Rachaela moved and a pool of blood and emerald slid along her body, turning the coverlet black and scarlet, dying her skin.

The room was splashed, dashed with dyes. A madness of green and red, magenta, gold and sapphire. Where the glass shone white it was opaque, and impenetrable. Nothing beyond the window showed through.

Rachaela saw the picture, hovering over her like a visitation. The tree clove the window, rising into a canopy of foliage from which blood-red apples scalded. Beneath the tree a man in golden armour with great wings tempted a naked woman to accept a fruit. From the extended apple a serpent coiled like a jewellery chain. Beyond the figures was a deep sky and the walks of a formal garden where animals, a gazelle, a lion, a unicorn, calmly reclined. In heaven a rayed sun looked on in rage.

Eve tempted in person by Lucifer?

It was stultifying to wake to it, this bomb-blast. The whole room was in its web. It gave no peace.

Why had they thought the tempting of Eve applicable to their guest? Or did the subject mean nothing? These pictured windows filled the house, she had noticed them in the drawing and dining rooms; outside another marked the turn of the passage.

She would have to live with Eve and Lucifer.

The clock at her bedside said ten o’clock. The black clock on the mantle told her it was eight-thirty. Which was correct she did not know, and even as she thought this, a clock chimed in the house far away. She counted: Five strokes.

Rachaela got out of her coloured bed, leaving the sheets awash. The face of Lucifer reflected on her pillow, eerie and exact. He had the pale and undefiled mask of a saint, this fallen angel.

In the dressing-table mirror among the lilies and the sun, she saw the tree behind her. She was sandwiched in by glass.

She walked to the bathroom. Its window was a sea with shells. She ran a bath.

As she bathed, brushed her teeth, she heard no sounds from the house beyond its continual soft croaks, its joists shifting, plaster cracking, tiles loosening. The house was filthy and in bad repair. Only its lunatic beauty and its twenty-one persons held it together.

As she came from the bathroom an old woman in a brown day dress of six previous decades hurried by, her head tucked in. She paid Rachaela no heed. They were not all interested then. To some she was a threat, maybe, a new varnished toy which might harm.

She dressed and rang the bell, a tail of frayed blue velvet, for Michael, Cheta, Maria or Carlo to come. It was Cheta who presented herself in her dark frock and without her brooch.

‘How can I help you, Miss Rachaela?’

‘I want breakfast,’ said Rachaela. ‘What must I do?’