The opera saw us out of the forest, and the green lowlands extended ahead. Despite the expansive view, I wasn’t sure of the route. “I may have to switch this off,” I said, “so I can hear the navigator.”

“I’ll direct you,” Bella said and took out her phone. Miles of downhill road brought us to a junction where none of the names on the sign told me the way to Brightspring. “Turn left, Patrick,” Bella said.

Hulking hedges cut the view off, and by the time the road meandered to another junction I’d began to wonder whether we’d taken a wrong turn. If the crossroads had ever been provided with a sign, it wasn’t there now. “Right this time,” Bella said.

“Are you sure, Bell? You haven’t been using your phone.”

“We don’t need it. I can feel the land.”

“Forgive me,” I said without wanting it much, “but how does that work?”

“Trust me, Patrick.”

“You can, dad. I do.”

As I turned along the unmarked road I wondered whether I was just indulging his confidence in his girlfriend. Wildly high hedges bordered the road as though bent on forcing it to change direction every few hundred yards or even less. I had no idea how far I’d followed it before a side road almost hidden by beech trees came in sight. A sign scaly with rust was partly obscured by a hedge and its tangled shadows, which made the pointer say RIGHT IN until I turned along the lane, transforming the words into RIG I and I PIN and I SPIN and I SPRING. “You could turn off the radio now, Patrick,” Bella said.

The trees and their shadows that netted the tarmac seemed to have trapped a silence. Apart from the rubbery mumble of tyres, I heard my breath and more faintly Roy’s, and felt as if Bella was urging us to hush. The lane curved without haste, and a strip of it reared up to greet us. No, it was a watery illusion created by haze, even if it persisted longer than such effects usually did. The car had almost reached it when it disappeared, absorbed by a glistening mass of shadow. I might have commented if fingers hadn’t tapped on the roof above my head.