Halfway Halt – trees reach for walkers in railway cutting. “Where man cracks the earth, beware the hatching of the egg.”

The last entry in my aunt’s journal was even more obscure, and hardly even legible. All I could decipher of the first word was the initial L, and the second appeared to begin as Science only to trail into a longer word. The scrawl was followed by a phrase that I eventually read as MADE ABLE but couldn’t fathom. “Well,” I said, and nothing else for some moments. “I hope you understand more of this than me.”

“Do you know which paintings it’s about?”

“I can’t identify a single one.”

“Maybe those are thoughts she had while she was painting and she didn’t put them in. Did she often talk like that?”

“If you mean all the archaic language, my guess is she was quoting.”

“Have you tried to find whichever book it was?”

“I’m afraid most of her library went to a charity shop, thanks to my mother. I only managed to salvage this and the books Thelma was involved in.”

“You haven’t searched,” Roy said and typed one of the quotations into his phone, trying several before he desisted. “Looks like it’s not online,” he said.

“I can’t recall ever seeing a book like that in her house. I’ve worked out what those jars she dropped off the roof were, though. Samples from places she listed in here.”

Leafing through the journal had reminded me of initials on the jars – MC, DF, DM or just a single letter. “But why did she drop them?” Roy said.

“I’m afraid she took her reason with her.”

“Maybe we’ll get an idea when we go wherever you want to drive to.” As though to give his eagerness a task Roy said “Shall I look up the distances for you?”

“The nearest one is pretty far.”

“We’ll still be going, won’t we?” Not entirely without childishness Roy protested “You said we would.”

“I just wonder if it’s worth it when there may not be anything to see. I know what we can do today,” I felt relieved to be able to suggest. “Why don’t we take a closer look at Thelma’s work.”

Roy shrugged in the direction of the shelves where it was represented. “Already have.”

“The actual paintings. We can see them at the Tate in Liverpool.”

“I saw the exhibition when it was in Manchester.”

“This will have a different curator and besides, you hadn’t seen her book then.”

I’d begun to feel unexpectedly if not inexplicably desperate when Roy said “Shall we bring it with us? No, I know. You hold it and I’ll take the shots.”