How isolated was the heath. No one in the world but she and the Scarabae.

❖

That evening Rachaela wore her green dress and a necklace of green glass beads she had found at a jumble sale.

Anna and Stephan were in the drawing room seated on a sofa, already drinking their pre-dinner tipples. Rachaela helped herself to a glass of the white wine.

‘Did you enjoy your walk?’ asked Anna, comfortably.

‘Very much.’ Tired out, she had fallen asleep again in the shards of the window, listening to Verdi. ‘Which is the way to the village?’

‘Across the heath. But it’s eight miles. Surely too far for you?’

‘I might work up to it,’ said Rachaela. ‘The exercise will do me good.’

They went into the dining room and three places were laid. Cheta and Maria served them. Maria had recovered from her hurt, the blast of daylight from the conservatory.

There was asparagus soup, and then a meat dish already sliced in a sauce. It had a fishy taste, and was rather stringy.

‘What meat is this?’

Anna looked obliging. ‘Seagull,’ she said. And then, ‘I do hope you don’t mind it.’

Rachaela had checked and put down her fork. To eat a gull was no worse than to eat a rabbit or a lamb, yet somehow it offended her. She did not want any more.

‘I’m afraid I don’t like the idea,’ she said.

‘Our habits spring from necessity.’

Who had hunted the gull, scattering its feathers underfoot? Surely not after all the cat, as she had supposed.

‘No, I quite see that,’ said Rachaela. ‘But nevertheless, I’ll leave it.’

There was an apple tart to follow, and Anna urged her to take two helpings, which Rachaela declined. She was used to eating sparely.

After the dinner, they did not speak.

Stephan stared into the fire. Anna embroidered, long flowers and streamers of foliage.

Rachaela sat in the silence and eventually excused herself.

Out in the hallway she sensed a sizzling undercurrent in the drugged air. Something had passed, or lingered still in the shadows. She went to what she took to be the tower door, and tried it again. It did not give.

An old woman in purple came down the stairs and went by Rachaela with a single look. Rachaela did not guess whether or not they had met before. Was it Livia or Unice? Would she know any of them again? Anna and Stephan, perhaps. And Sylvian the destroyer.

In the passage upstairs there was a scent of warmth, of something living, but nothing stirred. No mice lay on the threshold.

Beyond the closed sarcophagus of the house the wind was rising, moaning round the corners. Rain struck the window of the temptation. The cool quiet day had ushered in a storm.

Rachaela imagined the rain splashing in at the conservatory, at the double door at the front of the house, through any other apertures left ajar on the night.