She did not want to leave but she was cold, and all at once afraid. How close to him she had come. And close to what? She did not know him, what he was, or who. He could see in the dark like the cat.

He leaned forward and took her hand, and helped her lift herself to her feet. His hand was new. Male and warm. She marvelled at it—it was gone. She stood alone, exhausted.

‘Which door?’ she said.

‘Whichever the lady prefers.’

The idea of walking to her room weighed on her tiredness. She must be quick and run away. She did not know what she was thinking.

‘This will do.’

He walked with her back across the room, carrying her lamp.

He handed it to her politely at the stair head. She took it and stepped through and down the stairs to the upper doorway, and into the overpowering close darkness of the corridor beyond.

The door shut behind her, she listened for the scrape of a key, but did not hear it.

Rachaela dreamed of her mother cooking a Sunday dinner which every six months or so she had done. There was always great business. Rachaela stood at the sink peeling endless sprouts, marking each one as instructed with a cross against Satan. Her hands ached.

From the kitchen door, blurred in the dream, he called her.

‘No,’ said her mother. ‘You finish those sprouts.’

But Rachaela left the sprouts in the bowl.

At the door the man waited with outstretched hand.

‘You’re not to,’ said her mother. ‘You keep away from him.’

But Adamus picked her up, although she was adult height, he picked her up and bore her away.

Rachaela woke with this dream behind her eyes, very real, disconcerted.

The tower clock said twelve-thirty-five. Ten, she supposed. She had slept late.

She went to run a bath and found outside the door an exquisite thing lying on the carpet, a necklace of small shells, pale fawn and rose and ivory.

Another gift from Camillo perhaps, out of the treasure trove of the attic.

She stood with the shells in her hand, then set them on the dressing-table.

When she came back from the bath, drugged rather than revived, she dressed and brushed her hair lethargically and the shells lay there.

On impulse she took them up and held them, one by one, though they were too small, to her ear.

Her mother had told her of this trick when she was a child, but at first it had not seemed to work. It was at a stall somewhere at the seaside, where they had gone for the day. It had drizzled and the wind from the sea was sharp. Rachaela fell over on the sands and cut her knee on a piece of glass. In the mother’s fish tea was a large bone, about which she had been incensed.