“Don’t say you have no feelings of your own, or is that part of how you’re made? I’m sure you’ve convinced Roy you have some.”

“Patrick, I think it’s time for you to leave.” Before I could reply Julia added “And I think you’d better stay away.”

“Mum’s right, dad.”

“Surely you won’t let everyone do your talking for you, Bella. You had plenty to say to me.”

Roy kept his unhappy stare on me as he said “What does he mean, Bell?”

For the first time she seemed disconcerted, and I experienced a surge of vicious satisfaction. “Patrick,” Julia said, “for the second and last time—”

I held Bella’s resolutely innocent gaze with mine. “Give her a chance to speak. You can see she wants to be heard.”

Perhaps this provoked her, unless it simply left her no option except to respond. “All right, I feel harassed. I didn’t want to say.”

“There’s your answer, Patrick, and now will you please—”

“What don’t they know about, Bella?”

Julia had let her recover herself. “You’ll have to explain that, Patrick.”

“You haven’t told them what I meant before.”

“I should think you ought to know that best of anyone.”

“Come on, Bell,” Roy said and looked at her at last. “If you know, you tell us.”

With a wistfulness that turned my mouth sour Bella said “Has he made you suspicious of me?”

“If he says you know what he’s on about I expect you do, unless he’s mad.”

I saw her consider suggesting some version of this, but then she reached for her bag. “Since you’re insisting, you can hear for yourself.”

I couldn’t believe I’d guessed her intention until she produced the phone – my aunt’s phone. Before I could identify it aloud I was silenced by my own voice. “You know who this is and why. Let me have an answer.”

“That’s harassment if ever I heard some,” Julia said. “An answer to what, may we ask?”

“To a lot of things that need one. What do you say, Bella?”

“I assumed you just meant I should call you back. And to save Patrick the trouble of pointing it out, this phone used to belong to his aunt. I had it from my father.”

Though she was forgetting to sound Roy’s age, nobody else appeared to have noticed. “Father,” I said with no tone at all.

“Yes, Patrick,” Julia said, “her father. What are you trying to imply?”

“I was wondering if we’re ever going to meet him.”

“I’d say there’s increasingly less reason why you should.”

“Are you making other people speak for you again, Bella?”

She met this with a sad look that I was dismayed to think might be enough for Roy and his mother. I was about to provoke more of a response when Roy said “Bell…”