‘Krystal Weedon!’ shouted Parminder. ‘That stupid girl! Why are you paying attention to anything she says? Did you tell her I tried to keep her damn great-grandmother alive? Did you tell her that?’
‘I — no—’
‘If you’re going to care about what the likes of Krystal Weedon says, there’s no hope for you! Perhaps that’s your natural level, is it, Sukhvinder? You want to play truant and work in a café and waste all your opportunities for education, because that’s easier? Is that what being in a team with Krystal Weedon taught you — to sink to her level?’
Sukhvinder thought of Krystal and her gang, raring to go on the opposite kerb, waiting for a break in the cars. What would it take to make her mother understand? An hour ago she had had the tiniest fantasy that she might confide in her mother, at last, about Fats Wall…
‘Get out of my sight! Go! I’ll speak to your father when he comes in — go!’
Sukhvinder walked upstairs. Jaswant called from her bedroom: ‘What was all that shouting about?’
Sukhvinder did not answer. She proceeded to her own room, where she closed the door and sat down on the edge of her bed.
What had she expected? Warm encircling arms and comfort? When had she ever been hugged and held by Parminder? There was more comfort to be had from the razor blade hidden in her stuffed rabbit; but the desire, mounting to a need, to cut and bleed, could not be satisfied by daylight, with the family awake and her father on his way.
The dark lake of desperation and pain that lived in Sukhvinder and yearned for release was in flames, as if it had been fuel all along.
She got up, crossed her bedroom in a few strides, and dropping into the chair by her desk, pounded at the keyboard of her computer.
Sukhvinder had been just as interested as Andrew Price when that stupid supply teacher had tried to impress them with his cool in computing. Unlike Andrew and a couple of the other boys, Sukhvinder had not plied the teacher with questions about the hacking; she had merely gone home quietly and looked it all up online. Nearly every modern website was proof against a classic SQL injection, but when Sukhvinder had heard her mother discussing the anonymous attack on the Pagford Parish Council website, it had occurred to Sukhvinder that the security on that feeble old site was probably minimal.
Sukhvinder always found it much easier to type than to write, and computer code easier to read than long strings of words. It did not take very long for her to retrieve a site that gave explicit instructions for the simplest form of SQL injection. Then she brought up the Parish Council website.
It took her five minutes to hack the site, and then only because she had transcribed the code wrong the first time. To her astonishment, she discovered that whoever was administering the site had not removed the user details of The_Ghost_of_Barry_Fairbrother from the database, but merely deleted the post. It would be child’s play, therefore, to post in the same name.
It took Sukhvinder much longer to compose the message than it had to hack into the site. She had carried the secret accusation with her for months, ever since New Year’s Eve, when she had noticed with wonder her mother’s face, at ten to midnight, from the corner of the party where she was hiding. She typed slowly. Autocorrect helped with her spelling.
She was not afraid that Parminder would check her computer history; her mother knew so little about her, and about what went on in this bedroom, that she would never suspect her lazy, stupid, sloppy daughter.
Sukhvinder pressed the mouse like a trigger.
Krystal did not take Robbie to nursery on Tuesday morning, but dressed him for Nana Cath’s funeral instead. As she pulled up his least ripped trousers, which were a good two inches too short in the leg, she tried to explain to him who Nana Cath had been, but she might as well have saved her breath. Robbie had no memory of Nana Cath; he had no idea what Nana meant; no concept of any relative other than mother and sister. In spite of her shifting hints and stories, Krystal knew that Terri had no idea who his father was.
Krystal heard her mother’s footsteps on the stairs.
‘Leave it,’ she snapped at Robbie, who had reached for an empty beer can lying beneath Terri’s usual armchair. ‘C’m’ere.’
She pulled Robbie by the hand into the hall. Terri was still wearing the pyjama bottoms and dirty T-shirt in which she had spent the night, and her feet were bare.
‘Why intcha changed?’ demanded Krystal.
‘I ain’t goin’,’ said Terri, pushing past her son and daughter into the kitchen. ‘Changed me mind.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’ wanna,’ said Terri. She was lighting a cigarette off the ring of the cooker. ‘Don’ fuckin’ ’ave to.’
Krystal was still holding Robbie’s hand, as he tugged and swung.
