‘Except wicked things. They go to hell. Goats go to hell. He was their cat. He’ll go to hell.’

‘Maybe hell isn’t so bad after all,’ said Rachaela, rather facetiously.

Carlo had gone off, possibly to get a spade.

Ruth stood up. ‘He mustn’t do it till I come back. Make him wait, Mummy.’

‘All right.’

Ruth sprang away.

She returned in the red dress of her betrothal, and Carlo, kept waiting by Rachaela, buried the cat beneath the funeral yew. Ruth stood at the graveside in her scarlet, crying. Rachaela had not seen her cry since babyhood. They were intensely physical, agonized tears, ending in thick hiccups of pain. Rachaela could not console her, there was no mechanism left for it. At last the spade had covered up the cat, and Carlo went away, and Ruth stood weeping at the graveside, twisting the antique red skirt in her hands, uncomforted and desolate, a figure from Greek tragedy.

Chapter Eighteen

During the afternoon, Rachaela lay on her bed under the mosaic of the window. She was so hot she could not bear to move. She wondered if Ruth had gone to the lunch served in the dining room, as she usually did. Rachaela herself could not fancy food in the heat, though once she had rung for Cheta, and Michael had come, and presently brought her a glass of water. They did not keep orange juice, not even for Ruth, let alone the soft fizzy drinks that had cluttered Rachaela’s fridge.

The sight of Ruth sobbing by the grave of the dead cat stayed in her mind.

Something would happen now.

Perhaps Ruth would even come to the room. ‘Mummy, I don’t like it here any more.’

Rachaela made plans for the journey, the flight, as she had before. Her thoughts did not go past the moment when she should get Ruth on to the London train.

In London something would have to be done.

She did not want Ruth or the burden of Ruth, but she did not want Ruth to usurp her place with Adamus. If she took Ruth away, she would owe her something, and how would she pay it? A sort of different panic lay in London.

She would consider it when they got there, when they were out of this madness and had merely their own to contend with.

The afternoon sweltered and dragged.

Something would happen at dinner, if not before.

They ate very late now, waiting out the going of the summer sun.

If only she could shield herself from the blazing window. The serpent in his armour on her body like burning bricks, his hand holding the apple flaming at her groin. And here she had lain with the Devil... Don’t think of it. She thrust it from her mind.

The clocks ticked. She drowsed.

Would the door open on Ruth?

It did not.

What was Ruth doing?

Rachaela slept.