Not that bonking in the kitchen per se was what Dellen Kerne had had in mind, as things developed. She’d released herself from their embrace-one that had left Cadan’s head swimming and all the important parts of his body rushing with blood-and continued the sensuous dance she’d begun as the Latin music from the radio played on. Within a moment, though, she was back at him. She shimmied against him and walked her fingers up his chest. From there, it required no complicated set of dance steps for them to be hip to hip and groin to groin, and the rhythm of the music provided a primal beat whose intentions were impossible to ignore.

It was the sort of moment when conscious thought absents itself. The big brain stops functioning and the little brain-knowing only the most atavistic of motives-takes over until satisfaction is achieved. So when Dellen’s hand slithered down his chest and her fingers found the most sensitive part of him, he was ready to take her on the kitchen floor if she was ready to allow him the pleasure.

He grabbed her arse with one hand, her breast with the other, caught a nipple tightly between his fingers, and hungrily shoved his tongue into her mouth. This, it seemed, was the signal she needed. She backed away with a breathless laugh and said, “Not here, silly boy. You know where the beach huts are, don’t you?”

He said stupidly, “Beach huts?” because, of course, the big brain was not functioning at all at this point and the little brain knew and cared nothing of huts, beach or otherwise.

“Darling, the beach huts,” Dellen said. “Down below. Just above the beach. Here. Here’s a key,” which she took from a chain she wore deep between her sumptuous breasts. Had she had it on yesterday? Cadan hadn’t noticed, and he didn’t want to think of the implications behind this being a new piece of wearing apparel. “I can be there in ten minutes,” she said. “Can you?” She kissed him as she pressed the key into his palm. In case he’d forgotten what they were about, she reminded him with her fingers again.

When she released him, he looked at the key he was holding. He tried to clear his head. He looked at her. He looked at the key. He looked at her. Then he looked at the doorway. Kerra was standing there, watching them.

“Disturbing you, am I?” Kerra’s face was a sheet. Two spots of colour appeared on her cheeks.

Dellen trilled a laugh. “Oh my God,” she said. “It’s that damn music. It always gets into a young man’s blood. Cadan, you naughty boy. Getting me all silly like that. Goodness, I’m old enough to be your mum.” She turned the radio off. The silence that followed was like an explosion.

Cadan was mute. There was simply nothing in his brain, at least not in the big brain. The little brain hadn’t yet caught up to what was happening, and between big and little existed a maw the size of the English Channel, into which he wished he could fall and drown. He stared at Kerra, knowing if he turned his body her way she would see the huge betraying bulge in his trousers and-what was worse-the damp spot he could feel himself. Beyond that, he was struck dumb by the horror of what she might say to her father about all this. Beyond that, there was the need to escape.

He did so. Later, he would not be able to say how he managed it, but he grabbed up Pooh from the back of the chair he’d been perched upon and he tore out of the kitchen like Mercury on meth, leaving behind their voices-Kerra’s mostly, and she did no speaking in a pleasant tone-and hauling his arse down three flights of stairs and into the afternoon. He made for his bicycle and he took off at a gallop, pushing it till he had the speed he wanted. Then he mounted and away they went, with him pumping like a bloke who’d recently seen the headless horseman and Pooh just trying to stay on his shoulder.

He thought little else other than oh no oh no bloody hell damn fuck wanking idiot. He wasn’t sure what to do or where to go, and by rote, it seemed, his furiously working legs and arms guided the bike towards Binner Down. He needed advice and he needed it quickly. LiquidEarth was the place where he could get it.

He made the turn into Vicarage Road and from there he trundled onto Arundel Lane. It was smooth going and he made good time, but Pooh protested mightily when they got to the erstwhile airfield with its ruts and potholes. It couldn’t be helped. Cadan told the parrot to hold on tight and in less than two minutes, he was dumping the bike on the old concrete ramp just outside the hut where his father made surfboards.

Inside the door, he set Pooh on top of the till behind the counter. He said, “Do not dump, mate,” and he went inside the workshop. There, he found the one person he was looking for. Not his father, who would have undoubtedly greeted Cadan’s forthcoming tale with a lecture about his lifelong stupidity. Instead, he found Jago, who was engaged in the delicate final process of sanding the rough edges of fiberglass and resin from the rails of a swallowtail board.

Jago looked up as Cadan stumbled into the finishing room. He seemed to take a reading of Cadan’s state at once because there was music coming from the dusty radio that sat on an equally dusty shelf just beyond the sawhorses holding the board, and Jago went to this and turned it off. He removed his glasses and wiped them on the thigh of his white boiler suit to little effect.

He said, “What’s happened, Cade? Where’s your dad? He’s all right? Where’s Madlyn?” His left hand moved spasmodically.

Cadan said, “No. No. I don’t know.” What he meant was that he assumed everything was fine with his father and with his sister, but the truth was that he had no clue. He hadn’t seen Madlyn since that morning, and he hadn’t seen his father at all. He didn’t want to consider what that latter detail might mean because it would be one more piece of information to have to cope with, and his head was already bursting. He finally said, “Okay, I s’pose. I expect Madlyn went to work.”

“Good.” Jago gave a sharp nod. He went back to the surfboard. He picked up the sandpaper, but before he applied it, he ran his fingertips along the rails. He said, “You come in here like the devil’s chasing you.”

Cadan said, “Not far from the truth. You got a minute?”

Jago nodded. “Always. Hope you know that.”

Cadan felt as if someone had kindly withdrawn his thumb from the dyke, offering to take over the rescue of the lowlands in his stead. The story came forth. His father’s disgust, Cadan’s dreams of the X Games, Adventures Unlimited, Kerra Kerne, Ben Kerne, Alan Cheston, and Dellen. Last of all, Dellen. It was all a jumble to which Jago listened patiently. He sanded the surfboard’s rails slowly, nodding as Cadan went from point to point.

At the end he homed in on what they both knew was the salient detail: Cadan Angarrack caught in a delicto that was just about as flagrante as it could have been, short of the two of them-himself and Dellen Kerne-having been caught writhing and moaning on the kitchen floor. Jago said, “Sounds like mother, like son to me. Didn’t think of that when she played with you, Cade?”

“I didn’t expect…I didn’t know her, see. I thought something was a bit off with her when she came upon me yesterday, but I didn’t think…She’s like…Jago, she could be my mum.”

“Not bloody likely. For her faults, your mum stuck to her own kind, yes?”

“What d’ you mean?”

“Way Madlyn tells it-and, mind, she doesn’t think much of your mum-Wenna Angarrack with her list of surnames always sticks to her own age group. From what you say, this one”-and Cadan took from Jago’s tone of aversion that he was referring to Dellen Kerne-“doesn’t appear to mind what age she’s doing it with. ’Spect you had signs when you met her.”

“She asked me about it,” Cadan admitted.

“It?”