He checked the recipe and ladled more stock on to the rice. He was wearing one of Alice’s blue canvas aprons and handling the food with a certain alcoholic swagger that made him wonder whether he might not be very suitable for some kind of low-budget cookery programme. Catchpole in the kitchen: classic English cuisine from steak and kidney to spotted dick with television’s best-loved medic. There appeared to be an inexhaustible demand for colourful types who could chatter to camera while dicing peppers or flipping Thai prawns in a wok. Set against his present difficulties, this didn’t seem such an outlandish idea, and while being a TV chef was not, he thought, a wholly proper way to earn a living, it was preferable to what awaited him in the chill of the garage at San Fernando. It would certainly be the better option when KDBS organized the next Take Your Daughter to Work Day.

Ella was on the terrace; he could hear her through the open glass doors chatting in her considered way with Alec. Her stubbornness in the matter of the capsule had, in the last week, provoked Larry to extreme tactics. He had offered her money (twenty dollars). He had threatened to spank her (though they both knew he wouldn’t). He had spied on her through the keyhole of the bathroom, and even followed her into the garden, trailing her from tree to tree, stalking her as she gathered daisies and buttercups, crouched to turn a beetle with a twig, sang to herself. Did she know he was there? Or was this conspicuous innocence unfeigned, so that he was persecuting an entirely blameless child? What if one of the capsules had rolled off the shelf while he was in the toilet on the plane? Would he have noticed? Could he trust himself any more not to make such a mistake? What confidence could he have in his own judgment?

Alec had had his little chat with her. Apparently she had heard him out without giving the least hint she knew what he was talking about. And then Hoffmann had phoned, back from Detroit, telling Larry he would have to bill him for the call, and speaking to Ella while she stood in the kitchen holding the receiver with both hands, wide-eyed, nodding, saying yes, no, yes, I will, OK, uh-huh, OK. It had done no good. She was like a child in an Edward Gorey cartoon, a little thing in a taffeta party dress wandering about the house with a pistol in her hand.

‘Alec!’

Alec leaned into the kitchen.

‘This’ll be ready in twenty minutes, max. We should start getting Mum down.’

‘Right.’ He didn’t move.

‘You want to do it? Or you want to stir this and I’ll go up?’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Alec. But he came over to the stove and took the wooden fork from Larry’s hand.