It occurred to Rachaela that she was waking at the routine time of seven-thirty, as she had done in the days of Mr Gerard and the shop. Ten, then, meant seven-thirty, or the eight-thirty of the black clock of the angels, that meant seven-thirty also.

The reasonableness of this exulted her. It was a triumph over the house.

She threw off the covers, and the body of the golden Devil which had lain on hers as she slept.

Today she need not explore the corridors and rooms. The liberty of the garden and the cliff path were before her.

She would not trouble with breakfast, as in her former life often she had not. She missed coffee with anger. Perhaps Cheta would buy her a jar of instant from the fabulous seven-mile-distant van. It would be playful to send Cheta and Carlo with her rogue list, such things the old ones never needed—batteries and tampons.

The lower house might be empty. Dorian and Peter breakfasted in the morning room—she did not even know where it was.

She went downstairs. The two high windows reflected their violet urns and saffron sunsets into the chequered floor. The wooden nymph was at her post.

An impulse made her approach the iron-bound door. She tried it, it was locked. Recollecting the structure of the house as she had seen it during her approach, it seemed to her this door might lead into the tower. That she found it locked was only in keeping with the capricious mystery of this church of eyeless mirrors.

Rachaela walked through the drawing room and so into the dining room. The table was bare, and Maria was mildly polishing it. Overhead the years-dusty chandelier looked down into its reflection.

‘Good morning, Maria.’

‘Good morning, Miss Rachaela.’

Maria went on drowsily polishing.

Rachaela crossed to the curtain and pulled it back to reveal the door, closed. Did the conservatory still endure beyond, or had it phantasmally vanished?

As she opened the door a violent smack of whitest light burst over her. It made her mind reel, almost she shielded her eyes. Daylight—already foreign. So quickly the house had blinded and steeped her in its ichors.

She heard an indrawn breath, and looked back to see Maria groping her way from the room.

Rachaela drew herself out into the crystal glare of the conservatory, forcing her eyes to adjust to its brilliance. After two or three minutes her focus returned. She stood and breathed in the light.

The plants were revelling in it, for there was sun today and the glass room was already quite warm.

Rachaela picked her way between the tubular leaves, the green feathers of the giant ferns, the trumpeting lilies out of season.

Although she had found the conservatory door also closed, at night—surely to the detriment of the plants—it stood ajar. The house doors too were kept open after dark. Night was welcome in the house, day not.