle.

Mary wiped her streaming eyes on the back of her hand. Gavin found her a little morbid. His family cremated their dead. Barry's burial had only been the second he had ever attended, and he had hated everything about it. Gavin saw a grave purely as a marker for the place where a corpse was decomposing; a nasty thought, yet people took it into their heads to visit and bring flowers, as though it might yet recover.

She had got up to get tissues. Outside on the lawn, the twins had switched to sharing a set of headphones, their heads bobbing up and down in time to the same song.

"So Miles got Barry's seat," she said. "I could hear the celebrations all the way up here last night."

"Well, it was Howard's...yeah, that's right," said Gavin.

"And Pagford's nearly rid of the Fields," she said.

"Yeah, looks like it."

"And now Miles is on the council, it'll be easier to close Bellchapel," she said.

Gavin always had to remind himself what Bellchapel was; he had no interest in these issues at all.

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"So everything Barry wanted is finished," she said.

Her tears had dried up, and the patches of high angry color had returned to her cheeks.

"I know," he said. "It's really sad."

"I don't know," she said, still flushed and angry. "Why should Pagford pick up the bills for the Fields? Barry only ever saw one side of it. He thought everyone in the Fields was like him. He thought Krystal Weedon was like him, but she wasn't. It never occurred to him that people in the Fields might be happy where they are."

"Yeah," said Gavin, overjoyed that she disagreed with Barry, and feeling as if the shadow of his grave had lifted from between them, "I know what you mean. From all I've heard about Krystal Weedon -"

"She got more of his time and his attention than his own daughters," said Mary. "And she never even gave a penny for his wreath. The girls told me. The whole rowing team chipped in, except Krystal. And she didn't come to his funeral, even, after all he'd done for her."

"Yeah, well, that shows -"

"I'm sorry, but I can't stop thinking about it all," she said frenetically. "I can't stop thinking that he'd still want me to worry about bloody Krystal Weedon. I can't get past it. All the last day of his life, and he had a headache and he didn't do anything about it, writing that bloody article!"

"I know," said Gavin. "I know. I think," he said, with a sense of putting his foot tentatively on an old rope bridge, "it's a bloke thing. Miles is the same. Samantha didn't want him to stand for the council, but he went ahead anyway. You know, some men really like a bit of power -"

"Barry wasn't in it for power," said Mary, and Gavin hastily retreated.

"No, no, Barry wasn't. He was in it for -"

"He couldn't help himself," she said. "He thought everyone was like him, that if you gave them a hand they'd start bettering themselves."

"Yeah," said Gavin, "but the point is, there are other people who could use a hand - people at home..."

"Well, exactly!" said Mary, dissolving yet again into tears.

"Mary," said Gavin, leaving his chair, moving to her side (on the rope bridge now, with a sense of mingled panic and anticipation), "look...it's really early...I mean, it's far too soon...but you'll meet someone else."

"At forty," sobbed Mary, "with four children..."

"Plenty of men," he began, but that was no good; he would rather she did not think she had too many options. "The right man," he corrected himself, "won't care that you've got kids. Anyway, they're such nice kids...anyone would be glad to take them on."

"Oh, Gavin, you're so sweet," she said, dabbing her eyes again.

He put his arm around her, and she did not shrug it off. They stood without speaking while she blew her nose, and then he felt her tense to move away, and he said, "Mary..."

"What?"

"I've got to - Mary, I think I'm in love with you."

He knew for a few seconds the glorious pride of the skydiver who pushes off firm floor into limitless space.

Then she pulled away.

"Gavin. I -"

"I'm sorry," he said, observing with alarm her repulsed expression. "I wanted you to hear it from me. I told Kay that's why I wanted to split up, and I was scared you'd hear it from someone else. I wouldn't have said anything for months. Years," he added, trying to bring back her smile and the mood in which she found him sweet.

But Mary was shaking her head, arms folded over her thin chest.

"Gavin, I never, ever -"

"Forget I said anything," he said foolishly. "Let's just forget it."

"I thought you understood," she said.

He gathered that he should have known that she was encased in the invisible armor of grief, and that it ought to have protected her.

"I do understand," he lied. "I wouldn't have told you, only -"

"Barry always said you fancied me," said Mary.

"I didn't," he said frantically.

"Gavin, I think you're such a nice man," she said breathlessly. "But I don't - I mean, even if -"

"No," he said loudly, trying to drown her out. "I understand. Listen, I'm going to go."

"There's no need..."

But he almost hated her now. He had heard what she was trying to say: even if I weren't grieving for my husband, I wouldn't want you.

His visit had been so brief that when Mary, slightly shaky, poured away his coffee it was still hot.

XI.

Howard had told Shirley that he did not feel well, that he thought he had better stay in bed and rest, and that the Copper Kettle could run without him for an afternoon.

"I'll call Mo," he said.

"No, I'll call her," said Shirley sharply.

As she closed the bedroom door on him, Shirley thought, He's using his heart.

He had said, "Don't be silly, Shirl," and then, "It's rubbish, bloody rubbish," and she had not pressed him. Years of genteel avoidance of grisly topics (Shirley had been literally struck dumb when twenty-three-year-old Patricia had said: "I'm gay, Mum.") seemed to have muzzled something inside her.

The doorbell rang. Lexie said, "Dad told me to come round here. He and Mum have got something to do. Where's Grandad?"

"In bed," said Shirley. "He overdid it a bit last night."

"It was a good party, wasn't it?" said Lexie.

"Yes, lovely," said Shirley, with a tempest building inside her.

After a while, her granddaughter's prattling wore Shirley down.

"Let's have lunch at the cafe," she suggested. "Howard," she called through the closed bedroom door, "I'm taking Lexie for lunch at the Copper Kettle."

He sounded worried, and she was glad. She was not afraid of Maureen. She would look Maureen right in the face...

But it occurred to Shirley, as she walked, that Howard might have telephoned Maureen the moment she had left the bungalow. She was so stupid...somehow, she had thought that, in calling Maureen herself about Howard's illness, she had stopped them communicating...she was forgetting...

The familiar, well-loved streets seemed different, strange. She had taken a regular inventory of the window she presented to this lovely little world: wife and mother, hospital volunteer, secretary to the Parish Council, First Citizeness; and Pagford had been her mirror, reflecting, in its polite respect, her value and her worth. But the Ghost had taken a rubber stamp and smeared across the pristine surface of her life a revelation that would nullify it all: "her husband was sleeping with his business partner, and she never knew..."

It would be all that anyone said, when she was mentioned; all that they ever remembered about her.

She pushed open the door of the cafe; the bell tinkled, and Lexie said, "There's Peanut Price."

"Howard all right?" croaked Maureen.

"Just tired," said Shirley, moving smoothly to a table and sitting down, her heart beating so fast that she wondered whether she might have a coronary herself.

"Tell him neither of the girls has turned up," said Maureen crossly, lingering by their table, "and neither of them bothered to call in either. It's lucky we're not busy."

Lexie went to the counter to talk to Andrew, who had been put on waiter duty. Conscious of her unusual solitude, as she sat alone at the table, Shirley remembered Mary Fairbrother, erect and gaunt at Barry's funeral, widowhood draped around her like a queen's train; the pity, the admiration. In losing her husband, Mary had become the silent passive recipient of admiration, whereas she, shackled to a man who had betrayed her, was cloaked in grubbiness, a target of derision...

(Long ago, in Yarvil, men had subjected Shirley to smutty jokes because of her mother's reputation, even though she, Shirley, had been as pure as it was possible to be.) "Grandad's feeling ill," Lexie was telling Andrew. "What's in those cakes?"

He bent down behind the counter, hiding his red face.

I snogged your mum.

Andrew had almost skived off work. He had been afraid that Howard might sack him on the spot for kissing his daughter-in-law, and was downright terrified that Miles Mollison might storm in, looking for him. At the same time, he was not so naive that he did not know that Samantha, who must, he thought ruthlessly, be well over forty, would figure as the villain of the piece. His defense was simple. "She was pissed and she grabbed me."

There was a tiny glimmer of pride in his embarrassment. He had been anxious to see Gaia; he wanted to tell her that a grown woman had pounced on him. He had hoped that they might laugh about it, the way that they laughed about Maureen, but that she might be secretly impressed; and also that in the course of laughing, he might find out exactly what she had done with Fats; how far she had let him go. He was prepared to forgive her. She had been pissed too. But she had not turned up.

He went to fetch a napkin for Lexie and almost collided with his boss's wife, who was standing behind the counter, holding his EpiPen.

"Howard wanted me to check something," Shirley told him. "And this needle shouldn't be kept in here. I'll put it in the back."

XII.

Halfway down his packet of Rolos, Robbie became extremely thirsty. Krystal had not bought him a drink. He climbed off the bench and crouched down in the warm grass, where he could still see her outline in the bushes with the stranger. After a while, he scrambled down the bank toward them.

"'M thirsty," he whined.

"Robbie, get out of it!" screamed Krystal. "Go an' sit on the bench!"

"Wanna drink!"

"Fuckin' - go an' wai' by the bench, an' I'll gerra drink in a minute! Go 'way, Robbie!"

Crying, he climbed back up the slippery bank to the bench. He was accustomed to not being given what he wanted, and disobedient by habit, because grown-ups were arbitrary in their wrath and their rules, so he had learned to seize his tiny pleasures wherever and whenever he could.

Angry at Krystal, he wandered a little way from the bench along the road. A man in sunglasses was walking along the pavement toward him.

(Gavin had forgotten where he had parked the car. He had marched out of Mary's and walked straight down Church Row, only realizing that he was heading in the wrong direction when he drew level with Miles and Samantha's house. Not wanting to pass the Fairbrothers' again, he had taken a circuitous route back to the bridge.

He saw the boy, chocolate-stained, ill-kempt and unappealing, and walked past, with his happiness in tatters, half wishing that he could have gone to Kay's house and been silently cradled...she had always been nicest to him when he was miserable, it was what had attracted him to her in the first place.) The rushing of the river increased Robbie's thirst. He cried a bit more as he changed direction and headed away from the bridge, back past the place where Krystal was hidden. The bushes had started shaking. He walked on, wanting a drink, then noticed a hole in a long hedge on the left of the road. When he drew level, he spotted a playing field beyond.