The right-hand wall came to an end, but the track continued downwards, enclosed on that side by bare black rock. The increasingly haphazard heap of stones crowded closer on the left, where another wall of rock had risen. I’d begun to brake every few seconds for fear of snagging the rickety structure, but it ended abruptly, revealing a valley several yards wide at the edge of the track. The surface underneath the wheels had grown more uneven, and now I was nervous that a wheel might slip over the brink. As black rock towered higher around the car, it seemed to pinch the sunlight off, steeping the route in gloom. When I saw movement on the right-hand wall I thought moisture was streaming down the rock, until I came abreast of it and made out a glistening horde of insects. I shivered as I shut my window, and the sight of the black crawling mass left me anxious to define the situation. “What are we here for?” I said.

“Perhaps you may bring away some memento too, Patrick. I doubt you can remain unchanged.”

“No, I’m asking who’s down here.” When Bella gazed through the windscreen without speaking I said “I take it Lumen Scientiae is.”

“Don’t speak the name unless you want to bring him to you.”

Her voice had grown so sharp that I wondered why she should be concerned on my behalf – presumably because I might be left incapable of driving. I saw her gaze shift to the mirror, and felt reluctant to look. A generous section of the mass of insects had swarmed off the wall to hover behind the car. It resembled the upper part of a mask or else of a moist blackened face, in which two bulges could have been mistaken for large eyes, unstably hectic and yet imbued with watchful intelligence. The appearance loitered beyond the rear window while I struggled not to speed away from it, and then it swooped back to the wall. The incident made me desperate to speak, and I gestured at the bag resting in Bella’s lap. “But you’ll be taking some of him away with you.”

“That contains him.”

Her voice had settled down again, and I was determined to reach past its tonelessness. “You’ll be doing what he did to you,” I said. “It’s your revenge.”

“He is a stage of my growth,” Bella said with some hauteur. “They all have been.”