"I'll get a black one for next week," said Sukhvinder, unable to look Howard in the eye.

"Fine," he said, patting Gaia in the small of her back as he sent the pair of them through to the cafe. "Brace yourselves," he called to his staff at large. "We're nearly there...Doors open, please, Maureen!"

There was already a little knot of customers waiting on the pavement. A sign outside read: The Copper Kettle, Opening Today - First Coffee Free!

Andrew did not see Gaia again for hours. Howard kept him busy heaving milk and fruit juices up and down the steep cellar steps, and swabbing the floor of the small kitchen area at the back. He was given a lunch break earlier than either of the waitresses. The next glimpse he got of her was when Howard summoned him to the counter of the cafe, and they passed within inches of each other as she walked in the other direction, toward the backroom.

"We're swamped, Mr. Price!" said Howard, in high good humor. "Get yourself a clean apron and mop down some of these tables for me while Gaia has her lunch!"

Miles and Samantha Mollison had sat down with their two daughters and Shirley at a table in the window.

"It seems to be going awfully well, doesn't it?" Shirley said, looking around. "But what on earth is that Jawanda girl wearing under her dress?"

"Bandages?" suggested Miles, squinting across the room.

"Hi, Sukhvinder!" called Lexie, who knew her from primary school.

"Don't shout, darling," Shirley reproved her granddaughter, and Samantha bristled.

Maureen emerged from behind the counter in her short black dress and frilly apron, and Shirley corpsed into her coffee.

"Oh dear," she said quietly, as Maureen walked towards them, beaming.

It was true, Samantha thought, Maureen looked ridiculous, especially next to a pair of sixteen-year-olds in identical dresses, but she was not going to give Shirley the satisfaction of agreeing with her. She turned ostentatiously away, watching the boy mopping tables nearby. He was spare but reasonably broad-shouldered. She could see his muscles working under the loose T-shirt. Incredible to think that Miles' big fat backside could ever have been that small and tight - then the boy turned into the light and she saw his acne.

"Not half bad, is it?" Maureen was croaking to Miles. "We've been full all day."

"All right, girls," Miles addressed his family, "what'll we have to keep up Grandpa's profits?"

Samantha listlessly ordered a bowl of soup, as Howard waddled through from the delicatessen; he had been striding in and out of the cafe every ten minutes all day, greeting customers and checking the flow of cash into the till.

"Roaring success," he told Miles, squeezing in at their table. "What d'you think of the place, Sammy? You haven't seen it before, have you? Like the mural? Like the china?"

"Mm," said Samantha. "Lovely."

"I was thinking about having my sixty-fifth here," said Howard, absentmindedly scratching at the itch Parminder's creams had not yet cured, "but it's not big enough. I think we'll stick with the church hall."

"When's that, Grandpa?" piped up Lexie. "Am I coming?"

"Twenty-ninth, and what are you now - sixteen? Course you can come," said Howard happily.

"The twenty-ninth?" said Samantha. "Oh, but..."

Shirley looked at her sharply.

"Howard's been planning this for months. We've all been talking about it for ages."

"...that's the night of Libby's concert," said Samantha.

"A school thing, is it?" asked Howard.

"No," said Libby, "Mum's got me tickets for my favorite group. It's in London."

"And I'm going with her," said Samantha. "She can't go alone."

"Harriet's mum says she could -"

"I'm taking you, Libby, if you're going to London."

"The twenty-ninth?" said Miles, looking hard at Samantha. "The day after the election?"

Samantha let loose the derisive laugh that she had spared Maureen.

"It's the Parish Council, Miles. It's not as though you'll be giving press conferences."

"Well, we'll miss you, Sammy," said Howard, as he hauled himself up with the aid of the back of her chair. "Best get on...All right, Andrew, you're done here...go and see if we need anything up from the cellar."

Andrew was forced to wait beside the counter while people passed to and from the bathroom. Maureen was loading up Sukhvinder with plates of sandwiches.

"How's your mother?" she asked the girl abruptly, as though the thought had just occurred to her.

"Fine," said Sukhvinder, her color rising.

"Not too upset by that nasty business on the council website?"

"No," said Sukhvinder, her eyes watering.

Andrew proceeded out into the dank yard, which, in the early afternoon, had become warm and sunny. He had hoped that Gaia might be there, taking a breath of fresh air, but she must have gone into the staff room in the deli. Disappointed, he lit up a cigarette. He had barely inhaled when Gaia emerged from the cafe, finishing her lunch with a can of fizzy drink.

"Hi," said Andrew, his mouth dry.

"Hi," she said. Then, after a moment or two: "Hey, why's that friend of yours such a shit to Sukhvinder? Is it personal or is he racist?"

"He isn't racist," said Andrew. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, trying to keep his hands from trembling, but could not think of anything else to say. The sunshine reflected off the bins warmed his sweaty back; close proximity to her in the tight black dress was almost overwhelming, especially now that he had glimpsed what lay beneath. He took another drag of the cigarette, not knowing when he had felt so bedazzled or so alive.

"What's she ever done to him, though?"

The curve of her hips to her tiny waist; the perfection of her wide, flecked eyes over the can of Sprite. Andrew felt like saying, Nothing, he's a bastard, I'll hit him if you let me touch you...

Sukhvinder emerged into the yard, blinking in the sunlight; she looked uncomfortable and hot in Gaia's top.

"He wants you back in," she said to Gaia.

"He can wait," said Gaia coolly. "I'm finishing this. I've only had forty minutes."

Andrew and Sukhvinder contemplated her as she sipped her drink, awed by her arrogance and her beauty.

"Was that old bitch saying something to you just then, about your mum?" Gaia asked Sukhvinder.

Sukhvinder nodded.

"I think it might've been his mate," she said, staring at Andrew again, and he found her emphasis on his positively erotic, even if she meant it to be derogatory, "who put that message about your mum on that website."

"Can't've been," said Andrew, and his voice wobbled slightly. "Whoever did it went after my old man, too. Couple of weeks ago."

"What?" asked Gaia. "The same person posted something about your dad?"

He nodded, relishing her interest.

"Something about stealing, wasn't it?" asked Sukhvinder, with considerable daring.

"Yeah," said Andrew. "And he got the sack for it yesterday. So her mum," he met Gaia's blinding gaze almost steadily, "isn't the only one who's suffered."

"Bloody hell," said Gaia, upending the can and throwing it into a bin. "People round here are effing mental."

IV.

The post about Parminder on the council website had driven Colin Wall's fears to a nightmarish new level. He could only guess how the Mollisons were getting their information, but if they knew that about Parminder...

"For God's sake, Colin!" Tessa had said. "It's just malicious gossip! There's nothing in it!"

But Colin did not dare believe her. He was constitutionally prone to believing that others too lived with secrets that drove them half-demented. He could not even take comfort in knowing that he had spent most of his adult life in dread of calamities that had not materialized, because, by the law of averages, one of them was bound to come true one day.

He was thinking about his imminent exposure, as he thought about it constantly, while walking back from the butcher's at half past two, and it was not until the hubbub from the new cafe caught his startled attention that he realized where he was. He would have crossed to the other side of the Square if he had not been already level with the Copper Kettle's windows; mere proximity to any Mollison frightened him now. Then he saw something through the glass that made him do a double take.

When he entered their kitchen ten minutes later, Tessa was on the telephone to her sister. Colin deposited the leg of lamb in the fridge and marched upstairs, all the way to Fats' loft conversion. Flinging open the door, he saw, as he had expected, a deserted room.

He could not remember the last time he had been in here. The floor was covered in dirty clothes. There was an odd smell, even though Fats had left the skylight propped open. Colin noticed a large matchbox on Fats' desk. He slid it open, and saw a mass of twisted cardboard stubs. A packet of Rizlas lay brazenly on the desk beside the computer.

Colin's heart seemed to have toppled down out of his chest to thump against his guts.

"Colin?" came Tessa's voice, from the landing below. "Where are you?"

"Up here!" he roared.

She appeared at Fats' door looking frightened and anxious. Wordlessly, he picked up the matchbox and showed her the contents.

"Oh," said Tessa weakly.

"He said he was going out with Andrew Price today," said Colin. Tessa was frightened by the muscle working in Colin's jaw, an angry little bump moving from side to side. "I've just been past that new cafe in the Square, and Andrew Price is working in there, mopping tables. So where's Stuart?"

For weeks, Tessa had been pretending to believe Fats whenever he said that he was going out with Andrew. For days she had been telling herself that Sukhvinder must be mistaken in thinking that Fats was going out (would condescend, ever, to go out) with Krystal Weedon.

"I don't know," she said. "Come down and have a cup of tea. I'll ring him."

"I think I'll wait here," said Colin, and he sat down on Fats' unmade bed.

"Come on, Colin - come downstairs," said Tessa.

She was scared of leaving him here. She did not know what he might find in the drawers or in Fats' schoolbag. She did not want him to look on the computer or under the bed. Refusing to probe dark corners had become her sole modus operandi.

"Come downstairs, Col," she urged him.

"No," said Colin, and he crossed his arms like a mutinous child, but with that muscle working in his jaw. "Drugs in his bin. The son of the deputy headmaster."

Tessa, who had sat down on Fats' computer chair, felt a familiar thrill of anger. She knew that self-preoccupation was an inevitable consequence of his illness, but sometimes...

"Plenty of teenagers experiment," she said.

"Still defending him, are you? Doesn't it ever occur to you that it's your constant excuses for him that make him think he can get away with blue murder?"

She was trying to keep a curb on her temper, because she must be a buffer between them.

"I'm sorry, Colin, but you and your job aren't the be-all and end -"

"I see - so if I get the sack -"

"Why on earth would you get the sack?"

"For God's sake!" shouted Colin, outraged. "It all reflects on me - it's already bad enough - he's already one of the biggest problem students in the -"

"That's not true!" shouted Tessa. "Nobody but you thinks Stuart's anything other than a normal teenager. He's not Dane Tully!"

"He's going the same way as Tully - drugs in his bin -"

"I told you we should have sent him to Paxton High! I knew you'd make everything he did all about you, if he went to Winterdown! Is it any wonder he rebels, when his every movement is supposed to be a credit to you? I never wanted him to go to your school!"

"And I," bellowed Colin, jumping to his feet, "never bloody wanted him at all!"

"Don't say that!" gasped Tessa. "I know you're angry - but don't say that!"

The front door slammed two floors below them. Tessa looked around, frightened, as though Fats might materialize instantly beside them. It wasn't merely the noise that had made her start. Stuart never slammed the front door; he usually slipped in and out like a shape-shifter.

His familiar tread on the stairs; did he know, or suspect they were in his room? Colin was waiting, with his fists clenched by his sides. Tessa heard the creak of the halfway step, and then Fats stood before them. She was sure he had arranged his expression in advance: a mixture of boredom and disdain.

"Afternoon," he said, looking from his mother to his rigid, tense father. He had all the self-possession that Colin had never had. "This is a surprise."

Desperate, Tessa tried to show him the way.

"Dad was worried about where you are," she said, with a plea in her voice. "You said you were going to be with Arf today, but Dad saw -"