This seemed unavoidable as well, to prevent her from changing her mind about tomorrow. I shut my eyes and squeezed them tighter in a bid to fend off a sense of a transformation in the room. I had the impression that my visitor had reared up nearly as high as the ceiling and was determined to make me look, to betray how false my show of trust was. I seemed to sense a face reaching off the head to hover so close to mine that I ought to feel its breath, and hands stretching on their elongated arms to finger the air just inches from my face. My eyes were throbbing with an imitation of light by the time the face and hands withdrew, and at last I sensed how the entire body did, into a distance to which the empty air led. My eyes faltered open, and on seeing I was alone I let out a gasp that left all words behind.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Eight

A Final Darkness

“Roy.”

My phone spoke his name before I did. I’d just left the motorway and was close to where I had to be, but now I was afraid Bella had delegated him to send me home. I pulled over on a street where most of the parked cars were twice the height of mine, and a hulking dog began to bark through the elegantly twisted bars of a gate. “Yes, Roy,” I said.

“She’s gone, dad.”

His voice was so toneless that I couldn’t judge what he meant to convey. Was he accusing me of having separated them or telling me that she was out of both our lives? In the hope of learning more I said “You’re talking about Bella.”

“Who else am I going to mean?”

Hearing his distress, I felt dismayed to think how much of his life she might represent just now. I couldn’t tell him that however devastating separation felt at his age, you soon survived. “How do you know she has?” I said.

“She gave me a bell.”

It sounded like a bitter joke, a bid to leave his real emotions behind. “What did she say?”

“She’s had enough of me. I mean she thinks she’s been using me. That’s what you’ve made her think.”

“I can’t see how she would,” I risked saying, “unless it was the case.”

“She says she’s used me enough for learning what your aunt did. I tried to tell her that hasn’t got to be the end of us, but I couldn’t get through to her. She’s gone cold on me.”

“Perhaps you’re seeing the real Bella.”

At once I feared I’d said too much, especially when silence responded, but then he said “You didn’t know her like I did.”

I hoped I was taking enough care by saying “Roy, you have to accept how she’s behaved is real.”