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opportunity to link themselves to Ancient Egyptian beliefs in order to legitimise themselves. I’ve found evidence that this cipher may be written on the mechanism itself. It’s a phrase from a temple wall, an Isis temple, only recently discovered. I had Gareth write it down, because he’s so good at riddles.’
    ‘Have you solved it?’ I was intrigued despite myself.
    ‘I have an idea, but I’ll wait until I have the astrarium before I reveal my theory to a cynic like yourself.’
    ‘Be careful of anything Gareth suggests,’ I said warningly, handing her back the drawing. ‘He’s such a conspiracist.’
    Isabella threw her hands up in mock exasperation. ‘You see? No wonder I don’t confide in you. I’m too frightened of being ridiculed.’
    ‘Come back to bed, please?’ I begged, smiling.
    Dawn was creeping under the blinds but by my calculations there was at least an hour before we had to get up for the dive. Sighing, Isabella switched off the desk lamp and skipped across the room. As she slipped in beside me, the familiar fragrance of her body was an immediate comfort.
    ‘You’ll always look after Gareth, won’t you? He needs you, even if he’ll never admit it.’
    ‘Of course I will,’ I answered, trying to ignore the fatalistic undercurrent in her voice.
    My brother Gareth, born sixteen years after me, was an unexpected menopausal baby, adored by my mother but regarded as a late financial burden by my father. I had hardly known Gareth when he was a child, but when I did visit I would take him out for long walks across the moors, describing the rock formations in the hope that it would instil some greater ambition than my parents’ aspirations. It must have worked, for at the age of twelve he’d announced that he intended to become a landscape painter. We were close in those days and I would often make the effort to travel to Cumbria to see him. But suddenly, at sixteen, he began to reject openly both my parents and myself. He would argue furiously with my mother, and would not talk to my father for days. The first time he slammed the phone down on me I was devastated by the sense of alienation. I had loved the wild imagination and trust in the young Gareth: it was as if another, more sullen and closed individual had hijacked him. By the time he arrived in London to start art college he was already addicted to drugs. Despite this and determined to be supportive of his career as an artist, I’d tried openly to win him back. Regardless of my efforts it was always Isabella to whom Gareth turned in times of distress - our relationship from then on was never quite as it once had been.
    Sighing, Isabella curled up against me. ‘If anything should happen to me, Faakhir will know what to do with the astrarium. ’
    I pulled her closer, her leg over my torso, my arm slipped under her waist. ‘Nothing’s going to happen.’
    ‘No, Oliver, you must listen to me: you must guard the astrarium with your life. If the astrarium really is all that I believe it to be, then a lot of people will want it, but it is crucial to keep it safe. Don’t trust anyone, except Faakhir. Follow your instinct - your natural gift will lead you. It believes in you even if you don’t believe in it. There is a journey and a destination for the astrarium.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ I yawned, tired from a long day and the prospect of getting up again soon.
    ‘I don’t know yet. There is so much we don’t know until I find the mechanism itself.’ She sighed. ‘All I know is I have a feeling that when we find the astrarium it could throw us into much danger. You’ll just have to trust me. Promise?’
    I nodded and, reaching down, kissed her deeply, and there it was - a simple pledge given simply. With hindsight I wonder whether if I had argued with her, had made the case that perhaps sometimes it’s good to leave some treasures undiscovered, old hurts and dramas dormant, unanalysed, never to be returned to - would I have