chair, still in his coat, and stared across the room, apparently too stunned to speak. Ruth hovered around him, dismayed, affectionate and tearful. Andrew was glad to detect in Simon’s catatonic gaze a whiff of his usual ham theatrics. It made him feel slightly less guilty. He continued to lay the table without saying a word.
Dinner was a subdued affair. Paul, apprised of the family news, looked terrified, as though his father might accuse him of causing it all. Simon acted like a Christian martyr through the first course, wounded but dignified in the face of unwarranted persecution, but then — ‘I’ll pay someone to punch the fucker’s fat face through the back of his neck,’ he burst out as he spooned apple crumble into himself; and the family knew that he meant Howard Mollison.
‘You know, there’s been another message on that council website,’ said Ruth breathlessly. ‘It’s not only you who’s had it, Si. Shir — somebody told me at work. The same person — The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother — has put up something horrible about Dr Jawanda. So Howard and Shirley got someone in to look at the site, and he realized that whoever’s doing these messages has been using Barry Fairbrother’s log-in details, so to be safe, they’ve taken them off the — the database or something—’
‘And will any of this get me my fucking job back?’
Ruth did not speak again for several minutes.
Andrew was unnerved by what his mother had said. It was worrying that The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother was being investigated, and unnerving that somebody else had followed his lead.
Who else would have thought of using Barry Fairbrother’s log-in details but Fats? Yet why would Fats go for Dr Jawanda? Or was it just another way of getting at Sukhvinder? Andrew did not like it at all…
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Simon barked across the table.
‘Nothing,’ Andrew muttered, and then, backtracking, ‘it’s a shock, isn’t it… your job…’
‘Oh, you’re shocked, are you?’ shouted Simon, and Paul dropped his spoon and dribbled ice cream down himself. ‘(Clean it up, Pauline, you little pansy!) Well, this is the real world, Pizza Face!’ he shouted at Andrew. ‘Fuckers everywhere trying to do you down! So you,’ he pointed across the table at his eldest son, ‘you get some dirt on Mollison, or don’t bother coming home tomorrow!’
‘Si—’
Simon pushed his chair away from the table, threw down his own spoon, which bounced onto the floor with a clatter, and stalked from the room, slamming the door behind him. Andrew waited for the inevitable, and was not disappointed.
‘It’s a terrible shock for him,’ a shaken Ruth whispered at her sons. ‘After all the years he’s given that company… he’s worried how he’s going to look after us all…’
When the alarm rang at six thirty the next morning, Andrew slammed it off within seconds and virtually leapt out of bed. Feeling as though it was Christmas Day, he washed and dressed at speed, then spent forty minutes on his hair and face, dabbing minuscule amounts of foundation onto the most obvious of his spots.
He half expected Simon to waylay him as he crept past his parents’ room, but he met nobody, and after a hasty breakfast he wheeled Simon’s racing bicycle out of the garage and sped off down the hill towards Pagford.
It was a misty morning that promised sunshine later. The blinds were still down in the delicatessen, but the door tinkled and gave when he pushed it.
‘Not this way!’ shouted Howard, waddling towards him. ‘You come in round the back! You can leave the bike by the bins, get it away from the front!’
The rear of the delicatessen, reached by a narrow passageway, comprised a tiny dank patch of stone-paved yard, bordered by high walls, sheds with industrial-sized metal bins and a trapdoor that led down vertiginous steps to a cellar.
‘You can chain it up somewhere there, out of the way,’ said Howard, who had appeared at the back door, wheezing and sweaty-faced. While Andrew fumbled with the padlock on the chain, Howard dabbed at his forehead with his apron.
‘Right, we’ll start with the cellar,’ he said, when Andrew had secured the bicycle. He pointed at the trapdoor. ‘Get down there and see the layout.’
He bent over the hatch as Andrew climbed down the steps. Howard had not been able to climb down into his own cellar for years. Maureen usually tottered up and down the steps a couple of times a week; but now that it was fully stocked with