“It’s the rarest of the books that use her work. They reprinted it without her cover. I don’t even have it myself.”

“Now you have,” Bella said and held it out. “It’s yours, Patrick.”

“That’s extremely kind.” I was moved by her uninhibited instinctiveness. “But honestly,” I said, “I wasn’t asking.”

“You don’t have to ask me when it’s what you need.”

“Let me buy it from you at least.”

“I won’t. It has to be my gift to you.” More gently still she said “It wasn’t even new when I found it. It’s been well owned.”

She opened the front cover to display the underside, where an erasure pen had left a dull white patch. “That’s a pity,” I said.

Bella looked less than happy. “What don’t you like?”

“Somebody hiding the inscription or the owner’s name or whatever’s under there. It’s part of the history of the book.”

“That’s shops for you these days,” Bella said like someone of an earlier generation. “Some people don’t know what they’ve got, or they don’t care.”

As she handed me the volume Roy said “We can do a book for a book. I’ll show Bella your aunt’s journal.”

It was barely a question, and I said “I expect we can.”

Bella laid a hand on Roy’s shoulder as he brought up the pages on his phone, and I was rather more than ashamed to feel envious. I remembered this kind of early stage of a relationship, if that was what I was witnessing, but I was past such experiences now. All the mistakes I’d made with Julia – most of them my fault or at any rate equally mine – were enough for one lifetime. Bella didn’t move her hand until Roy finished swiping the pages aside, and then she blinked at me. “Your aunt never sounded like that,” she said.

“That’s what I told dad too. He thinks she was quoting someone.”

“You haven’t found out who.” When I mimed empty-handed ignorance Bella said “Maybe she wanted the quotations to be displayed with the paintings.”

“So why weren’t they?” Roy apparently felt Bella ought to know.

“She didn’t finish all her paintings, did she? Maybe she was going to put the mottos with them when she had.”