“You mean you’ve got one,” I said, a riposte that was useless at best, since she’d ended the call. As I stared at the phone I grew aware of the windmills sporadically twitching on the horizon, and it felt as if they were picking at my brain. So my mother had indeed recognised something when Roy had phoned Bella from the restaurant. The number Bella had was my aunt’s old number.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Three

Conversations in the Dark

As the windmills on the horizon began to glow like branding irons prepared for an interrogation I grew tired of waiting for Bella. Sunset bruised the sky with elongated welts of cloud while waves flocked towards the dimming bay as if they were recoiling from the prospect. I felt trapped in my apartment, nervous with undefined anticipation but unwilling to indulge Bella any longer. Was she reluctant to confront me? Perhaps the showdown would take place at the derelict hotel after all, despite what she’d said. I wasn’t about to drive there tonight – I hoped to sleep eventually instead – and I refused to be made to feel I was at her disposal. Rather than speak to her I sent a message. Please let me know when I can expect you, it said.

The formality felt like an attempt to bring the situation down to the banal – to exert control, at any rate. I disliked the notion of receiving a reply that would appear to come from my dead aunt, and so I substituted Bella’s name in the contacts list, only to feel I should have saved the evidence. What could it prove to anyone who didn’t know as much as I did? No doubt Bella would simply claim she’d acquired the phone from her supposed father, even if this failed to explain how he’d come by it. I knew Julia and our son would find some way of exonerating her. Perhaps I should have phrased my message differently, since it brought no answer. Even if she didn’t mean to let me know until she was imminent, I was going out for a walk.