Nyctophobia Read Free Page A

because I had done something I’d insisted I would never do; the evidence was banded in gold on my left hand.
    There was something indefinably theatrical about the building. I thought of the Adelphi, which had once been a separate district of London. Its main terrace was a block of twenty four houses, but it was fronted with a vast fake neoclassical façade. Hyperion House had something similar. It was as if the view had been folded back on itself in incorrect proportion, the better to be enjoyed by an audience.
    I remember this distinctly; it was 11:00am. The sun was punching its heat down through a sea-blue sky, and the house was aglow with colour and light. But it still looked incorrect, an Alice in Wonderland dwelling that might suddenly play tricks on you, closing its doors, changing its walls and twisting its corridors until you’d never be able to find your way out. I thought nothing more of it at the time.
    ‘Strange, isn’t it?’ said Mateo, glancing over and reading my mind. He drove with his left arm leaning on the door, so casual that he might have been at the tiller of a boat. Why can I never appear as relaxed as that? I wondered, but of course I already knew the answer. ‘It looks like the windows are angled out slightly.’
    ‘They have to be to make the whole thing work,’ I said absently. ‘The front appears bowed so that it catches the sun at every point, but it’s not. The windows are offset at slight angles.’
    ‘You noticed that?’
    ‘Of course. It’s what I was trained to do.’
    ‘Sorry, I forgot.’
    ‘Do you know how hard it must have been to build this kind of house here?’ I said. ‘It would have started with a spring, the discovery of water coming down from those mountains. A well would have been dug. The land would then have been cleared by hand, and the trees cut down with axes in early spring, in a way that would make them fall onto each other. After that they would have been left to dry out over the summer, so that the stumps could be burned and uprooted, and all the rocks would have been removed with chains and horses. The cliff could only be cut with pick-axes. Labourers would have been found in the nearest village, transported and probably housed here during the construction, an incredible undertaking.’
    ‘I didn’t think of all that.’
    ‘And the result is a real box of tricks. Julia said the architect was crazy, but I got the feeling she thinks everyone is crazy, including the banks, the housekeeper and her husband.’ I studied the vista, excited by it. ‘The trees are planted with exactly measured spaces so that you catch perfect glimpses of it from the driveway, like a giant zoetrope.’
    ‘You think it was planned that way?’
    ‘I’m betting every last detail was planned. You’ll be able to see more easily once we get inside.’
    The road swung around to the left again. It felt as if we were closing on the house in a great spiral. But then the amber rocks parted and there it was in all its glory, framed in wild green planting. Hyperion House was too large for a family of three and was absurdly remote. But look at it, I thought, so beautiful that it really does seem to be glowing, actually glowing in the late morning sunlight.
    ‘Check out the lawn,’ said Mateo. ‘It’s like something you’d find in the Thames Valley.’
    ‘The gardener’s been with the house forever. Apparently you have to stand upwind of him. We don’t have to keep the housekeeper on.’
    ‘How are you with domestics?’
    I laughed. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never had one. Would I be expected to lay down the law?’
    ‘For all the good it will do you. If they’ve been with the house that long, they’ll merely see us as tenants passing through. You just have to be gracious, and if you want to lay down the law switch to using their formal names, that usually works. Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll charm them, and I’ll back you up. You’ll soon learn to be the lady of the