The house was empty. It was so much the last thing Rachael expected as she stood no the threshold, staring at the pools of milky sunlight that marked he absence of carpet, dresser, phone table. The only object in sight was the abandoned husk of a spider crab, so small it must have blown in under the door. It was a sun-and-wave-washed pink, an unfriendly surface sliding inwards to the neat and durable home that once protected a living thing. Rachael picked up the shell, and held it.

Her imagined entrance had been entirely different - passing the front rooms, she would glimpse the vivid abstracts that made a gallery of the walls before reaching the dresser where, discovering Karl's favourite tweed jacket, she would hold it to her face and weep.

It was a house of memories built by her uncle, the man who told stories about light, space and dimensions; the architect. Together they would tour the house, Karl explaining the rules of balance and the meaning of harmony to the child who held his hand. Karl was not her mother's favourite brother and during Rachael's adolescence he faded from view, making appearances at her twenty-first and her wedding, the ginger-coloured man, softly spoken with a pale laugh.

Placing the spider crab on the window ledge, Rachael went through to the kitchen, which was shadowy and cool, its light filtered by the blossoms of jasmine and clematis that wreathed the windows. She put down the keys, the solicitor's letter and a thermos of coffee on the sink. Porcelainm she noted; all the features must be original. She could still hear the sea, a faint, regular sighing as the waves broke on the beach below the house.

'Just get rid of it', Mark had said. 'Pack it up and hand it over to the local agent. We've got enough on our places'. Of course, she had meant to return, to answer the invitations Karl regularly sent. But between the kids and the business, there was no time to drive the four hours from Sydney to the rim of Westernport Bay. As it was, Mark was running the shop without her, a thing he hated to do. It had been a shock to find herself the sole heir of Karl's will, that the land, the house and contents were hers.

The coffee she had brewed was strong. Sipping it, she contemplated how Karl could have lived there until his death three months ago without a stick of furniture. Had a jealous friend, thwarted by the will, decided to take the lot? Had thieves entered and stealthily lifted every item? Did Karl turn monkish in his declining years and relish sleeping on bare boards?

Rachael shivered. It was nearly dusk and the darkness reached the kitchen first. She had better decide what to do, start the drive to the nearest town or find a motel on the highway. There was no point in staying.

That was when the lights went on, one by one, as if someond were walking through each room, flicking the switch. She stood very still and held her breath as the fear pressed like a slow, cold finger on her spine. At the same time, the house grew warmer. The central heating had come one, too. Then Rachael laughed. Of course, it had been preset and no one thought to turn it off. She remembered Mark's sleeping bag in the boot of the car.

'Okay, house,' she said. 'I'll stay. If Karl could do it, so can I.'

She settled herself in the front room, leaving the lights on for comfort. She was an early riser. In the morning she'd make a quick tour of the property and find as estate agent. The house badly needed renovating, but it would still fetch a tidy sum. She zipped up the sleeping bag and closed her eyes against the light.

'Excuse me,' said a voice. 'Please don’t go to sleep.'

She sat up. In the bright empty rooms there were no movement. 'Who's there?' Rachael asked, 'What do you want?'

'I'm the house' The voice sounded offended. 'I don’t want anything. In fact, if anybody should be asking anybody else what they want, it's me who should be asking you.'

'I'm sorry, I just can't see …'

'What? I'm all around you.'

'Yes, but …'

The timbers groaned. 'We can’t go on like this all night. There's too much to discuss. Karl left me to you because he said you weren't like the rest of your family, whom he described alternately as cattle dogs and carrion crows. He said you have imagination, you'd look after me.'

'Mark and I …'

'Mark's got the aesthetic sense of a boiled potato.'

'Look,' Rachael spoke slowly, 'I'm sorry about the way things have turned out. I just can't afford …'

'Responsibility.' The tone was nasty. 'Karl often remarked you generation is selfish. Ours was a marriage, I'll have you know, not some modern shack-up. That's why he got rid of the furniture. He left it obstructed his view of my symmetry.'

Rachael sighed. 'I can't stay.'

'You can leave any time you like. It's not a fairytale. There aren't any rose bushes growing over the door knobs. Karl was, of course, an untidy gardener, regarding the natural world as secondary to the constructed one. He said home was a place of mediation between the real and the imagiary. He built me with love and I sheltered him. I know about the durability of materials, you see, and how deep foundations must be.'

Rachael saw the shell she had placed on the window sill. She reached for it and turned it over in her fingers. It was perfecctly balanced, weightless and whole. 'There are the children of course … school holidays … the beach …'

Contracting against the night air, the timbers of the house shifted like a body getting comfortable for rest, and the shell, nestled in Karl's palm, was warm.