'Hmm,' I said.  Obviously, formulating elaborate justifications for deceit was not an area in which I held a monopoly. 'Do you enjoy it?' I asked, frowning.

'What, the porn?'

'Yes.'

She looked thoughtful. 'You know what?' she said, nodding at me. 'I love it.' She shrugged. 'I like lots of sex, I like being admired and I like the money.  Sure beats working for a living.' She laughed. 'I'll give it another few years, then I think I might open my own chain of exotic lingerie shops.' She looked thoughtful, her gaze directed far away. 'Or go into flume design or something.' She shrugged again and went on filing her fingernails. 'I mean, it's kind of technical and cluttered, right enough, but it's very pure, really.'

We sat wet-haired in the cafe, watching the pool and the swimmers.  I am sure I looked bedraggled.  Morag looked like some fresh, glowing, blue-jeaned mermaid.  Ricky was at the counter, queuing to fetch us our drinks.

We had each tried the other three flumes, though Morag and Ricky both kept going back to the Black Hole.  I didn't, preferring the two convoluted medium tubes because they gave you time to appreciate the ride rather than just be terrified by it.  I even liked the broad, shallow white tunnel, the slowest of the lot, which Morag and Ricky tried because they felt they had to for completeness' sake but declared was really there for wimps and sportive old-age pensioners, but which had the additional attraction of having a view for the first, half-transparent section, and a damn fine view at that, of Salisbury Crags and Arthur's Seat rearing up all green and brown against the blues and whites of the sky.

After a couple of hours of intense fluming, producing raw heels, shoulders and other pointy bits, we did a few lengths of the pool for exercise, and then decided to call it a day.  Once we'd changed we'd headed for the café.

Morag put away her nail file in her little shoulder bag and sat back in her seat, stretching with lithe magnificence, her hands at the back of her neck pulling her damp hair away from her blouse.  Lifting her arms like that had a dramatic effect on her bosoms; the effect it had on those present, however, seemed to obey a sort of inverted inverse square law; she gave no sign whatsoever of noticing.  I wasn't about to, either, but men sitting at nearby tables stole furtive glances, males further away looked on with appreciative directness, and those surrounded by toddlers and damp towels twenty yards off across the cafe floor suddenly sat up straight and adjusted the position of their little plastic seats for a better view.

I gave a small laugh, leaning over the table. 'So, cousin, do I take it you've absolved me of being a stalker or an obsessive or whatever it was you thought I was?'

'Yeah,' she said, looking a little bashful. 'Well, I'm sorry about that, but it wasn't my fault, right?'

'No, I know,' I said. 'I think I know who's to blame.'

Ricky returned from the counter with a tray.  I had a little pot of tea, Morag a black coffee and a mineral water, and Ricky a cola and a cheeseburger.

'So, what do you think's going on, then?' Morag asked me in a business-like manner.

'At the Community?' I asked.  She nodded. 'I'm not certain,' I admitted. 'But I think Allan wants to take over.'

She frowned. 'But he's not a Leapyearian; how can he?'

'He's the one helping Grandfather with the revisions at the moment; that might even be the whole reason for getting me out of the way in the first place.  I can't see how he can remove Leapyearianism from the Faith entirely and leave anything worth believing in, but he might be able to persuade Salvador that a real Leapyearian is male and so I don't count, or that there should be a division between the Elect of God, who'd be just a… a sort of figure-head, and the… executive, I'd suppose you'd call it - whoever actually runs the Order and the Community.  They'd hold the reins.'

I looked over at Ricky, who was staring at me over his cheeseburger, his jaws wrestling with the food.

Morag saw me looking and glanced at him too. 'It's all right, Rick,' she said. 'Just God talk.'

He nodded, mollified, and redirected his concentration back to the cheeseburger.

'Maybe it's just me,' I said, shrugging. 'Maybe he feels I've wronged him somehow and he wants to destroy me personally…' I shook my head. 'No.  No; I think he's doing it for himself, and for Mabon, his son.'

'Maybe he's frightened of you.'

I opened my mouth to protest that this could not be the case, but then thought of Allan's face and the expression I had seen on it too many times to count, the first time on the day I brought life back into the fox lying dead in the field by the road.  I closed my mouth again and just looked down, shrugging.

'Or what about Salvador?' Morag asked. 'Sure it isn't the old man behind it all?'

'Not sure, but… fairly so.  I think he just took advantage of the situation.' I laughed bitterly. 'To try to take advantage of me.'

'Old bastard,' Morag said.  Ricky looked up again.

'Please, Morag,' I said. 'He is still the Founder, still my Grandfather.  It's just the man… and the drink, maybe, got the better of the prophet in him.'

'That's crap, cuz,' Morag said.

'He gave us everything, Morag,' I told her. 'Our whole way of life.  I'll not deny the treasure he found just because the hand that opened the chest was human and soiled.'

'Very poetic,' Morag told me, 'but you're too bleedin' generous, that's your problem.' It was probably the least perspicacious statement she had made that afternoon.

'Well,' I said, 'I don't intend to be very generous with Allan, once I have my case ready to present before the Order.'

'Good,' she said, with relish.

'Will you help me?' I asked her.

'How?' She looked neutral, Ricky looked suspicious.

'Come to the Community?  Back up my story?  I mean; simply tell the truth about these letters and Allan's phone calls and what he's told you; how he's lied.  Will you?'

'Think they'll listen to me?' She sounded doubtful.

'I think so.  We mustn't let Allan suspect anything or he'll attempt to discredit you with everybody else beforehand, as he has me, but if we say nothing about us having met, we should be able to surprise him.  If we had it all out in front of a meeting everyone attends, a full Service, there should be no opportunity for him to poison people's minds with rumours and lies.  We ought to be able to denounce him without retort.'

'But what about the porn?' Morag asked warily.

'Well, it is hardly the most blessed of professions, certainly, but it was your apparent apostasy that alarmed us most, and I think there would be more rejoicing over your return to the fold than resentment due to the fact that your fame derives from an artistic area other than music, were you to return,' I said, with only a little more conviction than I felt. 'Salvador is upset apparently - at the deception more than the true nature of your… career, I suspect - but I think he'll come round.' I smiled. 'You'll charm him.'

'I can try,' Morag said, with a smile that would have charmed blood from a stone.

'It might be best,' I said, thinking it through as I sat there, 'if you and I didn't turn up together.  At around the same time, certainly, but not obviously together.  Well, maybe.'

'All right.  Whatever.  It's a deal.  But when?' she asked.

I nodded, still thinking.  The next big Service would be on Sunday evening, for the Full Moon.  That was only two days away and so probably too soon, but you never knew. 'Let's keep in touch, but it might be as early as… day after tomorrow?'

Morag sat back, looking thoughtful. 'We're here tonight,' she said, glancing at Ricky, who had finished his cheeseburger and was now picking little bits of melted cheese and blobs of pickle off the surface of the tray.  He looked up guiltily. 'Leven and Dundee tomorrow,' Morag continued. 'We were going to go to Aberdeen next, but we could make it Perth instead, and do Stirling as well, now.  I'll give you the hotel numbers where we'll be staying.  How'd that be?'