"What?" She was spluttering, hauteur and outrage gathering within her mind.

"Your grandfather was quite right about you. You're a sciolistic; you know the moves, but not the governing laws."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Oh, you worked it out very nicely on a surface level, I'll grant you that. What you failed to appreciate were the undercurrents."

"Stop talking in euphemisms, it's bloody annoying."

"I've seen inside Kendric's mind," Greg said. "He dreams of you, Julia."

"He does?" She was suddenly very uncertain.

"He hates you, and fears you. He wants to destroy you. No. He's obsessed with destroying you. Not merely Event Horizon, but you personally, physically. He wants you beneath him, Julia, spread-eagled and screaming. He's sick in a way you'll never know."

"I do know," she insisted quietly.

"No, not really; you still haven't twigged, have you? Loathing is an abstract to you, a word whose meaning you've looked up in a dictionary. Kendric is its physical embodiment, lethal, and scatological to boot. You will never understand the sheer intensity of his revenge psychosis. It's a monstrous personality dysfunction."

"Tell you, Kendric sets up targets to knock down, fixates on them, devoting himself single-mindedly to their downfall. For the kind of left-hand business he's involved with it's a commendable trait. He'd been pretty successful, too; built up a good reputation for reliability, top man in the field. He'd never really known failure. Then I come along, hired by your grandfather, and we thwart him in what was probably his most ambitious scheme ever: asset-stripping Event Horizon. His first true debacle. Then you followed it up by humiliating him with blackmail. Anyone flying that high is going to be hurt bad by the fall. Small wonder you dominate his thoughts; any normal person would be bitter, but with a wacko like that it was probably the push over the edge. You misjudged him completely, and now Katerina is suffering because of that."

"She went with him," Julia said defiantly. "It was her choice."

"Of course it was, but you engineered it. You and your oh-so-logical nodes, meticulously sketching out all the conceivable scenarios the players could be combined in. You've got Kendric, rich, handsome, an expert in seduction, kinky wife who doesn't object to him playing the field. Katerina, in your eyes naive, also sex-mad and your close friend, who just happens to have in tow a very desirable stud who you've had your eye on for some time. And finally the poor old stud himself, Adrian, who Katerina had almost tired of anyway."

"You invited Katerina and Adrian to Horace Jepson's party, a real fiesta rave atmosphere complete with the world's greatest rock star. Katerina could no more refuse that than a bee can ignore pollen. And you chose it because that party was the perfect melting pot. Kendric walks in, sees you, the lonely little rich girl with probably her only real friend in the world, who by lucky chance is a real stunner and just as randy as he is. Well, he jumps at it, doesn't he? And he succeeds easily, because he's got the same sex appeal as Adrian, loaded with a suavity Adrian couldn't begin to match, and filthy rich with it. Katerina simply leaps at him."

"Kendric thinks he's scored a double bonus, depriving you of a friend and confidante, and at your age friends like that are terrifically important, plus he gets himself and Hermione a nice chunk of fresh meat to fun around with. You, in the meantime, get rid of Katerina, in whose company any girl will look like one of Cinderella's sisters, and get to console a devastated Adrian, who gratefully repays you with the only currency he's got."

There was a long moment of excruciating silence. "Kats did, you know." Julia was sitting perfectly still, gazing unseeingly straight down the drive. "School, parties, clubs; nobody even knew I existed. Not with her there. Her bust, her legs, God, even her voice is total audio-sex." She sniffed, blinking furiously, neck still rigid. "Do you know why I grew my hair so long? Do you? Because boys like a girl with long hair. Somebody told me that when I was eleven, and I've never had it cut since. I thought it would give me a chance, because there's nothing else to attract them. But of course her hair's long too, and shiny blonde." Julia turned to look straight at him, unrepentant, hot determination shining bright in her mind. "All I've got is my brains. And if brains is the only way I can grab hold of a boy, then by God that's how I'll grab one. And there's nobody, not you, not Grandpa, nobody, who is going to tell me different!"

Greg could see how much pain and loneliness was bottled up behind those stubborn eyes. That was something about her he'd misunderstood, assuming it was brattish cattiness which had provided the motivation behind her conniving. The spoilt rich kid who didn't get the treat she wanted, planning silent revenge on those who'd denied her.

"Oh, Julia, Julia, what are we going to do with you? If you'd sat down and tried to come up with a more harmful own goal you couldn't have found anything worse than giving Katerina to Kendric."

"I realise that now," she said miserably. "But how was I to know anyone walking round Wilholm could work out what Grandpa intended, or that Kats would be so willing to tell Kendric."

He winced inwardly. "She doesn't have a lot of choice."

"There's something you didn't mention, isn't there? About Kats. I never expected her to stay with Kendric for more than a day or two; not with Hermione insisting on her share. My God, you just can't get any more hetero than Kats. That's why I never felt any remorse, you see. As if one more man would make any difference to her. She said she had her first boy at thirteen. Thirteen! I just wanted their fling to last long enough to disillusion Adrian. But sticking it out like this is way out of character for Kats."

The sprinklers began to die down outside the Duo, leaving the whole front garden glistening under a glacé patina. Tall chrysanthemum stems bowed under the weight of the crystalline droplets which mottled their big bulbous flowers.

"Have you ever heard of something called phyltre?" Greg asked.

She came as near to embarrassment as he'd ever seen her. "I remember someone mentioning the name once. Some sort of drug?" she said distantly.

"It's not quite a drug. Phyltre is a symbiotic bacterium which lives in the blood stream, similar biotechnology principle as the gland. Strictly speaking it's a physiologically benign parasite. The most expensive narcotic ever created, a logical extrapolation from the old Ecstasy drug. It boosts orgasmic pleasure tenfold, a genuine designer high."

"Oh." Julia was studying her nails with minute attention.

"Pavlov would understand what Kendric has done to her. It's the nastiest form of conditioning I've ever come across. If, and only if, she does exactly what he tells her to then he takes her to bed and gives her that super-orgasm for a reward. She doesn't know it can happen with anybody."

"I imagine one of the first things he made her do was recount every conversation she'd had with you for the last few months, looking for something to use against you. He really lucked out discovering your grandfather's NN core plans."

Julia was silent for a minute, then said, "Thanks for not saying any of this in front of Grandpa."

He glared at her, feeling his hands ache as his blood rose.

"Now what?" she cried.

"There's just nothing that gets through to you, is there? I tell you that there's a maniac out there who wants your blood; that you're responsible for your best friend being raped twice a day for over a fortnight, that her mind's being systematically destroyed, and all you say is thanks for not telling a swarm of electrons floating round in a mutated vegetable. You fucking ice-bitch!"