"You sound tired."
"Aren't we all?"
"D'you know, Bee, I must confess I have the greatest difficulty in connecting the two."
"The two? Simon and Patrick?"
"No. Patrick and Brat."
There was a moment's silence, filled with the soft sound of the rain and the strokes of Eleanor's brush.
"You mean you-don't think he is Patrick?"
Eleanor stopped brushing and looked up, her eyes wide with surprise. "Of course he's Patrick," she said, astonished. "Who else would he be?" She put down the brush and began to tie up her hair in a blue ribbon. "It's just that I have no feeling of ever having met him before. Odd, isn't it? When we spent nearly twelve years of our lives together. I like him; don't you?"
"Yes," Bee said. "I like him." She, too, had no feeling of ever having met him before, and she too did not see "who else he could be."
"Did Patrick not smile very often?"