I’d withheld that challenge until it couldn’t be recorded, but might it reach her by some means? There was no point in antagonising her more than necessary, but I was determined to ensure she left my son alone. My final words had started to disturb me in a way I couldn’t grasp, as if they ought to convey more to me than they did. The impression lay like a shapeless weight on my mind while I waited for the phone to ring, if that was how Bella would respond. Half an hour crawled by, followed by another half, each marked by the emergence of a few commuters from the station and the voice of a train listing the stops on its route. I peered at every distant face, none of which resembled Bella’s. Perhaps she wouldn’t arrive that way, but I thought it best to watch the street as it grew secretive with twilight, and in any case I felt confined to my desk by my inability to think. I watched the sunset on the faraway windmills drain into the sea. The spindly vanes continued to work, plucking without result at an upright oval of pale cloud, so apparently insubstantial it was barely visible. I did my best to hope that Bella might end up as ineffectual as the windmills looked. After all, she’d caused me no physical harm, and how much longer was she going to need Roy? They must be close to finishing the expeditions they were basing on my aunt’s journal. Surely she couldn’t do much worse to Roy than she already had – and then, far too tardily, I wondered whether anybody else could have been another kind of victim.

Had I already learned the worst she was capable of, or at any rate seen examples of it? As my thoughts took a dismaying shape I was distracted by the spectacle at the horizon, the unnaturally regular oval cloud hovering over several windmills. Of course they couldn’t shift it, but it hadn’t moved of itself or altered any of its outline, though it had been loitering for minutes since I’d noticed it. It was the sort of phenomenon that gave rise to tales of alien visitors, and I imagined people phoning the authorities, but these thoughts were simply hindering the ones I was afraid to have. Had someone besides me recognised or at any rate suspected Bella? At once I was certain who had, and as though my realisation had wakened it along with my brain, the phone rang. “Bella,” it said, and another voice followed it as the ringtone fell silent. “I’m here, Patrick.”