Her words seemed redundant unless they were ominous. The ridge was perhaps fifty feet high, and surmounted by a line of trees that entangled branches with their neighbours in the small dense wood, creating shade that very little direct sunlight penetrated. The spring emerged about halfway up the slope and collected in a hollow in the rock, from which the overflow streamed between trees to the road. The rift the spring followed was as good as straight, and the bowl at its foot was virtually circular. Once again I had a sense that the place had been abandoned, quite possibly on purpose. No doubt the shade was why I felt a chill as Bella raised her cupped hand to her mouth. “Isn’t everybody thirsty?” she said.

“Are you sure it’s safe to drink?” I said.

She tipped the water into her mouth like somebody older dashing back liquor. “It always has been.”

“Bell looked it up,” Roy said, and drank. I found I was holding my breath, because he’d grown as still as the ridge. I was about to ask why when he said “I’m seeing, Bell. I’m hearing too.”

I was seized by a suspicion I would very much have liked to disbelieve. “Roy, have you taken something?”

“Dad.” Just as reproachfully he said “Never since I met Bell.”

“You shouldn’t need drugs either, Patrick. Just be open to what’s here.”

While I found this less than tempting, it was surely my responsibility to learn what my son had experienced. “Is anybody going to tell me what to expect?”

“Nobody should,” Bella said. “Let it come to you.”

As I leaned forward to reach into the spring, a shaft of light caught my hand and my bare forearm. I was disconcerted by how cold they immediately felt, as if something had drained all the heat from the sunshine. My shadow fell across the hollow in the rock, and I could have thought that darkness was taking shape in the water and rising to welcome me – that the pool itself had grown deeper. I could even have fancied that a face had peered up from the depths. Of course one had – my reflection – and only the irrepressible ripples had made it look unstable, desperate to cling to its identity. Just the same, I wasn’t anxious to linger, and I thrust my hand into the cleft in the rock.