Ian took their coats. Penelope made noises, once again, about whether her visitors required what she called a cloakroom. Hazel followed her directions – along the corridor, second door on the left – to a downstairs toilet. Its walls were lined with old school photographs: boys in sporting teams, boys in debating society, boys in boat races wearing straw hats. It seemed a funny place to showcase your mementos. But it was a relief to have a moment. She pulled her comb out of her small, cross-shoulder bag. If you made yourself tidy you tended to feel more on top of things.

‘Do tell us how your family came to be all the way in Australia? Not convicts I hope, ha-ha?’ said Ian at the tea table. It was a mirthless sort of a laugh.

‘No, the convicts got shipped there long before us lot arrived. There’s actually a kind of prestige to being descended from them, or there was, when I was growing up. Because they were among the very first immigrants.’

‘Oh yes, like the Daughters of the Mayflower, sort of thing,’ said Ian.

‘Although it’s got a lot more complicated, now that we’ve got a better understanding of the heritage of the Colonial settlers. Most people aren’t as proud of it as they used to be. Because of the terrible British treatment of the First Peoples,’ said Dawn.

‘Yes, and the incomers brought sickness with them, which led to the epidemics that decimated them. The seizure of their lands and water rights. There’s been a big shift in the way children are taught about our national history, even since I first went into education in the 80s. And not before time,’ said Hazel.

Ian looked blank. Penelope came in with a tray.

‘Well, we came here in ’71,’ said Ian, as if their arrival at The Grange was a historical equivalent. ‘Just weekends, to begin with, when I was still in the City.’

‘Only the other day, by your standards!’ said Penelope.

‘My ancestor, she was William Gale’s wife,’ Hazel told them. ‘His first wife. She went overseas to start a new life, after the divorce. She wouldn’t have been able to live in polite society if she’d stayed in England. What was called polite society, in any case,’ she added.

‘Ah,’ said Ian.

‘Sandwich?’ asked Penelope.

Penelope had made tiny triangles of smoked salmon sandwiches, which she served before slices of coffee and walnut cake, bought from the local Co-op. They drank their tea from shallow china cups festooned with roses and edged with gilt. The Eyres made no further enquiries about the Gale family. They asked where else the women intended to visit and Dawn told them.

‘Bath’s absolutely ruined,’ Ian told them. ‘The one-way system is impossible. Whole place seething with trippers.’

Penelope shot him a look. After all, their visitors were tourists themselves. She stood up.