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It made for a welcome change, as the campfire hadn’t supplied its promised excitement: even though the women had engaged with the seducers, and had stood them a couple for drinks, no improprieties had ensued, and even Jackie, who’d seemed like the type of girl to whom fidelity was an elastic concept, had merely danced with but not kissed her prince for the night.

Chase had watched with a certain measure of disquiet how Odelia had chatted with not one but two seducers, and when one of the latter had placed his hand on her arm had felt his blood go to a boil. The sudden powerful urge to wipe the man’s smirk from his face by means of planting his fist in his mouth was so overpowering he was already calculating how long it would take him to swim to the other island, the talk of dangerous currents and undercurrents and even potential sharks having been wiped from his mind.

“Looks like we’re the lucky ones,” said Joanna’s fianc?, clapping Chase on the back. “Just look at my sweet baby girl. Doesn’t even flinch when that tattooed fool flexes his ridiculously pumped-up bicep in her face.”

Nick, too, looked relieved.“Tina would never go for a guy like that,” he said, indicating the screen. “She’s more into the intellectual type, like me.”

If Nick was an intellectual, Chase was RuPaul, but he merely smiled encouragingly and unflexed his fists. He wasn’t fully sanguine, though. He knew Clint would do whatever it took to make the women fall for their seducers. After all, that’s why Passion Island had become the network’s top-rated show.

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“So… Gran is on the other island?” asked Dooley.

“Yes. And so is Scarlett Canyon,” I said. “And Harriet and Brutus.”

“But… why? And how?”

“I have absolutely no idea, Dooley. But I’m sure we’ll soon find out.”

Odelia had slept but fitfully, tossing and turning all night. Dooley and I, ensconced at the foot of the bed, as is our habit, had watched it with a worried eye. Apart from the fact that I don’t like it when Odelia moves around, afraid she’ll kick me in the snoot and send me flying off the bed, I hate to see my human troubled, and troubled she clearly was.

So far she hadn’t been able to chat with anyone from the production team, and it was exactly those people she needed to get close to if she was going to uncover what had happened to those other women.

Unfortunately Clint had instigated a rule that his staff refrain from getting too close to the candidates the moment the show started. In previous incarnations some of the cameramen hadn’t been able to resist the temptation to schmooze with some of the seductresses, and some of them had even hooked up. So this year the staff kept to their own villa, while the contestants stayed in their own little bubble with the seducers.

Morning had finally broken, and we watched as Odelia opened first one eye then the other.

“Wakey-wakey, sleepyhead,” I said.

She groaned and buried her face in her pillow.“I dreamt I was home,” she muttered.

“Usually people dream of being on a tropical island, all expenses paid,” I pointed out to her.

“Yeah, but those people haven’t been asked to try and unmask some abductor of women,” she replied, then turned and rubbed her eyes.

“I think you should really try to enjoy yourself more, Odelia,” said Dooley. “Maybe forget about the investigation for a couple of days and have some fun?”

“Yeah, you could go for a swim,” I suggested. “The beach looks particularly beautiful. And I heard that today you’re all going jet-skiing, so that should be a blast, right?”

Being dragged at a high rate of speed behind a boat, only two thin slices of styrofoam between you and the raging shark-infested waters of a deep sea didn’t sound like something I’d enjoy, but then humans are strange creatures. Some of them even like to climb mountains, which is something I thought only a certain species of goats enjoy.

“Jet skiing,” Odelia muttered as she dragged herself from the bed. “Great. Just what I need. More attempts by Mike to try and get into bed with me.”

“Why does Mike want to get into your bed?” asked Dooley. “Doesn’t he like his own bed?”

Odelia smiled.“I guess not,” she said, then slouched out of the room and into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later she’d put on running shoes, and was dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts and looked a lot less like something Dooley or myself had dragged in.

“Let’s go, you guys,” she said, performing a strange movement known as jumping jacks.

And then we were off, for our first run.

It was seven o’clock in the morning and already it was heating up quickly. And Odelia had only run five minutes before a stitch in my side halted my progress.

Cats are built for sprints, you see, not marathons.

“You go on ahead,” I said as I pressed a paw to my side. “I’ll get there in my own time!”

Dooley, too, was out of breath already.

And as we watched Odelia disappear around a bend in the dirt path, we both settled down in the shade of a nearby palm tree, languorously lying in the tall cool grass.