order of service. Naturally, there was to be an inquiry at work, because the local paper was clamouring for one, and had written a front-page piece suggesting that the small boy had been left in the care of a pair of junkies and that his death could have been avoided, if only he had been removed to safety by negligent social workers. Mattie had been signed off with stress again, and Kay's handling of the case review was being assessed. Kay wondered what effect it would have on her chances of getting another job in London, when every local authority was cutting numbers of social workers, and how Gaia would react if they had to stay in Pagford ... she had not dared discuss it with her yet.
Andrew glanced sideways at Gaia and they exchanged small smiles. Up in Hilltop House, Ruth was already sorting things for the move. Andrew could tell that his mother hoped, in her perennially optimistic way, that by sacrificing their house and the beauty of the hills, they would be rewarded with a rebirth. Wedded for ever to an idea of Simon that took no account of his rages or his crookedness, she was hoping that these would be left behind, like boxes forgotten in the move ... But at least, Andrew thought, he would be one step nearer London when they went, and he had Gaia's assurance that she had been too drunk to know what she was doing with Fats, and perhaps she might invite him and Sukhvinder back to her house for coffee after the funeral was over ...
Gaia, who had never been inside St Michael's before, was half listening to the vicar's sing-song delivery, letting her eyes travel over the high starry ceiling and the jewel-coloured windows. There was a prettiness about Pagford that, now she knew that she was leaving, she thought she might quite miss ...
Tessa Wall had chosen to sit behind everyone else, on her own. This brought her directly under the calm gaze of St Michael, whose foot rested eternally on that writhing devil with its horns and tail. Tessa had been in tears ever since her first glimpse of the two glossy coffins and, as much as she tried to stifle them, her soft gurglings were still audible to those near her. She had half expected somebody on the Weedon side of the church to recognize her as Fats' mother and attack her, but nothing had happened.
(Her family life had turned inside out. Colin was furious with her.
'You told him what?'
'He wanted a taste of real life,' she had sobbed, 'he wanted to see the seamy underside - don't you understand what all that slumming it was about?'
'So you told him that he might be the result of incest, and that I tried to kill myself because he came into the family?'
Years of trying to reconcile them, and it had taken a dead child, and Colin's profound understanding of guilt, to do it. She had heard the two of them talking in Fats' attic room the previous evening, and paused to eavesdrop at the foot of the stairs.
'... you can put that - that thing that Mum suggested out of your head completely,' Colin was saying gruffly. 'You've got no physical or mental abnormalities, have you? Well then ... don't worry about it any more. But your counsellor will help you with all of this ...')
Tessa gurgled and snorted into her sodden tissue, and thought how little she had done for Krystal, dead on the bathroom floor ... it would have been a relief if St Michael had stepped down from his glowing window and enacted judgement on them all, decreeing exactly how much fault was hers, for the deaths, for the broken lives, for the mess ... A fidgeting young Tully boy on the other side of the aisle hopped out of his pew, and a tattooed woman reached out a powerful arm, grabbed him and pulled him back. Tessa's sobs were punctuated by a little gasp of surprise. She was sure that she had recognized her own lost watch on the thick wrist.
Sukhvinder, who was listening to Tessa's sobs, felt sorry for her, but did not dare turn around. Parminder was furious with Tessa. There had been no way for Sukhvinder to explain the scars on her arms without mentioning Fats Wall. She had begged her mother not to call the Walls, but then Tessa had telephoned Parminder to tell them that Fats had