Chapter 16
4.30 p.m.
‘Do you like it? I hoped you’d like it.’
Two steps up the hallway, my back to the kitchen door where leaves grow up the wallpaper until they reach the ceiling. He leads me up the ancient oak spiral of the staircase, his fingers locked into mine. His breath is heavy, then shallow, as if he can’t quite catch it. I hold his hands tight, staring into his face, searching for information. But he smiles and becomes his ordinary self again, apart from the gleaming onyx in his eyes where grey was a moment ago. He opens the door and leads me in.
He’s invented a new world, magicked from the stuff of Virgil’s myths that we fell in love with at the bookshop. No longer the bed I’d teased him about, with its tiny pink flowered bedspread. It’s the bed of Dido, and my Aeneas is sta
