Cadel took two biscuits and a glass of water before trudging up to the top floor. Nothing had changed on the staircase since his first visit. The same mottled engravings hung on the wall. The same shabby runner was pinned down by the same tarnished brass stair rods. The bathroom off the first landing had not been touched, save for the occasional scrub-down and change of toilet paper. It remained gloomy and old-fashioned, with its wooden toilet seat, dangling chain and cream tiles.
But Thaddeus’s room had changed. Thaddeus had installed two brand new micro-suede couches the previous week, and hung new curtains at the windows. The carpet was now about three years old. And the technology, of course, was state-ofthe-art.
Cadel sat down in front of the psychologist’s computer. Munching on a biscuit, he checked his own email – and almost choked.
A message from Kay-Lee!
Weak with relief, he opened the file. There it was.
Get stuffed, it said. This conversation is officially terminated.
Cadel caught his breath. He couldn’t believe his eyes. Get stuffed? What was that supposed to mean? What are you talking about? he wrote. What’s the matter? Then he thought: why am I doing this? And he picked up the phone.
He had memorised the Weatherwood House number. It rang three times before a woman’s voice cut in, telling him that he had reached Weatherwood House and how could she help? He asked to speak to Kay-Lee McDougall.
‘One moment, please,’ the voice trilled. There was a click, and ‘Greensleeves’ began to play. After about two minutes, Cadel heard another click, followed by heavy breathing.
‘Hello?’ somebody panted. ‘This is Kay-Lee.’
Cadel was suddenly speechless.
‘Hello. Hello?’
‘Kay-Lee,’ Cadel finally croaked.
‘Speaking.’ She was beginning to sound impatient. Her voice was unexpectedly rough – she drawled her vowels.
‘Kay-Lee, it’s – it’s . . .’ For a moment, his mind went blank. ‘I’m a friend of Eiran’s,’ he gasped, knowing that the pitch and rhythm of his own voice were a dead giveaway. He quite obviously wasn’t a thirty-four-year-old alcoholic Canadian.
There was a long pause.
‘Oh.’
‘Eiran wants to know what that message was all about,’ Cadel continued. ‘Why you sent it.’
‘Look –’
‘He wants to know if you’re all right. If something’s wrong –’
‘Look, forget it,’ said Kay-Lee. She sounded tired, and not particularly upset. ‘Just forget it, okay? Lay off.’
‘But –’
‘Not interested. Okay? Sorry, but you’ve caused enough trouble.’
Clunk. She hung up.
For an instant, Cadel found it hard to breathe. That broken connection was like a punch in the belly. He thought he was going to be sick. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t be true.
He was still sitting, motionless, at Thaddeus’s desk when the psychologist walked in.
‘Ah! Cadel. I’m very sorry, it’s inexcusable to be so late, but I couldn’t help it. Emergency at the institute. Well . . .’ Thaddeus gave a short laugh. ‘I don’t have to tell you, of all people. It was Doris, of course. We had our suspicions right from the start. Hmm.’ He had picked up some unopened mail from his desktop, and was flipping through it. ‘How on earth do these people track me down?’ he remarked, tossing a letter into his rubbish bin. ‘Do you know I’ve dodged some of the world’s leading intelligence agencies? But when it comes to charitable organisations and insurance companies – well, they always find me in the end.’ He looked up, and his gaze became intent as it focused on Cadel. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked.
‘What?’ said Cadel stupidly.
‘Are you feeling sick?’
‘Uh – no.’
‘You’re very pale.’
‘Am I?’ Cadel glanced around vaguely, as if expecting a mirror to materialise. He knew that he was suffering from a mild case of shock. ‘I – I guess I didn’t eat much, today.’
‘Ah.’ Thaddeus nodded. ‘Stuck at your computer again, I suppose.’
‘Something like that.’
‘I’ll send Wilfreda out to get you a bite.’ Because there was no intercom connecting the upper and lower floors of the house, Thaddeus strolled onto the landing to summon his secretary. He called to Cadel: ‘What do you want? Something hot? Fish and chips?’
Cadel couldn’t think. He mentioned the first thing that popped into his head.
‘Sausage roll?’
‘Not very nutritious, Cadel.’
‘Pizza, then. Vegetarian.’
As Thaddeus and Wilfreda discussed which company she should call, and how they would pay for the delivery, Cadel erased Kay-Lee’s message from Thaddeus’s computer. Although Thaddeus knew about Kay-Lee, he had never much approved of her. Cadel didn’t want him to find out what she had done. It would be unbearable if Thaddeus turned around and said: ‘I told you so’.
Cadel himself still couldn’t believe what had happened.
‘Your father wants to talk to you,’ Thaddeus announced when he re-entered his office. ‘He has something important to say. I’m not sure what it is, but he was very insistent. We’ll have a transmission download in exactly’ – he checked his watch – ‘two minutes and thirty seconds. I’ve got it all set up, as you can see.’
‘Do you think . . . ?’ Cadel hesitated, before plucking up his courage. ‘I mean, it can’t wait, can it? Till next time?’
Thaddeus raised his eyebrows. He hardly needed to say ‘no’, because Cadel immediately backed down.
‘No, of course it can’t wait,’ he said. ‘Sorry. Not thinking. But can I go to the toilet first?’
Thaddeus nodded, studying Cadel intently. Avoiding his gaze, Cadel hurried out the door and down the stairs. He shut himself in the bathroom. His stomach was churning, and he was afraid that he might be sick – or worse. But nothing happened.
Nerves, he decided. It must be nerves.
Mrs Piggott often talked about her nerves. They caused her all sorts of problems, like headaches and stomach upsets. For the first time ever, Cadel found himself sympathising with her.
Finally he washed his face and marched heavily back upstairs.
‘Here he is,’ said Thaddeus, who was stationed in front of his most recent transmitter screen, which was larger and more advanced. Though Dr Darkkon’s transmitter was now concealed under a fake corn on his foot (a corn that he had to peel off when he wanted to speak to Cadel), advances in nanotechnology meant that Cadel saw more of his father than ever before: hands, shoulders, neck, even bits of his pudgy waist. Sometimes Cadel wondered if this was really an improvement.
‘Cadel,’ said Dr Darkkon, craning forward so that his bloodshot eyes became huge. ‘What happened to your face?’
Cadel opened his mouth. ‘Uh,’ he began, realising that he hadn’t thought up a good excuse. Fortunately, however, Thaddeus jumped in to save him.
‘I’m afraid that’s the result of faulty evacuation procedures,’ he said. ‘Cadel got pushed against a doorframe during a bomb scare.’
‘But –’
‘I’ve got Luther on the case now, revising guidelines,’ Thaddeus assured Dr Darkkon, who frowned.
‘I should hope so,’ he said. ‘Are you all right, son?’
‘Yes,’ Cadel replied.
‘Sure it wasn’t someone seizing the moment? Taking advantage?’
‘No.’
‘Well . . . as long as you’re on the mend.’ Dr Darkkon eyed Cadel’s injuries for a moment, before taking a deep breath. ‘Sit down, Cadel,’ he commanded. ‘There’s something we have to talk about.’
Obediently, Cadel sat. There was a burning sensation at the back of his eyes, but he tried to concentrate on what his father was saying. At least, whatever it was, it would take his mind off Kay-Lee. The cruelty! The unfairness!
No. He wouldn’t think about that. Not now.
‘Cadel, it’s y
our birthday tomorrow,’ Dr Darkkon declared. ‘You’re going to be fourteen.’
Oh yes, thought Cadel dully. I forgot about that.
‘Have you decided what you want, son?’
There was only one thing Cadel wanted at that moment. And his father couldn’t give it to him.
‘Not really,’ he muttered.
‘Well, there’s no hurry,’ Dr Darkkon continued. ‘When you’ve made your mind up, you can tell me. Meanwhile, I’ve got something to tell you. Something I swore to tell you when you turned fourteen. When you weren’t a child any more, in other words.’
‘But I am a child,’ Cadel pointed out, before he could stop himself. ‘Legally, I won’t be an adult till I’m –’
‘Yes, yes, I don’t mean under law.’ Dr Darkkon’s tone was impatient. ‘I mean in the truest sense. You may not be an adult, yet, but you’re certainly not a child.’
‘The Romans didn’t think so, anyway,’ Thaddeus interjected, and Dr Darkkon flashed him an irritable look.
‘Yes, well, that’s neither here nor there,’ Dr Darkkon said. ‘The point is, Cadel, I’ve something to tell you about your mother.’
‘My mother?’ This was completely unexpected. Cadel struggled to concentrate. All at once, his heart contracted painfully. ‘You don’t mean – she’s not alive, is she?’ he squawked.
‘No. Oh no.’
‘Calm down, Cadel.’ Thaddeus put a firm hand on Cadel’s shoulder. ‘It’s nothing like that.’
‘She is dead, I’m afraid. There’s no question about that.’ Dr Darkkon’s voice cracked, then grew hoarse. He cleared his throat. ‘But before she died, Cadel – well, you might have wondered about her. What she was like. Why I haven’t shown you any pictures. That sort of thing.’
Cadel realised, with growing astonishment, that he never had. He never had given much thought to his mother. Why was that? Because his mind had been fully engaged elsewhere? Because Thaddeus had almost never brought the subject up during their talks? Because both Thaddeus and Dr Darkkon, on the rare occasions when they did mention his mother, spoke dismissively, as if she wasn’t of any importance?
‘The fact is, son, she left us, before she passed away,’ Dr Darkkon sighed. ‘She abandoned us both. She was taking drugs, and she got involved with the wrong sort of people, and – well, she disappeared. That’s all I can tell you.’
Cadel gasped. ‘You mean, you don’t know what happened?’ he squeaked.
Thaddeus, who hadn’t let go of Cadel’s shoulder, applied more pressure, and leaned down to address his bewildered client.
‘What your father means,’ he said quietly, ‘is that Elspeth vanished, leaving behind all her possessions and what was left of her money. Her purse was found at the bottom of a cliff. No one’s seen her since, except the people who killed her.’
‘But – but if no one’s seen her,’ Cadel stammered, ‘then she could be alive! Couldn’t she?’
‘No, son.’ Dr Darkkon spoke gravely. ‘She was killed. I never found her body, but I found the men who did it. At least, Thaddeus did. He took care of them, too.’
‘They disposed of the body,’ Thaddeus interposed. ‘They told me how, but I won’t describe the method. It really doesn’t matter.’
‘What does matter,’ Dr Darkkon went on, ‘is that she betrayed us, Cadel. She walked off as if she didn’t care. One day she just walked off, and that was that. I never saw nor heard from her again. It was as if we’d never existed.’
‘But –’
‘I was frantic.’ Dr Darkkon stared off into space. ‘I never knew that she’d been living this other life. You had a nursemaid, so she didn’t have to take you along with her.’ There was a pause as he brooded. Then he shook off his dark reflections, and set his jaw. ‘Women do that, son. You can’t trust ’em – not the best of ’em.’
‘Look at Doris,’ Thaddeus interrupted. ‘A naturalborn poisoner. You couldn’t trust her an inch.’
‘They just drop you and walk away,’ Dr Darkkon insisted. ‘It happens all the time. I want you to know this, Cadel, in case you’ve ever wondered why I don’t talk about your mother.’ He swallowed, and blinked. ‘Frankly, it’s far too painful,’ he finished.
Cadel simply stared at him, not knowing what to say. His mother. Kay-Lee. They’d done the same thing to him.
How couldn’t he believe the worst about them both?
TWENTY-EIGHT
Mrs Piggott decided to throw a party in Cadel’s honour. It wasn’t every day, she said, that a boy turned fourteen. Cadel couldn’t argue with that, of course, but he was puzzled. It wasn’t every day that a boy turned ten, eleven, twelve or thirteen, either, and she hadn’t organised any parties for those birthdays. His last birthday party had taken place when he was nine.
As soon as the guests began to arrive, however, he saw that the event had very little to do with him. His birthday had simply given Lanna an excuse to pay off countless friends for their invitations. Cadel knew almost none of the people who arrived for lunch the following day. The day after Kay-Lee dropped her bombshell.
Cadel had spent a bad night. He had slept very little, tossing and turning and finally getting up to pace the floor. He couldn’t even turn to his computer for comfort, because his overwhelming impulse was to hammer at the keys with clenched fists. At one point he’d shed tears (silently, so as not to wake the Piggotts). When at last he had slept, Kay-Lee and his mother had become all tangled up in his dreams.
Upon waking, he discovered that his chaotic feelings had sorted themselves out a bit. He was now angry. Purely and simply furious. She hadn’t given him a chance. Not one single chance. She had refused him even an explanation. That wasn’t right. It wasn’t the behaviour of a decent human being.
He thought: I’m going to get even with her.
He shuffled out of bed and went to his bathroom. The face that stared back at him from the mirror was chalk-white, except for the bruised bits, with grey smudges under his eyes making them look even bigger than usual.
‘Oh my God,’ Lanna cried, when she first caught a glimpse of him. ‘Don’t tell me you’re sick!’
‘No,’ said Cadel, heading for the fridge. It was nine o’clock and the kitchen was already in disarray, cluttered with unopened bottles of beer and wine, white cardboard boxes full of French pastries, packets of pretzels and water biscuits, tubs of exotic dips.
‘Don’t touch that!’ Lanna commanded as Cadel reached for one of the packets. ‘That’s for later.’
‘How many people are coming?’ asked Cadel, gazing at the rows of glistening wineglasses lined up on every available surface.
‘Seventy-four.’
‘Seventy-four? ’ Cadel couldn’t believe it. ‘I don’t even know seventy-four people!’
‘Don’t be silly. You know lots of these people.’ Lanna was spooning low-fat yoghurt into her mouth, one eye on the clock. ‘We’re having the Mayles, the Van Hoorts – you know their two sons, Aidan and Kirby –’
Cadel groaned.
‘And the Driscolls, you’ve met them –’
‘No I haven’t.’
‘Yes you have. Before they went to Hong Kong. And Dr Roth’s coming –’
‘Thaddeus?’
‘Oh bugger!’ Mrs Piggott slapped her forehead. ‘I forgot to call the florist!’ Then the doorbell rang, suddenly. ‘Stuart! Stuart!’ she cried. ‘Will you please answer that?’
Cadel grabbed a muesli bar and retreated, before Lanna could ask him to open the front door. It wasn’t until he was back in his room that he realised something: she hadn’t wished him a happy birthday.
She had probably forgotten that it was his birthday.
He smiled grimly to himself. Then he sat down and turned on his computer, because today was the day. He was going to find out every tiny little thing that he could about Kay-Lee McDougall. And then . . . well, then he would see how it could be used. He already knew a great deal, of course. Thanks to the sloppy security on her computer, he had been
able to fish around inside it the way most people would fish around inside someone’s desk drawer. He had found and read through her conversations with various mathematicians around the world, with a friend called Ivy, and with a supplier of ‘assistive devices’ for handicapped people. Weatherwood House being a kind of group home for disabled kids in wheelchairs, this last exchange had to be work-related. Strangely enough, there wasn’t much else about work on Kay-Lee’s hard drive. Cadel had picked up most of his knowledge about Weatherwood House from its information website.
The website included photographs of a large, white building surrounded by trees, and other pictures of stick-thin kids trying to manipulate paintbrushes, or being supported in swimming pools, or simply draped in wheelchairs, grinning, with party-hats on their heads and smiling adults clustered around them. Cadel scanned these photographs carefully, but saw only one person who might have been Kay-Lee. It was hard to tell, because she was in a swimming-pool picture, turning away from the camera and wearing a rubber cap. Nevertheless, he thought it was her.
The home had its own swimming pool, shuttle bus, kitchens, vegetable garden, trained physiotherapists and a ‘broad range of assistive technology’. Cadel scrolled through the endless lists of goals, achievements and useful links, looking for more information on the staff. There wasn’t much. He did find out that Weatherwood House had staff ‘living on the premises’ to allow for ‘maximum involvement and supervision’.
That’s Kay-Lee, he decided. She lives on the premises.
He had never paid much attention to the Weatherwood House website, and as he examined it more closely, he felt more and more left out. Kay-Lee had hardly ever mentioned her work. Yet here it was, in full colour, and it didn’t look like something you could easily ignore. A big house, stuffed to the brim with people and noise and colour; parents coming and going; kids demanding attention; kids wetting themselves and spilling their drinks and needing comfort in the middle of the night. It looked all-consuming. Especially if you were living on the premises.
Cadel wasn’t the least bit involved in this side of Kay-Lee’s life. He was completely cut off from it – from something so big!