I had never wanted to be a bachelor, but my mistrust of women, born of my professional contact with them, had led me to doubt whether I would ever find St Paul’s ‘one in a thousand’, who is virtuous and obedient. However, as I saw more of Effie, as I was charmed by her beauty and her sweet ways, I realized that, after all, there was a way to achieve that ideal.

There was no taint on Effie: she was absolutely pure. If I could nurture her qualities, if I could keep a fatherly eye on her development, I was certain that I could make of her something rare, something wonderful. I would protect her from the rest of the world, educate her to be my equal. I would mould her, then, the work done…as I formulated the idea my mind threw back at me the memory of a small boy in a room full of forbidden marvels, and that fleeting, nostalgic scent of jasmine seemed to fill the air. For the first time the image brought no accompanying twist of guilt: Effie’s purity would redeem me, I knew it. There was nothing worldly, nothing sensual about her; hers was the cool indifference of the true innocent. Through her I would find salvation.

I engaged private tutors for her-I wanted her to have as little contact with other children as possible-I bought her clothes and books. I employed a respectable housekeeper for her mother and aunt so that Effie would not have to waste time helping around the house. I befriended her tedious mother so that I should have the excuse to frequent Cranbourn Alley and I kept the money flowing in.

I was painting Effie almost incessantly now, abandoning all my other models unless they were needed as secondaries in a canvas. I concentrated upon Effie: Effie at twelve, taller, in the pretty white dresses and blue sashes I encouraged her mother to buy; Effie at thirteen, fourteen, her dancer’s figure as graceful as a colt’s; at fifteen, her eyes and lips darkening, her face taking a more adult shape; at sixteen, her pale hair bound up in a tidy coronet around her brow, her mouth the tenderest of arcs, her lovely rain-coloured eyes heavy-lidded, the skin around them so fine that it seemed almost bruised.

I must have drawn or painted Effie a hundred times: she was Cinderella, she was Mary, she was the young novice in The Passion-Flower, she was Beatrice in Heaven, Juliet in the tomb, draped with lilies and trailing convolvulus for Ophelia, in rags for The Little Beggar Girl. My final portrait of her at that time was The Sleeping Beauty, so like My Sister’s Sleep in composition, showing Effie all in white again, like a bride or a novice, lying on the same little girl’s bed, her hair, much longer than it had been when she was ten-I had always urged her never to cut it-trailing on to the floor, where a century’s worth of dust lingers. Sunlight filters through the skylight on to the floor, and tendrils of ivy have begun to drop through the window into the room. A skeleton in armour, twined all over with the encroaching ivy, warns of the perils of disturbing the sleeping innocent. Effie’s face is turned towards the light; she smiles in her sleep, unaware of the desolation around her.

I could wait no longer. I had woven the enchantment which had kept her waiting for me all these years: now was the time to break it. She was still very young, I knew, but to wait another year might be to risk losing her for ever.

Her mother did not even seem surprised that I should want to marry her daughter. Indeed, the eagerness with which she welcomed the offer made me suspect that she had already envisaged the possibility. I was a rich man, after all: it was certain that if Effie married me I would be obliged to help her relatives, and I was almost forty while Effie was seventeen. When I died, all my fortune would be hers. The maiden aunt-a sour-mannered creature whose only redeeming feature was an overpowering devotion to Effie-disapproved. Effie was too young, she said, too sensitive. She did not understand what would be required of her when we were married. I did not care about her objections. Effie was my only concern. She was mine: trained to grow along me like ivy on the trunk of an oak.

She married me in the same antique embroidered dress she had worn for the Sleeping Beauty.

‘This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred…’

The black caravan of his words lurched onwards, and I was glad I had taken laudanum before the service. My migraine was quite gone, leaving in its place a cool dark cavity into which all my thoughts receded, remote as stars.

‘“wrath, strife, sedition, heresies…”’

In my own quiet space I smiled to myself.

The rhythm of the verses was cruel, but poetry nevertheless, compelling as the pagan lilt of the skipping-songs I sang in the street all those years ago, in the days before I married Mr Chester:

The higher we jump

The higher they’ll grow.

Around and around and around we go.

Remembering the song I felt suddenly sick at heart at the terrible remoteness of that lost time when Mother was well, and Father alive and we used to read poems together in the library of our old house, before Cranbourn Alley; a time when going to church was an occasion to celebrate, to sing and be happy. My hands clenched abruptly as the sick feeling intensified, and I bit down on my lip to quell my faintness. William, sitting to my left, gave me his rueful grin, but I kept my face lowered; Mr Chester would not like me to smile in church. Over the minister’s head the sunlight illuminated St Sebastian, shot with arrows.

The higher we jump…

St Sebastian’s face was cool and passive, like Henry’s.

Suddenly I was falling, pinwheeling my arms in panic, my mouth open in a great silent O of terror…but I was falling upwards, towards the high vault of the church ceiling, and I could see the gilt paint and the scrollwork and the cold gleam of St Sebastian’s eyes…As my fall slowed I looked dizzily on to the bowed heads of the congregation, my terror giving way to awe and euphoria. How could I be here? Had I died and left my body without realizing it? Was I dreaming? I skipped and danced in the air, whooping as I spun around the bald head of the minister like an angel on the head of a pin. No-one heard me.

Testing my new-found ability, I swooped invisibly over the tide of dark heads, realizing as I did so that my vision and hearing were sharper than ever before, each detail a miracle of precision. I could actually see the minister’s words mounting heavenwards like smoke from a factory chimney. I could see the gloom of the congregation, occasionally broken by the clear beam of a child’s inattention; looking closely I found that somehow I could see right into people; I could see their essence like sunlight through stained-glass. Behind a mask of flesh, an old woman with a sour face and a sharp tongue blossomed with a spectral radiance; a child radiated simple joy; a young, dark-haired woman was a terrifying pit of blackness and death. What I saw in the dark-haired woman chilled me, and I sped upwards as fast as I could.

From the vault I inspected my own discarded body; pale little face lost in the dark hollow of my bonnet, lips white, eyelids closed and blue as bruises. I was inclined to feel contempt at myself; such a thin little slip of a thing. Better to watch Mr Chester with his stern, handsome face, or William, his fair hair hanging over his eyes.