She watched the wrecked man move dazedly into the room, hating herself for the pain she felt at the sight of him. He was wearing jeans and a bright yellow sweatshirt, with elasticated plimsolls on his feet. At least he'd remembered to shave, or someone had reminded him. There were a couple of male nurses on permanent call at the manor, for when he got difficult, and when he had nightmares. He wasn't much trouble, not physically, spending most of his days in a small brick-walled garden that backed on to the kitchen wing. There was a bench by the fishpond for him when the weather was fine, and a Victorian summerhouse for when it rained. He would read poetry for hours, or tend to the densely packed flower borders, throw crumbs to the goldfish.

And that was it, she thought, holding her face into that well-practised expressionless mask. All he was capable of, reading and weeding. The nurses gave him three shots of syntho a day.

If we were poor, she thought, they'd lock us all away as crazy, the whole Evans family, all three of us, three generations. A dying man with grandiose aspirations for the future, a syntho addict, and a girl with an extra brain who can't make friends with anybody. We probably deserve it.

Dillan Evans smiled as he caught sight of his daughter. "Julie, there you are."

She rose smoothly from the admiral's chair, switching off the flatscreen and its images of treachery. Her father walked towards her, taking his time over each step. He was trying to hide a bunch of flowers behind his back.

She couldn't despise him, all she ever felt was a kind of bewilderment mingling with heartbreaking shame. For all his total syntho dependency, she was his one focal point on the outside world, his last grip on reality. He'd come with her to Europe, not caring about the location, not even caring about having to live in the same house as his father again, just so long as he was with her. Even the First Salvation Church had been glad to get him off their hands, and they recruited new bodies with the fervour of medieval navies.

"For you," Dillan Evans said, and produced the flowers. They were fist-sized carnations—mauve, scarlet, and salmon-pink.

Julia smelt them carefully, enjoying the fresh scent. Then she kissed him gently on the cheek. "Thank you, Daddy. I'll put them in a vase on the table, here look, so I can see them while I'm working."

"Oh, Julie, you shouldn't be working, not you, not when it's a bright sunny day. Don't get yourself tangled up in the old bastard's schemes. They'll leach the life out of you. Dry dusty creatures, they are. There's no life in what he pursues, Julie. Only suffering."

"Hush," she said, and took his hand. "Have you had lunch yet?"