Aldara rose. She said, “You must leave. I’ve tried to explain myself to you time and again. But you see how I am as a moral question and not what it is, which is just a manifestation of the only way I can function. So yes, someone is on his way and, no, I’m not going to tell you who it is, and I’d vastly prefer it if you were not here when he arrives.”

“You refuse to be touched by anything, don’t you?” Daidre asked her.

“My dear, that is definitely the pot and the kettle,” was Aldara’s reply.

Chapter Five

CADAN HAD HIGH HOPES THAT THE BACON STREAKIES WOULD do the trick. He also had high hopes that Pooh would do the trick. The Bacon Streakies, which were the bird’s favourite treat, were supposed to encourage and reward him. The system was to let the parrot see the bag of goodies dangling from Cadan’s fingers-a manoeuvre sufficient to get the bird’s interest-and then put him through his paces. The reward would follow, and there was absolutely no need to show Pooh the crunchy substance itself. He might have been a parrot, but he was no dummy when it came to food.

But tonight, distractions diverted him. He and Cadan were not alone in the sitting room, and the other three individuals were proving more interesting to the parrot than the food on offer. So balancing on a small rubber ball and walking said ball across the length of the fireplace mantel did not hold the same promise that a lolly stick in the hands of a six-year-old girl held. A lolly stick carefully applied to the parrot’s feathered head, rubbed gently back and forth in the region where one assumed his ears to be, guaranteed ecstasy. A Bacon Streakie, on the other hand, effected only momentary gustatory satisfaction. So although Cadan made a heroic attempt to get Pooh to provide some entertainment for Ione Soutar and her two young daughters, entertainment was not forthcoming.

“Why’s he not want to do it, Cade?” Jennie Soutar asked. She was the younger of the two. Her older sister, Leigh-who was, at ten, already wearing glittery eye shadow, lipstick, and hair extensions-looked as if she’d never expected the bird to do anything extraordinary in the first place and who cared anyway as the bird was neither a pop star nor someone likely to become a pop star. Instead of paying attention to the failed bird show, she’d been flipping through a fashion magazine, squinting at the pictures because she refused to wear her specs and was campaigning for contact lenses.

Cadan said, “It’s the lolly stick. He knows you’ve got it. He wants to be petted again.”

“C’n I pet him, then? C’n I hold him?”

“Jennifer, you know how I feel about that bird.” These words were spoken by her mother. Ione Soutar was standing in the bay window, gazing out at Victoria Road. She’d been doing that for thirty minutes, and she didn’t look like a woman who intended to stop doing it anytime soon. “Birds carry germs and diseases.”

“But Cade touches him all the time.”

Ione shot her daughter a look. It seemed to say, “And just look at Cade, will you?”

Jennie interpreted the expression on her mother’s face in whatever way Ione intended. She scooted back on the sofa-her legs sticking out in front of her-and she puffed out her lips in disappointment. It was, Cadan saw, a facial expression unwittingly identical to Ione’s.

No doubt the feeling behind it was the same as well: disappointment. Cadan wanted to tell Ione Soutar that she was going to be endlessly disappointed as long as she had his father in her marital sights. On the surface it looked as if they were perfect for each other-two independent businesspeople with workshops in the same location on Binner Down, two parents years without partners, two parents who surfed, two children for each of them, two little girls interested in surfing, with a third older girl their role model and instructor, two family-oriented families…There was probably also good sex involved as well, but Cadan didn’t like to speculate about that, as the thought of his father in a carnal embrace with Ione made his skin go prickly. Nonetheless, superficially it appeared to be logical that nearly three years in this association between man and woman ought to have resulted in something akin to a commitment from Lew Angarrack. But it hadn’t done, and Cadan had heard enough of his father’s end of telephone conversations to know Ione was no longer happy with the situation.

She was currently annoyed as well. Two takeaway Pukkas pizzas had long since gone cold in the kitchen while she waited in the sitting room for Lew’s return. It was a wait that was beginning to seem futile to Cadan, for his father had showered and changed and rushed off on what Cadan saw as a real fool’s errand.

It seemed to Cadan that a visit from Will Mendick had prompted Lew’s departure. Will had rumbled up Victoria Road in his wheezing old Beetle and as he’d unfolded his wiry frame from the car and approached the front door, Cadan could see from his ruddy face that something troubled him.

He’d asked for Madlyn directly and said curtly, “Where is she, then? She wasn’t at the bakery either,” when Cadan revealed that she wasn’t at home.

“We don’t have her on the GPS yet,” Cadan told him. “That’s next week, Will.”

Will hadn’t seemed to appreciate the humour. “I need to find her.”

“Why?”

So he’d told him the news he’d had off the bird at Clean Barrel Surf Shop: Santo Kerne was dead as a doornail, his head mashed in or whatever it was that happened when one fell during a cliff climb.

“He was climbing alone?” Climbing at all was the real question since Cadan knew what Santo Kerne really preferred doing, which was surf and shag, and shag and surf, both of which came quite easily to him.

“I didn’t say he was alone,” Will pointed out sharply. “I don’t know who was with him or even if there was someone with him. Why d’you think he was alone?”

Cadan didn’t have to reply at that point because Lew had heard Will’s voice and had apparently read something dire from the tone. He’d come from the back of the house where he’d been working on the computer and Will had brought him into the picture as well. “I’ve come to tell Madlyn,” Will explained.

Too right, Cadan thought. The way to Madlyn was open, and Will was not a man to ignore a gaping doorway.

“Damn,” Lew said in a thoughtful tone. “Santo Kerne.”

Not one of them was exactly in extremis over the news, Cadan admitted to himself. He reckoned that he was the one who probably felt the worst, but that was likely because he had the least at stake in matters.

“I’ll go look for her, then,” Will Mendick had said. “Where do you think…?”

Who bloody knew? Madlyn’s emotions had been running their usual mad course since her breakup with Santo. She’d started with devastation and moved on to blind and unreasonable anger. As far as Cadan was concerned, the less he saw of her the better until she’d gone through her last stage-it was always revenge-and then got back to normal again. She might have been anywhere: robbing banks, breaking windows, pulling men in pubs, tattooing her eyelids, beating up small children, or off to regions unknown for a surf. With Madlyn, you just never knew.

Lew said, “We’ve not seen her since breakfast.”

“Damn.” Will bit the side of his thumb. “Well, someone’s got to tell her what’s happened.”

Why? was what Cadan thought, but he didn’t say it. Instead, he said, “Think it should be you?” And he added foolishly, “Wise up, mate. When’re you planning to work things out? You’re not her type.”

Will’s face flared. His skin was spotty anyway, and the spots enflamed.

Lew said, “Cade.”

Cade said, “But it’s true. Come on, man-”

Will didn’t wait to hear the rest. He was out of the room and out of the door before Cadan could say another word.