“Not the way you mean.”

“Which way, then?”

“I think she thought wherever she’s going today might be too much somehow. She was looking after me, dad.”

I heard how much he wanted to persuade me and perhaps needed this himself. I was leaving his belief unchallenged when he said “She isn’t answering her phone. If I knew where she was going I’d find her.”

I couldn’t resist asking “How do you think she knows where to go?”

“Maybe it was in the book we read in the library. I told you she read more than me.”

I doubted that Lumen Scientiae had predicted his own place of burial, but I was refraining from making the point when Roy said “Maybe you saw where.”

So this was why he’d called. I felt absurdly satisfied to have a chance to tell some truth. “I’ve no idea where she’s planning to go.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll be seeing her again.”

I was ashamed to resort to saying “It seems unlikely, doesn’t it.”

“Only if you should be in touch after all, can you ask her to call me? If she’s done what she didn’t want to take me to there’s no reason we can’t get back together.”

I could think of several that I didn’t voice. Fearing he might ask me to phone Bella on his behalf, I said “Anyway, I should be on the move.”

The dog was still barking as though it had sensed an intruder. “Where are you, dad?” Roy said.

“On my way to see someone. Call me whenever you like,” I felt obliged to say, hastily adding “Any time at all after today.”

Could the prohibition make him suspicious? Might he even guess I was meeting Bella? If he was at his mother’s it would take him just a few minutes to walk to the short cut he’d seen Bella use. Surely he had no reason to assume I was going there, but I drove to it as fast as I dared and pulled up opposite the gap in the misshapen wall. At once I saw Bella emerging from the gloom.

As she stepped off the dark path between the trees I had the fancy that she was quitting a canvas of Thelma’s, one of those that showed her lurking in a forest. She wore a T-shirt and equally black jeans along with sandals, or at least the appearance of all those, and was carrying her bag. She crossed the road almost too swiftly to watch, and took the seat next to me with a single movement as lithe as water. “I thought I’d see you sooner, Patrick,” she said.

“I was talking to my son.”

“Ever the concerned father.” Presumably she had no reason to keep up her youthful style now that Roy couldn’t hear. “Was the conversation private?” she said.