“I think she’s embarrassed by it. Maybe it’s a bit of a tip if she’s there with just her dad, if he’s not as tidy as you are.”

“If you’re planning to stay together—” Just in time I refrained from suggesting he insist that Bella should show him where she lived, because I had no idea what this might provoke. “Perhaps you’re right,” I made myself say. “No need to harass her.”

“I expect she’ll let me see when she’s ready.”

I hoped whatever this might entail would never come to pass. As a preamble to risking more conversation I said “Your mother will be at work.”

“She said you tried to check she wouldn’t be there. What didn’t you want her to know?”

“Roy, I’m not the one you should be asking that.”

His cough might have been a bid to fend off the remark, but he said “Not getting you.”

“Whose idea was it to visit the archive while your mother wasn’t there?”

So bluntly that it might have been the final syllable he had for me Roy said “Mine.”

“Bella didn’t choose the day.”

“Maybe she sort of did, but she didn’t know mum wouldn’t be around.”

I couldn’t argue with this, however little I believed it. “So you want to know why I did the same as you.”

“You keep doing it. It’s like you want to copy Bell.”

Withholding my immediate response took more of an effort than ever. “How much of that book did you read?”

“Some.”

“Did you read how he created a familiar?”

“Missed that bit.” In a tone that might have denoted condescension Roy said “I don’t believe any of it. It just helps Bell get hold of what your aunt did.”

“So what did you read?”

“Not much.” Defensively enough to sound resentful Roy said “The writing hurt my eyes.”

“Mine too, but I carried on. You’d have thought Bella would have wanted you to.”

I thought nothing of the kind, and Roy retorted “Why would she want anything to mess me up?”

I suspected she wouldn’t care, but confined myself to saying “Suppose there was something in that book you wouldn’t want to know?”

“That’s pretty much everything I read.”

“No,” I said while my nerves endured my reticence. “I mean suppose someone wouldn’t want you knowing?”

“Maybe that’s why he wrote it like that, so nobody else could read it.”

“Bella seems to have succeeded.”

“That’s because she didn’t find the writing hard. She’s more into the past than me. Anyway,” Roy said as I took a breath to answer, “you succeeded too.”

“I wish I had.”

“I don’t know what you mean, dad, but I hope it’s over now.”

“What do you think is going to be?”