'I was frantic.' Dr Darkkon stared off into s.p.a.ce. '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 a 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 bombsh.e.l.l.

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 G.o.d,' 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 winegla.s.ses 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 a you know their two sons, Aidan and Kirby a '

Cadel groaned.

'And the Driscolls, you've met them a '

'No I haven't.'

'Yes you have. Before they went to Hong Kong. And Dr Roth's coming a '

'Thaddeus?'

'Oh b.u.g.g.e.r!' 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 'a.s.sistive 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 a.s.sistive 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 a from something so big!

It suddenly occurred to him that he probably hadn't been as important to her as she was to him.

'Cadel!' It was Lanna, somewhere down the hall. 'Cadel!'

'What?'

'Are you dressed?'

'Huh?'

'I want you dressed, please! I want to see what you'll be wearing!'

'Yeah, okay!' Cadel ignored her. He started to track down the Weatherwood House staff, using phone records as his jumping-off point. But he wasn't allowed to work in peace for very long.

'Cadel!' The door swung open. 'What are you doing? You're still in your pyjamas!'

Cadel glowered at Lanna like a small, cornered animal. But she refused to be intimidated.

'Get those off,' she ordered. 'Now. I want you in something decent. These will do. And these.' She began to pluck various garments out of his wardrobe. 'Not those disgusting shoes. I'm going to throw those away.' She picked them up. 'Your guests will be arriving in one hour, so I want you out of here and waiting by then. Understand?'

'My guests?' Cadel snorted.

'Don't you get smart,' warned Stuart, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway. 'If you give your mother any more lip, you can stay in here all day.'

'I'd prefer to stay in here,' muttered Cadel.

'Without the computer,' Stuart added. Then there was a loud crash from the kitchen and his head jerked around. 'For Chris-sake, what's that?'

'The caterers,' said Lanna, despairingly. 'Go and see what's happened, will you?' Frowning, she caught sight of Cadel's screen. 'What are you doing? Some kind of project?'

With one swipe at a key, Cadel exited the site. He didn't want Lanna poking her nose into his private business. 'Nothing,' he said, and realised, with a sinking heart, that he wasn't going to be left in peace that day. After all, it was supposed to be his birthday party.

Sighing, Cadel hid his computer back in its old hiding place, inside the hollowed-out world atlas. Just to be on the safe side, he also implemented his fail-safe program, which was designed to keep his computer from booting up unless special codes were entered. Only he knew the codes, of course. Anyone else who tried to turn it on would be unable to do so. He would explain that the machine had broken down.

And that's exactly what he did say to the kids who turned up a at least, to those who actually noticed him. Despite the fact that it was his birthday, most of the guests ignored him entirely. Only one little girl called Leticia even bothered with him, and she followed him around purely to annoy. She dogged his footsteps as he picked at the piles of chicken wings, pork dumplings, spring rolls, spiced cutlets, breadsticks, Thai salad, barbecued ribs and vol-au-vents arrayed across the dining-room table.

'Yuk,' she said, watching him deftly whip a spring roll off one plate. 'What's that?'

'A spring roll.'

'It looks disgusting.'

'Good.' Cadel stuffed it into his mouth. 'More for me if you don't like them.' 'Yuk! How can you eat that?' 'With my teeth.' 'Eew! That one's green.' 'Because it's made out of vine leaves.' 'How can you eat leaves? Caterpillars eat leaves.'

Cadel rolled his eyes.

'I'm hungry, and there's nothing to eat!' moaned Leticia. 'Don't you have any sandwiches?'

'No,' said Cadel, 'but there's cheese.' Leticia looked around suspiciously.

'What kind of cheese?' she queried, and pointed at a round of camembert. 'Not that kind. That's yukky. I won't eat that.'

'Very wise,' a smooth voice suddenly remarked. Glancing up, Cadel saw Thaddeus standing in the doorway. He wore a light jacket over a crisp shirt, and was cradling a gift-wrapped parcel.

'You probably shouldn't eat anything you haven't pulled out of the ground yourself,' Thaddeus went on gravely, addressing Leticia. 'Processed foods are full of insect residue.'

Leticia stared, open-mouthed. 'Huh?' she said.

'Little tiny bits of wings and legs and carapace,' Thaddeus explained. 'Stuff you can only see under a microscope. You can't keep it out of things like bread and meat and cereal. Most of us must eat the equivalent of a oh, at least two c.o.c.kroaches a day.'

'I do not!' Leticia protested, her eyes wide with horror. 'I do not eat c.o.c.kroaches!'

'Of course you do. We all do.'

'I do not!'

'And spiders,' Thaddeus continued with relish. He bared his long teeth in a wolfish smile. 'And big, fat blowflies.'

'Mummy!' Leticia cried, before bolting from the kitchen. Cadel and Thaddeus both listened to her clumsy tread and piercing cries, which slowly faded as she escaped into the garden.

'What a repulsive creature,' Thaddeus finally observed, thrusting his present under Cadel's nose. 'Happy birthday, dear boy. If you've already got it, I've kept the receipt a but I'm told that it's a must-have.'

Cadel took the parcel with a shy smile. He was desperately relieved to see Thaddeus. Disoriented by his sleepless night, buffeted by the noise and the crowds and the unexpected blows he'd received, he felt safe in Thaddeus's company.

The psychologist's gift was a book: Parallel Distributed Processing a Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition, Volume 2. Cadel examined it with pleasure.

'Thanks,' he said.

'You haven't got it?' asked Thaddeus.

'Only volume one.'

'Oh, good.'

'It's the only decent present I've had today.'

'Really? What did the Piggotts give you?'

'Nothing. Yet.'

'Though they have pulled all the stops out for your party.' Thaddeus jerked his head at the scene beyond the door: the tonnes of food, the vats of punch, the roaring ma.s.s of people. 'I was actually forced to park in the next street.'

'Oh yeah,' Cadel replied, dryly. 'Nothing's too good for the birthday boy.'

'No wonder you're looking a little lost, if I may say so.'

'I always get lost in this place,' Cadel replied, and Thaddeus studied him closely. Before the psychologist could speak, however, someone else cut into their conversation.

'Your birthday, Cadel?' a harsh voice inquired.

Cadel turned around. He was astonished to see Mrs Brezeck, his former mathematics teacher, standing about two metres away. She wore a long, tan-coloured coat and a green scarf around her neck. She looked ruffled.

'Mrs Brezeck?' Cadel exclaimed. 'How did a gosh, they didn't tell me they invited you.'

'I wasn't invited,' she said. 'I just walked in.'

'Oh.' Cadel didn't know how to respond. It was odd, seeing her in such familiar surroundings a like seeing a ghost. She stepped forward suddenly, her purse clutched to her chest, her mouth set in a thin, straight line.

'I came here to say that I know what you did, Cadel.' She almost hissed the words. 'I've been following through. It all leads back to you, all of it.'

Cadel blinked. Though he didn't feel strong enough to cope with this attack, he forced himself not to swallow, or glance aside. 'What are you talking about?' he asked.

'You know exactly what I'm talking about,' Mrs Brezeck spat. 'Just before the English exam, Angelique told Damian she was breaking up with him, and he ran his car into a tree. Couldn't take his exams. Angelique was so shattered that she failed hers. I've spoken to Angelique, and she said she gave Damian his marching orders because of a letter she received from Heather Parsons, accusing Damian of taking advantage of her on the night of the formal. According to Heather, she wrote that letter because Jessica told her that Angelique had been calling Heather a 's.l.u.t' a something that Jessica heard from you, Cadel.'

Cadel stared blankly.

'Then there was Colm Cartwright. He somehow got a copy of several HSC exam papers over the Internet, before he had to do them. Funny that, isn't it? When you consider that he can hardly manage a word processing program. Naturally, they were fake papers. Naturally, he prepared for the wrong questions. I can't prove it yet, Cadel, but I know you were responsible for that, too!'

Cadel shook his head. 'No, I wasn't.'

'Don't lie to me!' Mrs Brezeck yelped, and took another step forward, one forefinger raised. Before she could reach Cadel, however, Thaddeus's arm shot out, barring her way.

'I don't believe we've met,' he said coolly, at which point she glared up at him like a snappy little terrier.

'Who are you? ' she growled. 'His father?'

'Just a family friend.'