The root cellar is full of gas masks again

How strange. The sea is far away- miles- and yet I can hear the tide when I lean slightly over the edge of the well near the orchard and look down into the salt-smelling darkness. Is this the well mentioned in the old letter I found when my wall-papering regimen revealed a hitherto unknown door under a rancid sheet of ersatz William Morris, giving onto a room that- window and all- I had never suspected was there before.

And once the room was discovered, it was as if I'd always known that particular window over the conservatory to be there; can't remember, in fact, a time when it wasn't there. Except, of course, it wasn't there yesterday.