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Delgadillo might be disappointed. I think she already has an image in her head.’
    ‘What sort of image?’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know, the young English bride, very pale skin, diamonds and a veil, something out of the magazines she reads. Not –’ he looked over and indicated my baggy T-shirt, my tan, my faded jeans and scuffed sneakers. ‘Not you.’
    ‘I could whip into a twinset and pearls if you prefer,’ I said, not without sarcasm. ‘I don’t want her to get the idea that I’m something I’m not. I want to be able to say “fuck” in my own house.’
    ‘You wouldn’t be you if you didn’t swear a lot,’ he agreed, stopping in front of the house. The front door was surrounded by purple bougainvillea and scarlet hibiscus. ‘Although I’d rather you didn’t in front of Bobbie. I’d like to make a rule about that.’
    It was the first of the new rules in my life. ‘I just have to get used to the quiet,’ I said again. ‘I could always hear police sirens in Vauxhall.’
    ‘You won’t find any police around here. Senora Delgadillo says there are two in Gaucia, but they won’t drive out this far because they don’t like to waste the gas.’ In the weeks before the sale was completed, Mateo had been able to come up to the house several times while I was back in London, getting ready for the move. He already had a head-start on the village gossip.
    ‘There are some locals around who keep an eye on things – I’m sure you’ll soon get to meet them. They’ll probably seem very private at first, but they’ll come to love you. How couldn’t they?’ He placed his right hand flat on the front door and pushed. ‘Shall we?’
    It didn’t smell like any old house I’d been in; no lavender polish, damp floorboards or cooking cabbage. Instead there was the scent of orange blossom, sun-hot wood and lemons. I stood at the threshold and breathed in the warm, fragrant air.
    In the hall of midnight blue Castilian tiles, sunlight bounced off every surface. All around me, motes and midges glowed golden in the angled geometries of four great stained-glass windows. It seemed as if brightness was filtering in from everywhere; it flowed in pools across the floors and cast chromatic diagonals on the walls, so that they appeared to be lit from within. Windows are important clues to the purpose of a building. They provide personal vistas. These vast panes of glass were meant to raise serotonin levels, pure and simple.
    On closer inspection, I saw that the bordering tiles were scattered with representations of stars. The sun and the moon were wrought in glass at opposite ends of the hall. Other representations of the heavens featured in the smaller panels and friezes, lunar symbols in shades of sapphire, solar signs in amber and citron, a cathedral of constellations, and all this in a hallway. It was like a church, designed to instil respect, wellbeing and a sense of calm.
    ‘My God,’ I said, turning about, ‘how could I have forgotten the light? Look at it!’
    ‘No wonder the old owner valued his privacy,’ said Mateo. ‘If this house ever got on the tourist trail…’
    The astronomical theme continued into the rooms. With so much sky on display at every window, it was hardly surprising that the planets had been selected as part of Hyperion’s design.
    I walked further into the largest of the front rooms. Around the central table, half a dozen crystal bowls were transformed into rainbow prisms, and the carpets and tapestries appeared sewn with gold thread.
    ‘It is especially good in spring and autumn, when the sun is lower,’ said a woman’s voice.
    Even though her hair was leached of colour and worn in a tight chignon, there was something ageless about Rosita Delgadillo. She had the scrubbed look of someone in a Vermeer painting. Long-necked and small-featured, her skull-like face was free of lines or expression. Her white apron held starched creases and covered a black high-necked dress that must have