‘Anna,’ she said, forcing herself to utter the name, as if to name them was sorcerous. ‘I’m awfully tired. Would you excuse me if I went up to bed?’

‘You must do exactly as you want, Rachaela. There’s a bell in your room by the fireplace. If you should wish for anything, Michael or Maria or Cheta will see to it. Did Carlo take up your bags?’

‘Someone did.’

‘Yes, that will have been Carlo. He is our strong one.’

Rachaela rose. She was taller than all of them: Anna and Stephan seated at the table, Cheta and Michael, Alice and Sasha facing her across its glowing length set only with three places. The candles shone and gave heat. Above, sprinkled with reflected light, the second chandelier dropped its mutilated beauty.

‘How many are you?’ said Rachaela, stemming the alarm of her voice. The sea sounded very loud in her ears.

Stephan laughed. His laugh was the male formula of Anna’s. ‘Many, many.’

Anna said quietly, ‘Now we are twenty-one persons.’

Stephan said, ‘You forget—’

‘No,’ said Anna. ‘No.’

The dead mouse had been removed from the dressing-table, but the ribbon left there, neatly folded.

Rachaela sat brushing her hair. Her mother had been used to brush it. She was heavy-handed, seeming to think the thick prolifereration of the hair precluded any feeling at its roots. Rachaela had been a tangled child. Once the mane was lopped for convenience. Rachaela had wept. She walked in hatred until the mass of hair was regrown.

The house did not make her dwell on her mother. This brusque memory was used, briefly, as a shield between herself and the house. The Scarabae.

On the stairs as she returned to her room she had met another old man in a greenish jacket. He peered into her face with burning eyes.

‘I’m Rachaela,’ she said. ‘And you?’

But this old man scurried away, not frightened of her but unwilling to communicate. Was he Peter, or George, or Sylvian from the library? What did it matter? They were all one, and twenty-one in number.

There was a key in the lock of her door, and after visiting the bathroom, she used it. She had a vision, of course, of other keys which would open the way, and a troupe of them entering in a noiseless procession to observe her while she slept. Cobweb-ringed fingers over her things, her comb and brush, her powder and mirror, musty dresses shuffling by, the flick of an old man’s sleeve...

It was impractical to leave. There was no means. Besides, she had been doomed to stay. She had nowhere else. All the wide world could not afford her sufficient crannies to hide from them.

For she knew she belonged to them. It was in her bones. She shrank only from certainty.