Ruth shaded in an area of her beast.

‘Why doesn’t my dad live with us?’

‘He didn’t want to.’

‘I don’t have a nanny or a grandpa, either.’

‘No. I’m sorry. There’s just us.’

‘Didn’t they want me too?’ The inquiry was not plaintive. It was brutally matter-of-fact.

I didn’t want you. Don’t want you. You are a little animal, muddling up my life, that expects to be fed and clothed, that has to have schools and presents. That has to be thought about. Not loveable, like a cat. Skin and hair and voice.

But the Scarabae had wanted Ruth. Oh yes.

Lie about it now? She tried not to lie to the child, as she had been lied to.

‘I expect they did want you, but it wasn’t their choice.’

‘Do I have a nanny?’

‘Maybe.’ Had Anna been Adamus’s mother, as Rachaela suspected? ‘But they’re a long way away.’

‘Like Emma,’ said Ruth, surprisingly.

‘Much further than Emma.’

‘They don’t write to me.’

‘No.’

‘I don’t expect they want me,’ said Ruth.

She had successfully sidetracked Rachaela from the subject of the blood.

Rachaela said, ‘About Terry Porter. You mustn’t do anything like that again.’ Ruth did not ask why. ‘You understand that, don’t you? You must be careful not to give people bad ideas about you. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t give yourself away. Try to behave like other people.’

Ruth nibbled at her coloured pencil.

Impelled by instinct, Rachaela took the drawing up and stared at it.

Ruth had drawn the heath, the Scarabae heath, the dragon parts, and the dragon coming forth to kill its knight. On a slope was a weirdly shaped rock—the standing stone?

‘What gave you the notion for this?’ Rachaela said.

‘Don’t know.’

Ruth was looking at her at last with sharp, bright black eyes. Her unlined milk-white face was ancient.

‘It’s a very good drawing.’

‘Thank you.’

Rachaela handed back the heath and the dragon. Through that place she had walked, Ruth a thing coiled inside her. How else had the child seen?

‘Mummy,’ said Ruth, ‘can we have a cat?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I’m sorry, but there’s no garden and we’re out all day.’

She did not want Ruth to have a cat. She did not know why. Surely Ruth would not hurt the cat, for she stroked them on walls. Rachaela had seen her. It was something else.

Ruth did not whine or try to get her way.

She took the heath and went back behind her screen.

A storm raged over the house.

Rachaela dreamed of Adamus bending over her, his hair a black cowl. The lightning caught him, faded.

She opened her eyes. Ruth was seated at a window watching the storm.

A blue flash like an incendiary, the child did not start, but leaned closer to the pane.