There was a well-tuned machine which comprised a radio and cassette player, and tapes of classical music in a case.

A booklet in a calfskin cover referred to the hotel library, and what tapes and books were also available.

Eric, Sasha, and Miranda perhaps discovered television at the hotel. Certainly they would turn on the big perfect screens in their rooms, and sit watching them, usually alone.

Rachaela played music. She walked in the grounds. She met no one at all in the rose garden or among the topiary snipped to resemble peacocks and pyramids. No one out among the trees.

On some fine mornings, from an upland path among rhododendrons, she found she could see away across miles of country, distantly yellow with crops, turquoise with farness, otherwise featureless, flowing into a dream.

She did not know where they were. They were not near the sea.

Rachaela did not ask the Scarabae any more questions. She was not even restless. She read the books and sent for others. She slept later, and sometimes again after lunch. At night she might sit by her window, watching the moon ride over the park.

At dawn, pigeons cooed in the monkey puzzle. Once a fox ran through the chestnuts. Then she thought of Ruth. But it was better not to think of Ruth. Rachaela pushed the thought away.

/ am a Scarabae.

She did not truly believe it. Yet she could not wholly reject it, either.

Summer deepened into autumn.

Rachaela wondered if the Scarabae were now settled. She considered her departure, but to what? What had happened to her flat in London… ? It was too complicated. Days like falling leaves. The leaves began to parch and fall.

Being at the hotel was almost being out of time. And yet the mansion was subtly modern. There were radiators in the rooms against the coming of the frost.

Frost came.

Then came driving winds and the trees lost their leaves. The monkey puzzle now was more than ever like a spider, its legs wrapped tight. Grass blue with cold, matching the azure sitting room. Rachaela said to Sasha: "You'll spend the winter here."

"Oh, yes." Sasha added, "The house isn't ready yet."

The house. Had they rebuilt it? Rachaela could not bring herself to ask anything else.

Every Scarabae in a solitary room, TV and music and books. Rachaela felt like a child. There was no other way she could explain it to herself. Melancholy, and safe. Held fast in nostalgia.

At Christmas, literally, Michael and Cheta decked the walls with boughs of holly. There was even a tree the management must have sent, tall and resinous, hung with golden filigree balls and tied by scarlet ribbon.