‘Rachaela is here,’ said Anna unnecessarily, for the eyes beamed and crackled on the newcomer. ‘Rachaela, this is Alice, and this, Sasha.’

‘Good evening,’ said Rachaela, to test them.

Alice in the plum-sombre red replied with a quick darting movement of her hands. Sasha in a lace collar spoke: ‘Good evening, Rachaela.’ Like Anna and like Stephan, her voice, which somehow should have had a foreign accent, had none, no accent at all. It was a fact, each of them should have talked like dummies with the dialect of some mountainous European upland.

‘Did you have a pleasant journey?’ said Alice, abruptly, in the voice of Anna and Sasha.

‘Not really,’ said Rachaela.

‘Oh I’m so sorry,’ said Alice, the waves of her face making up concern. ‘Travelling is so tedious now. So taxing. Everyone is so unhelpful.’

‘Now Alice, when did you last travel anywhere?’ chid Anna, playfully.

‘I remember,’ said Alice, flustered, ‘the great black trains and all that steam and smoke. One was filthy. I remember my hat almost blew away, and Peter had to catch it.’

Rachaela found herself picturing a Soviet snow-scape, the antique monster of the train flying in sparks and fume.

‘It’s years since any of us ventured out,’ said Stephan from the cheese. ‘We have small need now.’

‘We were driven,’ said Alice to Rachaela. Her face was still a mask, but a mask of confiding. Her eyes gleamed to see how Rachaela would react. ‘Driven out.’

‘The pogroms,’ said Sasha suddenly.

Rachaela caught at the foreign word eagerly. They had given themselves away.

‘Ours has not always been a tranquil history,’ said Anna. There was no warning or repression in her voice. ‘But this is too soon to burden Rachaela with the past. She’s never known such things, and perhaps she never will.’

‘Old scars,’ said Stephan. He pushed his plate from him. ‘Old history. The family has borne very much.’

Somewhere, perhaps in the room, a clock struck distantly.

‘It isn’t the time,’ said Anna, still without warning.

Rachaela shivered at the power of unison in this rectangular space.

There were many of them, how many she did not now dare to guess. A swarm, the Scarabae, and heavy with their past which was not hers, and yet which, by relationship, must come to belong to her.

She felt a terrible affinity. She believed she was related to them, had somehow come to acknowledge it in the few weird hours she had spent here.

Alice said, faultlessly, ‘She will see the library.’

Anna gave a little laugh like broken scales.

‘The library!’

‘Sylvian was busy today,’ said Stephan.

They sighed, each of them, almost as one.

The large house teemed with these creatures, but they were one thing, facets of a whole, an entity.

And she, Rachaela, where did she fit?

Was she to be absorbed, devoured?