Ostentatiously, like it was the jackpot in a game show, Grandpa went to his clothes wardrobe and slid the envelope under his stack of checked shirts, all washed, ironed, folded and delivered by Grandma in the days before her accident. Since then, at a loss over who to order to do his laundry, Grandpa had reverted to wearing the same Wallabies fleece day after day, although, Ben noticed, it was beginning to accumulate an archaeology of food stains.

‘Wouldn’t he like to know?’ Tony growled.

‘Okay, have your fun,’ Gordon said. ‘You ready to go, Dad?’

‘Enjoyed your visit with Leonie?’ Tony Eastaugh asked with a nasty grin.

‘She couldn’t make it,’ Gordon said.

‘She’s got him by the short and curlies,’ Tony rumbled to Grandpa.

‘Beware of foreigners bearing gifts,’ Grandpa said with a vindicated air, even though he had never discouraged Gordon from accepting Leonie’s share in The Lodge, and in fact had told him to grab it with both hands.

Ben was looking from one old man to the other, still unable to comprehend why these two were sitting together as if they shared a beer every other day.

Tony raised his glass— you can’t take this from me—and chuckled, pushing his spectacles up over his eyes to show he was done with anyone further away than the length of his arm.

Ben stepped forward. ‘Come on, Grandpa, let me get you to the car.’

‘Nice boy,’ Tony gurgled behind Ben’s back.

In the lift, Ben remembered he had meant to give his dad a hug. But he couldn’t do it in front of Grandpa.

Ben had never seen an old person so keen to get into a hospital. His grandfather, he had to conclude, was a strange individual who became stranger with every passing day.

The first night Grandma had been in the hospital, they couldn’t get Grandpa to leave the ward. Due to the pharmacopoeia that she subsisted on, from methotrexate for her rheumatoid arthritis to cortisone for her chronic pain to temazepam for her insomnia, the surgeon had decided that Grandma needed a full flushing-out before he could operate. So Grandma lay in the emergency department suffering not only the pain in her broken hip but full-blown withdrawals. And, to make matters worse, Grandpa stayed by her bedside all night telling stories about ‘all my fellow inmates at the nursing home who are sent here to die’.

Even when Grandma had her surgery the next day, Grandpa insisted on waiting for her until she came out of intensive care.

‘I don’t know if this is a good idea,’ said Gordon who, with Ben, had spent the night sleeping in waiting-room chairs. ‘She’ll be pretty groggy from the anaesthetic.’

‘If you’re getting tired,’ Grandpa said, ‘you go home and get some rest, just leave your car here with me.’

‘It’s okay, we’ll stay.’