Stevie searched through the wastepaper basket next to the desk and found a few more screwed up stories, some used tissues, chocolate wrappings and several empty potato chip packets.

A row of sagging shelves above the desk was weighed down with paperbacks—the Harry Potter series, Alex Ryder boy detective, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books, Paul Jennings and several others. Despite the strained finances of her mother, it didn’t seem as if Bianca had gone without. Next to the books were jumbled piles of CDs, an iPod and a small-screen combo TV and DVD player.

‘Did you ever see what Bianca was doing on the computer?’ Stevie had asked Stella earlier.

‘Don’t know anything about computers, all I know is I get a whacking great bill for the Internet every month.’

‘Did she use email?’

‘Yes, with her Internet friends. I encouraged it. I couldn’t write a proper letter when I was her age. I was proud of her.’

If the woman had known anything at all about kids’ activities on the Internet, Stevie thought, she would have realised the letters were probably far from proper.

‘Why’s everyone so caught up over the computer, anyway?’ Stella had queried.

‘We think it might have been taken by her abductor to cover his tracks.’

‘You mean he took it when he grabbed her? But why would he do that?’

‘This man is probably a cyber predator, a paedophile who picks up children through the Internet and tricks them into meeting him. I doubt he came here to take the computer. A common ploy is to get the child to bring their laptop, if they have one, to the meetings. In that way they can destroy the computer and any evidence of their activities.’

At that point Stella had buried her face in her hands. ‘I never knew any of this. She was always so good. So quiet.’

Stevie heard her own mother’s voice across the chasm of the years: ‘You’re too quiet, you’re up to something.’ And usually they were, either putting laxatives in the shearers’ tea or hiding the hand-reared calf from their father at market time. There were no computers then, no Internet chat rooms and no mobile phones.

Stevie was thirty-five years old, but her childhood could have been a century ago.

7

Thursday

Her parents were at it again; Emma Breightling heard them yelling at each other in the kitchen. She padded through her bedroom door, still in her nightie, and peered down into the kitchen from behind the wrought iron banister, wondering what it was about this time. Three guesses: money, money or maybe even money; Emma wasn’t usually wrong. She looked down at her mother’s head and saw the gleam of scalp shining through the dark sculptured hair. Miranda would be mortified if she knew how exposed and vulnerable—how old—she seemed from this height.

Emma took hold of the decorative balustrade on the mezzanine with both hands and wiggled at it. The ornamental railings were loosening nicely in their concrete beds and would soon be more of a danger than a safety feature. God help the stumbling drunk who might one day lean upon it for support. Emma smiled to herself and continued to watch Miranda.

Her mother hit the side of the table with the rolled up morning paper, making the Spode cups rattle in their saucers, the milk shiver in the matching jug. Emma’s father flinched but said nothing. Emma could imagine the little muscle in his jaw twitching, one beat short of a facial tic. It was as if there was something lurking there just under his skin, bursting to get out. He reached for a paper napkin and placed it under his cup to absorb the slops.

‘You’ve got to do something, Christopher! I can’t take much more of this—this not knowing. Have you any idea what it’s doing to me?’

‘Miranda, I told you, everything’s fine. It was just a temporary cash flow problem; we’re back on track now.’

Compared to his wife’s hysterical shriek, her father’s voice sounded calm and slow, though Emma could tell by the twitch and by the clenching and unclenching of his fist on the table, how close he was to snapping.

‘Aidan said—’

‘You shouldn’t be listening to Aidan,’ Christopher interrupted.

‘He said we might have to sell the house.’

‘That stupid nouveau prick doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Just leave everything to me, it’s going to be fine.’

‘That’s no way to speak of your oldest friend,’ Miranda pouted. ‘ And our accountant—if anyone should know, he should.’

‘ Your oldest friend, Miranda; not mine.’

Christopher said no more, refusing to be drawn into a conversation about Aidan Stoppard. Funny, he never listened to Emma either, when she tried to tell him what her godfather was really like; it seemed he never listened to either of them any more.

Miranda bided her time, drumming her long fingernails on the breakfast table, clicking them like metal balls on strings. Emma knew the signs; her mother was dredging for something else to hurl at her husband.

At last she seemed to find it. ‘That man was hanging around outside the agency again the other night,’ Miranda said. ‘I told you to do something about him. I’ve not been sleeping; my nerves are shot to pieces. You’ll have to give me another prescription. Imagine if he tried to do something to one of the girls?’

Emma had to stop herself from laughing out loud; Miranda was even dumber than she thought. You’d think that after fifteen years of marriage, she would have realised the only thing that got Christopher Breightling flustered was money; money and Aidan Stoppard, which were one and the same thing really.

‘When was it you saw this man?’ Christopher asked calmly.

Miranda lifted her chin. ‘Monday.’

He took several measured sips of coffee before answering her. ‘I spoke to him weeks ago, I told you that.’

‘Well it can’t have done much good, whatever you said. He was hanging around outside the agency again, ogling the girls, just like before. And you’re off to your stupid conference in Queensland this afternoon. What do I do if he comes back?’

‘I’ll only be away a couple of days. Get Julian to talk to him if you’re worried.’

‘Huh, some help he is.’

‘Are you sure it was the same man? What did he look like?’

‘It was dark, so I couldn’t see his face but he was smallish, and thin, and he was wearing a hooded windcheater.’

Christopher paused with the coffee cup halfway to his lips. For a moment he appeared to stare right through Miranda. Then he gave a slight shrug. ‘There are always men hanging around waiting to get a glimpse of the girls, and he sounds like a different man to me. I’m sure the one I spoke to won’t be coming back.’ After some deliberation he said, ‘Maybe you should just go to the police.’

Emma was sure she saw the hint of a smile on his face—yay, one for the old man at last. After Miranda’s last disastrous contact with the police, he’d have to know she wouldn’t dream of involving them in this.

Emma turned back into her room, stopping when she reached her desk to gaze at the photo on the pin up board. The picture showed a small dark-skinned boy standing in front of a mud shack, grinning. His name was Josef, he lived in Morocco and he was her World Vision sponsorship child. She rummaged in her school bag and plopped yesterday’s lunch money in the tin under the photo. Then she kissed her finger and tapped the small boy’s face with it. Every morning Christopher gave her money to buy lunch and every morning she put it in her tin and made her own lunch after he’d left for work.

She selected her wardrobe for the day, an old pair of school track pants with torn knees and saggy waistband. The other girls would doubtless be wearing their sexy pleated sports skirts. This was the thing she liked the most about her state school, the compulsory school uniforms—not.

In her pink en-suite bathroom, designed by her mother to keep her out of hers, she brushed her long dark hair one hundred times. Then she bent over and mussed it all up again. Satisfied with the unkempt look, she went downstairs to make some toast for breakfast, planning on taking it back up to her room to eat as she scanned her morning’s email.