Which caused Daidre to pause. She saw the resemblance, then, for of course she’d seen Madlyn more than once in the times she herself had been to Cornish Gold cider farm. She looked at Aldara, whose face was placid but whose eyes shone and whose heart was no doubt beating strongly now as anticipation sent her blood hither and yon, to all the proper places.

Daidre nodded and stepped past Lewis Angarrack, outside onto the narrow porch. Aldara murmured something to the man and followed Daidre out. She said, “You see our little problem, I think.”

Daidre glanced at her. “Actually, I don’t.”

“Her boyfriend first and now her father? It’s critical, naturally, that she never know. So as not to upset her further. It’s as Lewis wants it. What a shame, don’t you think?”

“Hardly. It’s the way you want it as well, after all. Secret. Exciting. Pleasurable.”

Aldara smiled, that slow, knowing smile that Daidre knew was part of her appeal to men. “Well, if it must be that way, it must be that way.”

“You’ve no morals, have you?” Daidre asked her friend.

“My darling. Have you?”

Chapter Twenty-seven

ULTIMATELY ON THAT MISERABLE DAY, CADAN FOUND HIMSELF in a situation in which the chickens of his machinations had finally come home to roost: caught in the sitting room of the family home in Victoria Road with his sister and Will Mendick. Madlyn, having just returned from work, was still in her Casvelyn of Cornwall getup-all stripes the colour of candy floss and a pinny with ruffles along the edges. She was slouched on the sofa, while Will stood in front of the fireplace with a bunch of daylilies dangling from his fingers. He’d shown good enough sense to buy the flowers and not bring along rejects from the wheelie bin. But that was the limit to the good sense he was showing.

Cadan himself was perched on a stool near his parrot. He’d left Pooh alone for most of the day, and he’d been intent upon making up for that with an elongated bit of bird massage, just the two of them, with the house-or at least the room-to themselves. But Madlyn had arrived home from work and on her heels had come Will. He’d apparently taken to heart Cadan’s bald-faced lies about his sister and her affections.

“…so I thought,” Will was saying, with scant encouragement from Madlyn, “that you might like…well, like to go out.”

“With who?” Madlyn said.

“With…well, with me.” He’d not presented her with the flowers yet, and Cadan was hoping fervently he’d pretend that he’d not brought them at all.

“And why would I want to do that, exactly?” Madlyn tapped her fingers on the arm of the sofa. This gesture, Cadan knew, had nothing to do with nervousness.

Will grew redder in the face-he was already blushing like a bloke with two left feet at a fox-trot lesson-and he shot a look towards Cadan that said, Give us a hand here, mate? Studiously, Cadan averted his eyes.

Will said, “Just…perhaps to get a meal?”

“Out of a bin, you mean?”

“No! God, Madlyn. I wouldn’t ask you to-”

“Look.” Madlyn had that Expression on her face. Cadan knew what it meant, but he also knew that Will hadn’t the first clue that his sister’s detonator was doing whatever detonators did just before the bomb went from UX to X. She pushed herself to the edge of the sofa and her eyes got narrow. “Just in case you don’t know, Will, which you apparently don’t, I had a talk with the police. A quite recent talk with them. They caught me out in a lie, and they crawled all over me. And guess what they knew?”

Will said nothing. Cadan urged Pooh onto his fist. He said, “Hey, what you got to say, Pooh?” The bird was usually very good at providing diversions, but Pooh was silent. If he felt the room’s tension, he wasn’t responding to it in his normal vociferous manner.

“They knew that I followed Santo. They knew what I saw. They knew, Will, that I knew what Santo was doing. Now how do you s’pose the cops knew that? And do you have any idea how that makes me look?”

“They don’t think that you…You don’t need to worry-”

“That’s hardly the point! My boyfriend’s having it off with a cow old enough to be his mum and he’s liking it and this particular cow happens to be the cow I work for and all this is going on under my nose with both of them looking like butter wouldn’t melt and he’s calling her Mrs. Pappas, mind you. Mrs. Pappas in front of me and you can bloody well depend on him not calling her Mrs. Pappas when he’s fucking her. And she knows he’s my boyfriend. That’s part of the fun. She’s specially friendly to me because of it. Only I don’t know. I even have a cup of tea with her and she asks me all about myself. ‘I like to get to know my girls,’ she says. Oh, too bloody right.”

“Don’t you see that’s why-”

“I do not. So there they are-those cops-and they’re looking at me and I can see what they know and what they think. Poor stupid cow she is. Her boyfriend’d rather do some old witch than be with her. And I didn’t need that, d’you see it, Will? I didn’t need their pity and I didn’t need them knowing because now it all gets written down for the world to see and everyone knows and do you know-have you any idea-what that feels like?”

“It wasn’t your fault, Madlyn.”

“That I wasn’t enough for him? So much not enough that he wanted her as well? How could that not be my fault? I loved him. We had something good, or that’s what I thought.”

Will said, stumbling, “No. Look. It wasn’t you. Why couldn’t you see…He would’ve done the same…He would’ve walked away, no matter who he was with. Why couldn’t you ever see that? Why couldn’t you just let him-”

“I was going to have his baby. His baby, all right? And I thought that meant…I thought we would…Oh God, forget it.”

Will’s jaw had dropped with Madlyn’s revelation. Cadan had, of course, heard the expression before-someone’s jaw dropping-but he’d never imagined how lost it made one look till he saw what Will’s face revealed. Will hadn’t known about this, then. But of course, how could he? It was a private business held within the family, and Will was not a member of the family or even close to becoming one, a fact which he did not appear to understand. Even now. Sounding numb, he said, “You could have come to me.”

“What?” Madlyn said.

“To me. I would’ve…I don’t know. Whatever you wanted. I could have-”

“I loved him.”

“No,” Will said. “You can’t. You couldn’t. Why won’t you see what he was like? He was no good, but you looked at him and what you saw-”

“Don’t you say that about him. Don’t you…don’t.”

Will looked like a man who’s spoken a language that he assumes his listener has understood, only to discover she’s a foreigner in his country and so is he as a matter of fact and there’s nothing to be done about the matter. He said slowly and with dawning knowledge, “You can still defend him. Even after…And what you just told me…Because he wasn’t going to stand by you, was he? That’s not who he was.”

“I loved him,” she cried.

“But you said that you hated him. You told me you hated him.”

“He hurt me, for God’s sake.”

“But then why did I…” Will looked around as if suddenly waking. His glance went to Cadan, then to the flowers he’d brought to give Madlyn. He tossed these into the fireplace. Cadan rather liked the drama of the gesture, had the fireplace been one that actually worked. But as it didn’t work, the act seemed past its sell-by date, the sort of thing one saw in old films on the telly.

The room was filled with a hollow silence. Then Will said to Madlyn, “I punched him out. I would have done more if he’d even been willing to fight, but he wasn’t. He didn’t even bother to care. He wouldn’t fight. Not for you. Not because of you. But I did that. I punched him out. For you, Madlyn. Because-”