I wasn’t sure enough to put the feeling into words, and in any case I had no chance. The front door had opened, letting out Roy and Bella. “We’re ready,” Bella said.

Their arrival threw me so much that I demanded “Is there anyone else in the house?”

“No.”

All three said it, pretty well in chorus, which made them laugh. I did my best to feel they weren’t laughing at me. Perhaps I’d seen a bird reflected in the window, or a cloud. “My mistake,” I said.

“Try not to make any more, Patrick,” Julia said and followed us to the gate. As I unlocked the car and let my passengers into the back she said almost too low to be heard even by me “Just be certain you want this and why.”

I couldn’t answer when I was uncertain of both. As the car moved off she sent Roy and Bella a smile she hadn’t found for me. While they weren’t sitting particularly close together, they were loosely holding hands. Their clasp rested on Bella’s shoulder-bag between them, a gesture I thought reminiscent of a séance. Perhaps I owed the notion to the chant I heard somewhere ahead: “Appear… appear… appear…” The voices fell silent, and then a soloist began to sing: “Sprites of earth and air…” I wasn’t expecting much of an answer when I said “What am I hearing?”

“It’s The Sorcerer,” Bella said. “Gilbert and Sullivan’s firstborn.”

“Sounds like somebody’s rehearsing,” Roy said. “Do you like old music, Bell?”

“Older than that.”

“Put some on for her, dad.”

I switched on the radio, which was already tuned to the BBC’s classical station, and notes streamed out of the speakers. Within seconds Bella said “That’s when he was starting to become himself.”

“Who, Bell?” Roy said with admiration.

“George Frideric.” As if she thought she should sound more teenage Bella added “Handel doing old Julius Caesar.”

The overture was ending. The opera accompanied us onto the motorway and through Stockport towards the Peaks. The road narrowed through a succession of small towns before rising towards a sky so blue that it suggested its depth was infinite. On both sides of the road slopes blazed variously green along with purple shades of heather or shone grey with bare limestone. As we reached the heights the spiky drystone walls gave out, leaving the road bordered just by ditches. We’d started to descend when a pine forest closed around us, shoring up the intense burden of the sky. Bella looked engrossed in the music – her wide eyes might have been full of reminiscence – but she turned to look at a signpost for a town called Moonwell. “What’s that about, Bell?” Roy said.

As the gloomy side road through the trees fell behind she said “There’s something down there.”

“Do you want to go and look?”

“It’s not for us.”