He threw a log into the grate with the careless vehemence of a young man. And as he turned his head she saw that his hair was not very short but only scraped back from his face, caught at the base of his skull, and falling from there in a coarse black silk rope down his back. A young man’s hair.

‘Perhaps you’ll tell me,’ she said, ‘why I’m wanted here. Was it you who typed the letter?’

A drift of amusement changed his face, was gone. ‘They fear the typewriter. A useful machine.’

Rachaela said, ‘Then you wanted to bring me here.’

‘It was the time for it.’

‘Anna talks like that. The time.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Anna’s very crafty. You’ve no idea how beautiful she used to be. I must show you the photographs. Almost as good as you.’

A freezing heat went through her when he said this.

‘Strange,’ she said,’ a compliment from you.’

‘I don’t bother with compliments, Rachaela. A fact. The family is noted for its looks. At times it has been notorious for them.’

‘So you subscribe to it too, this tribal mystique.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Mad people and eccentrics, reckoning yourselves special.’

He said, ‘What did your mother tell you about me?’

Rachaela looked at the fire. Was she to betray her mother now, that bitter and frowning, heavy-handed woman.

‘Very little. You gave her little enough.’

‘Yes, little enough. I don’t know if she told you, Rachaela, I was only with her for three nights. Just three. Two in the beginning. One night three months later, when she was carrying you.’

‘Why did you go back?’

‘To see if she was pregnant, why else.’

‘And she was, and you left her.’

‘It was done. That was all there was to do.’

‘I think you’re saying,’ Rachaela stated, ‘that they let you go, your precious family, to sow your seed. And when you had, they summoned you back again.’

‘I came back. I could see by then the futility of anything else. This house is my prison, but I need it. The rest is rubbish. Haven’t you found it so?’

‘No,’ she lied again. ‘Actually I valued my freedom.’

He smiled. It was a cold and repellent smile, so that she wished she had not spoken. He intimidated her, but that was absurd. He was one with the Scarabae, a creature of the farce. Was there nothing she wanted to say, did she not want to tell him to be damned? But it was not feasible to think of him as her father. No, she did not credit it. This was some joke they played on her.

She was magnetized by his presence. She could not leave the fireside while he was there. She had never before confronted such an externalization of herself, terrifying and apt.

‘I agree,’ she said, ‘that the house is a sort of prison.’