slimy and brown as she clutched it, and she usually wiped it off on the underside of a warm wooden pew in St Michael's.
She let herself into her house and saw at once, through the open door to her left, that Terri had not gone to bed. She was sitting in her armchair with her eyes closed and her mouth open. Krystal closed the door with a snap, but Terri did not stir.
Krystal was at Terri's side in four strides, shaking her thin arm. Terri's head fell forwards onto her shrunken chest. She snored.
Krystal let go of her. The vision of a dead man in the bathroom swam back into her subconscious.
'Silly bitch,' she said.
Then it occurred to her that Robbie was not there. She pounded up the stairs, shouting for him.
''M'ere,' she heard him say, from behind her own closed bedroom door.
When she shouldered it open, she saw Robbie standing there, naked. Behind him, scratching his bare chest, lying on her own mattress, was Obbo.
'All righ', Krys?' he said, grinning.
She seized Robbie and pulled him into his own room. Her hands trembled so badly that it took her ages to dress him.
'Did 'e do somethin' to yer?' she whispered to Robbie.
''M'ungry,' said Robbie.
When he was dressed, she picked him up and ran downstairs. She could hear Obbo moving around in her bedroom.
'Why's 'e 'ere?' she shouted at Terri, who was drowsily awake in her chair. 'Why's 'e with Robbie?'
Robbie fought to get out of her arms; he hated shouting.
'An' wha' the fuck's that?' screamed Krystal, spotting, for the first time, two black holdalls lying beside Terri's armchair.
'S'nuthin',' said Terri vaguely.
But Krystal had already forced one of the zips open.
'S'nuthin'!' shouted Terri.
Big, brick-like blocks of hashish wrapped neatly in sheets of polythene: Krystal, who could barely read, who could not have identified half the vegetables in a supermarket, who could not have named the Prime Minister, knew that the contents of the bag, if discovered on the premises, meant prison for her mother. Then she saw the tin, with the coachman and horses on the lid, half-protruding from the chair on which Terri was sitting.
'Yeh've used,' said Krystal breathlessly, as disaster rained invisibly around her and everything collapsed. 'Yeh've fuckin' - '
She heard Obbo on the stairs and she snatched up Robbie again. He wailed and struggled in her arms, frightened by her anger, but Krystal's grip was unbreakable.
'Fuckin' lerrim go,' called Terri fruitlessly. Krystal had opened the front door and was running as fast as she could, encumbered by Robbie who was resisting and moaning, back along the road.
Part Five Chapter VI
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 towards the bedroom.
Shirley brought up her favourite 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