Unable to move, Rachaela watched them rise and fall together, their bodies mounted on a black wild horse of pleasure, galloping.

Ruth screamed. She screamed and kicked and caged him in her long white legs.

Rachaela spasmed in long aching waves and woke in the bed in the flat, staring into darkness.

It was not possible.

Father and grandfather. He could not.

But why should anything stop him?

Rachaela’s day was over, she had served her purpose. Now Ruth might be the year queen.

Continuance. The mad people treasured it, and Adamus was their instrument.

Don’t be a fool If it must, let it happen.

She tried to remember his face, but as in the dream it had grown blurred and distant.

Rachaela sat up and switched on the light. Outside some drunks were shouting in the street. She was glad of them.

She got out of bed and went to make tea. That had been Emma’s remedy for everything. Tea or a drop of sherry.

What would Emma have made of this?

‘You can’t let them get hold of her, Rachaela. From what you say, they’re terrible people. Crazy, awful. Your own child. You have to get her back out of their clutches.’

‘Yes, Emma,’ Rachaela said.

The boiling water splashed into the mug, and the drunks sang on the street in rejoicing.

Chapter Fifteen

Driver number three was quite confident. ‘Pitchley. I know Pitchley. Where the new estate is. It’ll cost a bit.’

.‘Yes.’

‘That’s OK then. Jump in.’

Seeing the line of taxis at the station in Porlea she had not been optimistic, but time had narrowed the spaces of the countryside. The territory of the Scarabae had been breached.

She recollected the way, even backwards and in the early summer greenness. She recognized the broad motorway, churches and pubs.

Only the normality was unnerving.

She did not recognize the village.

A small supermarket had been built, there was a post office and a greengrocer, a new bold pub with a rainbow sign The Carpenters. Up on the hill the new estate, chocolate brown, with gabled roofs, satellite dishes, wheels of washing and model cherry trees in gardens. Somewhere in the middle lay the depression of grey stone houses. The derelict fields had gone to lawns.

‘Here you are,’ said the driver. ‘Where do you want me to drop you?’

‘At the top of the hill.’

‘The estate.’

He drove her almost on to the drive of the last brown doll’s house.

She paid him and got out. She watched him drive away.

The crows had gone. Where did crows go to?

It was all so different. But it was still the place. The starting point for the long walk over the heath to the house.

Her bag was light now, only packed with the bare essentials.

She had better be careful of the road. There might be more traffic.