‘Will you?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right,’ said Ruth. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

Rachaela sat looking at her eldritch elfin child. Was Ruth also like her?

‘Will spaghetti on toast do for tea?’

‘With cheese.’

‘With cheese.’

Rachaela got up and went to set out tins on the work-top in the kitchen. Ruth followed her and stood in the doorway.

‘What would my dad say about me not going to school?’

Rachaela checked. ‘I don’t think he’d give a damn.’

Ruth said, ‘Will I ever see him?’

Rachaela made herself look back at the white face of her child.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘He wouldn’t be interested, Ruth. I’m sorry.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I knew him. He wasn’t interested in me, either.’

‘But the grandfather and granny,’ said Ruth.

Your grandfather is also your father.

‘There isn’t any grandfather or granny. It’s just a big shapeless family of old people. You wouldn’t like them.’

But how could she be sure?

Ruth was in their image. Ruth had done what they did.

She must not try to picture Ruth in that house. The house which had faded to a ghost with the years, but still lingered there, a lump of fog, on the edge of her mind. The mirrors, the windows.

Ruth said, ‘I might like them. I don’t mind old people.’

‘They’re very far away.’

‘Couldn’t I go?’

‘No, Ruth.’

‘But I want to.’

How had the conversation veered into this? Rachaela put down the can opener and emptied the spaghetti into the saucepan.

‘No, Ruth.’

‘I dream about them,’ said Ruth.

Rachaela stopped what she was doing.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I dream of them in a big house. And I walk down a corridor and I go in a door, and they’re there.’

Obviously, through the years, Rachaela had let things slip. She must have done. The child had her fantasies, like any child.

‘I don’t want to talk about it, Ruth. I don’t want you anywhere near them, and that’s that.’

Keep away from the Scarabae.

Rachaela saw again her mother’s congested face.

Ruth said, ‘Why can’t I? Why not?’

Rachaela said, ‘They’re mad. They’re mad people. And they’re a sort of vampire. Or they think they are.’ Don’t say any more.

‘Vampire,’ said Ruth. ‘Like Dracula?’

‘Not like Dracula. They’re bad people.’

She stirred the saucepan, waiting for the next assault, which did not come. When she looked back, Ruth had retreated again, behind the screen.

I shouldn’t have said that.

Too late.

She had a vision of Adamus walking up the wall of the house in the black of the moon, his pale face lifted and a trickle of blood running from the corner of his mouth. A sexual pang shot through her core, amazing her. After so long, after so much that was base and stupid, after Ruth.