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Odelia was shaking her head, directing annoyed glances at the van where Solange now sat counting her money. That big burly guy was back, standing in the entrance and pointedly ignoring them. He was some kind of security person, she reckoned, making sure Madame Solange’s unhappy customers couldn’t lodge a complaint with the fortune teller, or demand their money back.

Just then, Odelia thought she saw a familiar figure. It was a man, built like her uncle, only this particular person had a full head of hair and a thick, red mustache.“Look at that guy over there, Mom,” she said.

“Hey, he looks just like Alec,” said Mom. “Only with more hair. A lot more hair.”

He was dressed differently, too, with black leather pants, black leather vest, and cowboy boots. His hair was also black and slicked back with gel. And he was the possessor of a pair of impressive sideburns, and generally rocking a rockabilly style.

“Sir!” said Odelia, calling out to the man. “Can we have a word, please, sir!”

But the man, if he’d heard them, wasn’t heeding her call. Instead he kept on walking.

“Sir, Hold up, sir!” Odelia yelled, and made to follow the man. But soon he’d disappeared in the maze of trailers and stalls and the mass of people milling about.

Weird, she thought. He must have heard her.

Then she shrugged. Probably just a coincidence. So she returned to her mom.

Only when she got back to Solange’s trailer… Mom was nowhere to be found.

Chapter 28

Norm was happy. In fact the busily buzzing fly was ecstatic. Not only had he found himself a couple of great new friends but he’d also discovered his purpose in life: to be the bug equivalent of James Bond. A spy fly. Handsome and debonair. In other words a pretty fly fly. And so he’d been practicing his line all morning: ‘My name is Fly. Norm the Fly.’

It was a catchy line, and he was pretty sure it would attract a great deal of attention from lady flies. And in fact his wandering eye—all 4500 facets of it—had already spotted just such a deserving lady fly sitting on a shop window, busily cleaning her wings.

She was a shapely fly, he thought—one of those green flies that like to sit on a nice slice of steak, then sit on a pile of cow dung, then sit on a nice piece of cheese, and so on and so forth. Flies like to change things up, and have some variety in their diet, after all.

So Norm now flew in the direction of this lady fly, keen to make her acquaintance, and he was already practicing his line when suddenly he saw a familiar face appear on one of the many television screens lined up behind the shop window: it was none other than Tex Poole, the father of his new friends’ human.

“Hey, you guys,” he said therefore, for the moment neglecting his role as the new Lothario amongst flies and putting his duty to his newfound friends before carnal desire.

Max and Dooley came trotting up, and were as surprised as he was to see Tex Poole’s face reflected in two dozen televisions. Of course Tex Poole’s face was also being reflected in Norm’s multi-faceted compound eyes but that was neither here nor there.

“Hey, look, Max,” said Dooley, the large orange cat’s not-so-smart sidekick. “It’s Tex.”

“Yeah, and Marge,” said Max.

And indeed the chunky orange cat wasn’t lying: Marge Poole now also featured on the televisions, being interviewed alongside her husband.

“Let’s find out what’s going on,” said Max, and hurried in through the open shop door, followed by Dooley and of course Norm, buzzing right in.

For a moment they sat and watched the interview. It seemed to revolve around a lottery the couple had won, and a cruise they were going to take. Not all that earth-shattering, Norm would have thought, as he wasn’t particularly interested in cruises—much too windy for his taste, but Max and Dooley drank it all in. And when next a man was featured named Barry, announcing his upcoming nuptials with a cop named Sarah Flunk, the cats’ excitement increased. The interview with the happy couple—though Norm thought the man looked distinctly nervous indeed—was followed by an interview with Wilbur Vickery, the guy whose cat they’d just talked to. Wilbur announced he was now engaged to be married to an actual live princess and would just as soon like to be addressed from now on as Prince Wilbur if it was all the same to his clientele, whom he unfortunately would have to leave soon to take up residence at a castle in England.

Finally the series of interviews concluded with a man named Dan Goory, who looked like Father Time with his long white beard, and whose sole joy in life seemed to be to play with his trains, and especially a very fancy new locomotive he’d just come into the possession of.

By then Norm was already glancing in the direction of that lady fly again, but unfortunately for him she’d taken off, presumably to go sit on some dog poo.