She came up into a room. The lamp described the dark interior of the lion window she had seen from outside, and across it the black levels of a piano with dim paleness on the keys. He then, not any machine, had made the music which she heard.

She turned away and let the lamp slide over the beams of the ceiling, the furniture of the room, to the hearth.

The great cat lay there, watching her from half-moon eyes.

Then a second light struck against her own.

Three candles on the mantelpiece had come to life. She saw Adamus standing there in his black clothes, and the match quivered down into the fire.

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she said, as if taking up again their previous conversation.

‘Nor I.’

He looked the same, as if always he must look the same. He leaned to ruffle the big cat’s ebony head, and lights streamered over his nonconformist face before shadow dippered it. He sat in a chair before the fire. His face was a stranger’s that she knew.

‘Come here then,’ he said, ‘sit down and say whatever you have to.’

She walked forward and set her lamp upon the mantel. There was a mirror there covered by iron-black scrolls; a white clock which, she saw, was quickly running backwards.

‘I don’t have anything to say,’ she told him.

‘Then why are you here?’

‘I’m interested,’ she mimicked, ‘I’ve had to wait nearly thirty years, to see my father.’

He observed her as she sat in the chair opposite to his own. The form of the cat lay between them, a living rug, head lowered now to paws. It was simple after all to accept the domesticity of the cat. Not his.

On the edge of the hearth, on the tiles there, was set a bottle of red wine. There were two glasses, one full one empty. He leaned down and filled the second glass from the bottle. He handed it to her. She took it. He had been expecting someone, presumably her.

‘You knew I’d come here. You spoke to Camillo.’

‘I rarely speak to any of them. Camillo especially avoids me. He finds my—youth offensive.’

‘Anna and Stephan didn’t eat dinner with me. They always have. Yet at lunch they were all there. Even the servants. They chattered, tweeted. The noise was peculiar.’

‘Another game,’ he said. ‘They’re playing with both of us. You’d better understand.’

‘But you,’ she said, ‘typed the letter to me.’

‘Anna asked me,’ he said. ‘Anna can be very winsome, persuasive. She dictated the words.’

‘Who signed it?’ Rachaela asked.

‘I did.’

‘Scarabae.’

‘My name.’

She said, ‘You have a very melodramatic name. What did my mother think of it?’

‘She believed I was called Adam. In a way I am.’

‘Man,’ said Rachaela.