it wasn't any of our side, but that's not how that journalist made it look. And I'll tell you this: if Yarvil makes us look inept or dirty ... they've been looking for a chance to take us over for years.'
'That won't happen,' said Shirley at once. 'That couldn't happen.'
'I thought it was over,' said Howard, ignoring his wife, and thinking of the Fields. 'I thought we'd done it. I thought we'd got rid of them.'
The article over which he had spent so much time, explaining why the estate and the Bellchapel Addiction Clinic were drains and blots on Pagford, had been completely overshadowed by the scandals of Parminder's outburst, and the Ghost of Barry Fairbrother. Howard had completely forgotten now how much pleasure the accusations against Simon Price had given him, and that it had not occurred to him to remove them until Price's wife had asked.
'District Council's emailed me,' he told Maureen, 'with a bunch of questions about the website. They want to hear what steps we've taken against defamation. They think the security's lax.'
Shirley, who detected a personal reproof in all of this, said coldly, 'I've told you, I've taken care of it, Howard.'
The nephew of friends of Howard and Shirley's had come round the previous day, while Howard was at work. The boy was halfway through a degree in computing. His recommendation to Shirley had been that they take down the immensely hackable website, bring in 'someone who knows what they're doing' and set up a new one.
Shirley had understood barely one word in ten of the technical jargon that the young man had spewed at her. She knew that 'hack' meant to breach illegally, and when the student stopped talking his gibberish, she was left with the confused impression that the Ghost had somehow managed to find out people's passwords, maybe by questioning them cunningly in casual conversation.
She had therefore emailed everybody to request that they change their password and make sure not to share the new one with anybody. This was what she meant by 'I've taken care of it'.
As to the suggestion of closing down the site, of which she was guardian and curator, she had taken no steps, nor had she mentioned the idea to Howard. Shirley was afraid that a site containing all the security measures that the superior young man had suggested would be way beyond the scope of her managerial and technical skills. She was already stretched to the limits of her abilities, and she was determined to cling to the post of administrator.
'If Miles is elected - ' Shirley began, but Maureen interrupted, in her deep voice. 'Let's hope it hasn't hurt him, this nasty stuff. Let's hope there isn't a backlash against him.'
'People will know Miles had nothing to do with it,' said Shirley coolly.
'Will they, though?' said Maureen, and Shirley simply hated her. How dare she sit in Shirley's lounge and contradict her? And what was worse, Howard was nodding his agreement with Maureen.
'That's my worry,' he said, 'and we need Miles more than ever now. Get some cohesion back on the council. After Bends-Your-Ear said what she said - after all the uproar - we didn't even take the vote on Bellchapel. We need Miles.'
Shirley had already walked out of the room in silent protest at Howard's siding with Maureen. She busied herself with the teacups in the kitchen, silently fuming, wondering why she did not set out only two cups to give Maureen the hint that she so richly deserved.
Shirley continued to feel nothing but defiant admiration for the Ghost. His accusations had exposed the truth about people whom she disliked and despised, people who were destructive and wrong-headed. She was sure that the electorate of Pagford would see things her way and vote for Miles, rather than that disgusting man, Colin Wall.
'When shall we go and vote?' Shirley asked Howard, re-entering the room with the tinkling tea tray, and pointedly ignoring Maureen (for it was their son whose name they would tick on the ballot).
But to her intense irritation, Howard suggested that all three of them go after closing time.
Miles Mollison was quite as concerned as his father that the unprecedented ill-humour surrounding next day's vote would affect his electoral chances. That very morning he had entered the newsagent's behind the Square and caught a snatch of conversation between the woman behind the till and her elderly customer.
'... Mollison's always thought he was king of Pagford,' the old man was saying, oblivious to