“Just like you and Roy have, but I don’t know which you mean.”

“Nor do we, Patrick,” Julia said without much patience. “It’s past time you said.”

“Turns of phrase, for one thing. Bella, you told me you and Roy help each other grow.”

“I could have said that,” Roy protested. “It’s the truth.”

“It’s true of quite a lot of people,” Julia told me. “It isn’t as unusual as you seem to think.”

I hadn’t time to grasp how many criticisms this might contain. “That wasn’t all. When we were at the spring you said you’re what we see, Bella.”

“Don’t you think I am?”

“I’ll say she is as well, dad.”

“Have you any reason to suppose she isn’t?” Julia said.

“That’s not my point. It’s what her father said as well.”

“I shouldn’t think that’s too uncommon either. So are you going to tell us who you’ve made up your mind he is? You’re the one who’s creating a mystery here, not Bella.”

“I should think she can say who her own father is.”

“I’m sure she can, but why don’t you? What on earth are you trying to achieve?”

“I just wanted to be certain, and I am. It’s your eyes, Bella.”

“What about them?” Roy demanded, and Julia said “Yes, what, Patrick?”

“She doesn’t look much like her father otherwise, which is why it’s taken me this long to realise. They have the same eyes, though. I still remember them.”

I was willing Bella to admit her parentage when Julia said “Stop harassing the poor girl and just say who you mean, for heaven’s sake.”

“The man my aunt took up with at the end.”

“Good God with a capital, does everything have to come back to her?”

“I’m afraid it mostly seems to just now. It does in this case, doesn’t it, Bella?”

She turned her eyes to Roy, and I thought she was about to appeal to him until she said “I’m sorry, Roy, but yes.”

He reached for her hand on the table but stopped short of touching. “Sorry for what, Bell?”

“Patrick’s right about my father.”

“Why are you going to be sorry about that?”

“For not telling you who I was. I was afraid you’d think I’d been lying in wait for you that first time at the gallery. At first I didn’t realise, and when I did I thought it was too late.”

His hand had found hers now. “Why do you think it’d have mattered?”

“It’s as Patrick started to say before. You could have thought I was playing some kind of trick.”

“For what?”

“Yes, Patrick,” Julia said. “For what purpose?”