Part Five Chapter V

VKrystal was walking along Foley Road in the untimely morning sunlight, exhausting a banana. It was an unfamiliar taste and texture, and she could not arrive at up her mind whether she liked it or not. Terri and Krystal never bought fruit.Nikkis mother had on the nose turfed her unceremoniously out of the house.We got curvegs to do, Krystal, she had said. Were going to Nikkis grans for dinner.As an afterthought, she had handed Krystal the banana to eat for breakfast. Krystal had left without protest. There was unless enough room for Nikkis family around the kitchen table.The field were not improved by sunshine, which merely showed up the dirt and the damage, the cracks in the concrete walls, the boarded windows and the litter.The Square in Pagford looked freshly painted whenever the sun sh champion. in deuce itinerarys a year, the primary school children had walked through the middle of t sustain, crocodile fashion, on their way to church for Christmas and Easter services. (N obody had ever wanted to hold Krystals hand. Fats had told them all that she had fleas. She wondered whether he remembered.) There had been hanging baskets full of flowers splashes of purple, pink and green, and every time Krystal had passed wizard of the planted troughs outside the Black Canon, she had pulled off a petal. Each unrivalled had been cool and slippery in her fingers, swiftly becoming slimy and br induce as she clutched it, and she usually wiped it off on the underside of a untoughened wooden pew in St Michaels.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, save Terri did not stir.Krystal was at Terris side in four strides, shaking her thin arm. Terris head fell forwards onto her shrunken chest. She snored.Krystal let go of her. The mass of a dead man in the bathroom swam back into her subc onscious. round the bend bitch, she said. and then it occurred to her that Robbie was not there. She pounded up the stairs, shouting for him.Mere, she heard him say, from behind her own closed bedroom door.When she shouldered it open, she saw Robbie standing there, naked. Behind him, loot 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 mouth to Robbie.Mungry, said Robbie.When he was dressed, she picked him up and ran downstairs. She could hear Obbo moving around in her bedroom.Whys e ere? she shouted at Terri, who was drowsily awake in her chair. Whys e with Robbie?Robbie fought to get out of her arms he hated shouting.An wha the fucks that? screamed Krystal, spotting, for the first time, two black holdalls lying beside Terris armchair.Snuthin, said Terri vaguely.But Krystal had already forced one of the zips open.Snuthin 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.Yehve used, said Krystal breathlessly, as calamity rained invisibly around her and everything collapsed. Yehve 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 Krystals grip was unbreakable.Fuckin lerrim go, called Terri fruitlessly. Krystal had opened the bet door and was running as fast as she could, encumbered by Robbie who was resisting and moaning, back along the road.