The long hair was tied back, in the way she recalled. It was like Ruth’s hair, so straight, a torrent.

He did not turn to look at Rachaela, looked only at the child-woman kneeling before him.

So Rachaela saw only his profile. That had not aged a moment. It was just the same. The sombre eye fixed. He did not smile at the child, he had no expression. Presently he said, ‘Come to the piano.’ And got up and walked across the room. And Rachaela saw his face, the unremembered face. No wonder her mind had not been able to retain it. It was too absolute, too like itself and nothing else. But there was the medium of another resemblance. For Rachaela saw now that Ruth was like Adamus more than like anything else. Perhaps this was why Rachaela had never found pleasure in her face.

As Adamus walked towards the piano his eyes inevitably met Rachaela’s. She found his gaze unendurable and unavoidable, horrified that so much had stayed in her, of him.

And in that instant Ruth darted up from the hearth and came after him, and plucked at his arm.

‘What shall I play?’

‘I’ve put the Mozart out for you. Try that.’

And Ruth was the centre of the room again.

She sat down before the piano, glanced at the music, and spread her white hands. She began to play. She was deft, starlingly so. She did not fumble, but once or twice she slowed, frowning at the music. She gave the piece an eerie measured quality perhaps not suitable, but it was an interpretation. So quickly she had learned so much.

‘That’s very good,’ he said. ‘But when you misread the music, you mustn’t bluff. You must stop and play it as it’s written.’

‘Yes, Adam,’ said Ruth. And now she smiled at him.

She had smiled at Emma like that. There was no artifice, yet the smile was subtly flirtatious, sure of finding a reception.

And Adamus smiled at Ruth, a cold and quite indifferent smile, a teacher dutifully showing friendliness for a clever pupil.

Rachaela felt herself breathe, as if she had not done so for the past ten minutes. A rush of blood passed through her head.

She made herself speak.

‘Ruth’s very proficient after such a short time.’

‘Yes,’ he said, as if they had been speaking all the while, had spoken together every day for twelve years, ‘it’s remarkable. But I was the same. She takes it from me.’

‘I take after you,’ said Ruth.

‘I hope not,’ he said.

Ruth giggled like a happy child with a new joke.

‘Play the scales now,’ he said.

And Ruth played scales.

Rachaela walked away from them and sat down in one of the chairs before the hearth. She leant and stroked the cat’s sleeping head. The gauntness of age had invested all of it. Easy to feel the skull beneath the skin.