Careless in Red (Inspector Lynley, #15)(113)

“I didn’t expect…I didn’t know her, see. I thought something was a bit off with her when she came upon me yesterday, but I didn’t think…She’s like…Jago, she could be my mum.”

“Not bloody likely. For her faults, your mum stuck to her own kind, yes?”

“What d’ you mean?”

“Way Madlyn tells it?and, mind, she doesn’t think much of your mum?Wenna Angarrack with her list of surnames always sticks to her own age group. From what you say, this one”?and Cadan took from Jago’s tone of aversion that he was referring to Dellen Kerne?“doesn’t appear to mind what age she’s doing it with. ’Spect you had signs when you met her.”

“She asked me about it,” Cadan admitted.

“It?”

“Sex. She asked me what I did for sex.”

“And you didn’t think that was a bit off, Cade? Woman her age making enquiries like that? She was readying you.”

“I didn’t really…” Cadan shifted his uneasy gaze off Jago’s shrewd one. Above the radio hung a poster, a Hawaiian girl inexplicably wearing nothing but a lei round her neck and a wreath of palm leaves on her head as she surfed a good-size wave with casual skill. It came to Cadan as he looked upon her that some people were born with amazing confidence, and he was not one of those people.

“You knew what was going on,” Jago said. “S’pose you thought you got yourself a three-way girl with no asking, eh? Or, worst case, a bit of how’s yer father. Either way, you’re happy.” He shook his head. “Blokes your age never can think outside of the envelope, and we both know what that envelope is.”

“She offered me lunch,” Cadan said in his own defence.

Jago laughed. “Bet she did. And she was planning to be your pudding.” He set down his sandpaper and leaned against the board. “Girl like that’s trouble, Cade. You got to know how to read her from the start. She gets a boy by the short ones by giving him a taste, eh? A little bit now, and a little bit then till he’s got the whole. Then it’s on again, off again till he don’t know which part of her’s the part to believe in so he believes in it all. She makes him feel ways he’s never felt, and he thinks no one can make him feel the same. That’s how it works. Best learn from this and let it go.”

“But my job,” he said. “I need the job, Jago.”

Jago pointed at him with his trembling hand. “What you don’t need is that family,” he said. “Look what hooking into the Kernes did to Madlyn. She better off for spreading her legs for that boy of theirs?”

“But you let them use your?”

“’Course I did. When I saw I couldn’t talk her out of letting Santo in her knickers, least I could do was my best to make certain they were safe about it, so I said for them to go to Sea Dreams. But did that help matters? Made them worse. Santo used her up and spat her out. Only good was that at least the girl had someone to talk to who didn’t shout the I-told-you-so’s at her.”

“Reckon you wanted to, though.”

“Bloody right I wanted to. But what was done was done, so what was the point? Question is, Cade, are you going to go the way of Madlyn?”

“There’re obvious differences. And anyway, the job?”

“Sod the job! Make peace with your dad. Come back here. We got the work. We got too much work, with the season nearly here. You can do it well enough if you’ve a mind to.” Jago returned to his own employment, but before he began, he made a final comment. “One of you two’s going to have to swallow pride, Cade. He took your car keys and your driving licence ’cos he had a reason. To keep you alive. Not every father makes that kind of effort. Not every father makes it and succeeds. Best you start thinking of that, my boy.”

“YOU’RE DISGUSTING,” KERRA SAID to her mother. Her voice was trembling. This somehow made things seem even worse to her. Trembling might suggest to Dellen that her daughter was feeling fear, embarrassment, or?what was truly pathetic?a form of dismay when all the time what Kerra was feeling was rage. Seething, white hot, utterly pure and all of it directed towards the woman before her. She was feeling far more of it than she’d felt towards Dellen in years, and she wouldn’t have believed that possible. “You’re disgusting,” she repeated. “Do you hear me, Mum?”

Dellen said in turn, “And what the hell do you think you are, coming upon me like a little spy? Are you proud of yourself?”

Kerra said, “You can turn this on me?”

“Yes, I can. You sneak round here like a copper’s nark and don’t think I don’t know it. You’ve been watching me for years and reporting back to your father and anyone else who’d listen.”

“You absolute bitch,” Kerra said, more in wonder than in anger. “You absolute, unbelievable bitch.”

“Hurts a bit to hear the truth, doesn’t it? So hear some more. You caught your mum off guard and now you’ve got the chance you’ve waited for to do her in. You see what you want to see, Kerra, instead of what’s right in front of your nose.”

“Which is?”

“The truth. He got carried away by the music. You saw for yourself I was pushing him away. He’s a randy little worm and he saw an opportunity. And that’s what happened. So get out of here with your nasty speculation and find something useful to do with your time.” Dellen moved her head in a way that tossed her hair at the same time as it dismissed whatever conclusions her daughter may have drawn. Then, despite her previous words, she apparently decided she’d not said enough, for she went on with, “I offered him lunch. There can’t be a problem with that, can there? Surely that can’t possibly meet with your disapproval. I turned on the radio. Well, what else was I supposed to do? It was easier than making conversation with a boy I barely know. He took the music as some sort of sign. It was sexy, the way Latin music always is, and he got caught up in?”