Matthew Rose Sorensen(Piranesi)—Sarah Raphael

The relationship between Matthew Rose Sorensen (Piranesi) and Sarah Raphael begins at the moment of danger, when she enters the House looking for Matthew and finds the man who has lived there as Piranesi. Raphael does not claim a shared past: she is a police officer who has come to find a missing person, and he does not initially know how to answer to his former name. Their connection is therefore built in the present—through mutual rescue, careful truth-telling, and the difficult choice to leave the House together.

The Search and the Meeting

Raphael reaches Piranesi after a chain of concern set in motion by Angharad Scott, a woman who had spoken with Matthew about writing a book on Laurence Arne-Sayles. When Scott later learned from Matthew’s former college that he had gone missing, she recognized a troubling pattern among people who had disappeared around Arne-Sayles and contacted the police. Raphael’s search thus brings an outside investigation into the House, where Piranesi has been living without knowing the full circumstances of his disappearance.

Their first encounter takes place amid rising water and immediate danger. Piranesi has disarmed The Other by kicking the gun away, then demands to know where 16 is. A woman calls for Ketterley and says she has come for Matthew Rose Sorensen. Piranesi recognizes the voice as 16’s, warns her that Ketterley intends harm and has a gun, and sees her emerge from a southern doorway in jeans and a green jumper. When The Other grabs Piranesi and tries to strike him, Piranesi turns his movement against him, breaks free, and runs toward Raphael, shouting that a flood is coming and that they must climb. Their relationship begins not with recognition but with coordinated action under threat.

Names and the Absence of a Shared Past

After the immediate danger, Piranesi tells Raphael that she is Six—16—and that she is Raphael. She identifies herself as Sarah Raphael and identifies him as Matthew Rose Sorensen. The name is not an easy recovery: when she later asks what she should call him, he starts to say Piranesi, explaining that Dr Ketterley gave him the name and that he suspects it was meant as mockery. Raphael agrees that Ketterley was capable of that. Her response acknowledges the name he has lived under without pretending it was harmless or that his former identity can simply replace it.

Piranesi asks whether Matthew knew Raphael and whether that is why she came. She pauses, then tells him plainly that they have never met. She is there as a police officer, not as a friend from his remembered life or a person claiming intimacy he cannot recall. That distinction matters: Raphael’s care does not depend on Piranesi recovering a memory of her. Their trust has to form between the people they are now, while he learns what happened to Matthew and she listens to the account of his life in the House.

Shared Understanding and the Offer to Return

Raphael explains how she entered the House: she had tried to understand what Matthew was thinking when he disappeared by following Arne-Sayles’s instructions for returning to a pre-rational mode of thought. Arne-Sayles had told her that she would see paths and which one to choose; Raphael had understood those paths as metaphorical until she discovered that they led into a real world. Piranesi connects her experience to his own divided history. Matthew, he says, was shocked and frightened when he first arrived, then fell asleep and Piranesi was born. Later, entries in his journal seemed to him evidence of madness because he thought they described a different world; he now understands that Matthew wrote them. Raphael’s account gives him a framework for understanding her arrival, while his account gives her a direct explanation of what happened to the missing man she came to find.

Raphael then asks whether he would be willing to come with her to Matthew’s parents and sisters, so they can see his face and know he is alive. She makes the offer without insisting that he remain in the outside world permanently: even if he later returned to the House, she says, seeing him would help his family. Piranesi answers that he cannot do it then. Raphael accepts the answer without pressure. The exchange establishes the relationship’s characteristic respect for his agency: she offers a concrete possibility of reunion, but does not treat rescue as authority over what he must choose next.

Friendship and the Decision to Leave

Piranesi later distinguishes Raphael from The Other. The Other’s feelings toward him had been mixed, and Piranesi had misunderstood the Other’s departures, believing he was merely elsewhere in the House rather than returning to another world. That mistaken sense of company had made solitude easier to bear. Raphael, by contrast, is genuinely his friend; she has promised to visit, though he knows that when she leaves she returns to the outside world. Her friendship therefore includes an uncomfortable truth: her presence can ease his loneliness, but it cannot make the House less solitary when she is gone.

That knowledge informs his decision. Piranesi considers the prospect of leaving an inhabited House empty and feels the force of that thought, but remaining would mean accepting that he is alone, while Raphael’s return visits would repeatedly make the separation visible. He decides to go with her. Before they leave, he retrieves the small cardboard box marked AQUARIUM, which had once held the shoes Dr Ketterley gave him and later held the ornaments he removed when told to hide from 16. He spends two or three hours putting the ornaments back into his hair: shells, coral beads, pearls, tiny pebbles, and fishbones. Raphael is astonished by his dressed-up appearance, but the gesture belongs to his own preparation for entering a new world.

He carries his journals and favourite pens in his messenger bag, and the two walk toward the Minotaurs in the south-eastern corner. Between them, the shadows shimmer like a corridor leading toward lights and moving colours Piranesi cannot interpret. He gives the House one last look; Raphael takes his hand, and they walk into the passage together. The ending makes their bond a practical bridge rather than a restoration of an old acquaintance: she has found him, helped him survive, and offered a way back, while he chooses to cross the threshold with her despite the attachment he feels to the House.