Pleasure reading. "The casual vacancy" Part 3

Ten requests have been received asking for a vote to fill Barry's vacancy. So now, much to Howard Mollison's chagring, an election must happen. Howard is sorting the letters, the applications and complaints.

Samantha refuses to go to dinner at the Sweetlove house. She stays home drinks a bottle of wine and thinks about some of the things that she and Miles had talked about doing before they got married. They were going to travel around the world and live in London. In her drunkenness, she decides that she's not going to live like this anymore.

Later in the week, Gavin and Kay go to Miles and Samantha's for diner. Early in the afternoon, Samantha sees Mary and also invites her over for dinner but Samantha says it as a gesture of goodwill and does not really expect that Mary will come. Samantha burns the dinner, yet still serves it and Mary arrives. There are the five of them. Gavin finds Samantha intolerable and is duly uncomfortable by the fact that Kay is being paraded around as his girlfriend. Gavin turns his attention, nearly exclusively, to Mary, his best friend's widow. Kay is unnerved and Samantha becomes vitriolic as she continues to drink.

Meanwhile, Andrew Price goes to an Internet cafe and hacks into the parish council website and posts a post about how unfit Simon Price is to win an election seat. The post refers to purchasing stolen home goods and how he steals supplies at work. Andrew is careful to cover his tracks so that his father will not catch him. He does not want Simon to run for election as he knows it will embarrass and humiliate all of them.

Gavin goes to Mary Fairbrother's to sort out the death benefit insurance payments. Mary breaks down and tells Gavin about how Barry gave everything to everyone but her.

Miles and Samantha go to Howard and Shirley's house for dinner. Shirley discovers that someone has written about Simon Price. Shirley decides to leave it on the parish website until Ruth asks her to take it down. At dinner, Samantha drinks a lot of wine and fantasizes about a different life, specifically Jake, the lead singer from her daughter's favorite boy band. More than anything, Samantha wants away from the Mollisons and away from Pagford.