‘All right, I get the message,’ Grandpa said. ‘I’ll go down myself.’ Grandpa set out, not with any great speed, but the transition was too swift. Blood fled from his head, or his legs. His bones dissolved inside his flesh. The way he fell made Ben freeze. There was a crack as his shoulder hit the balustrade. While Ben was rooted to the spot, Kelly, who was coming up the stairs from the house, ran forward to stop Ron tumbling down the flight. As he fell, the old man violently fended her away. Norma cried out. Hand to her mouth, she hobbled to where Ron was sitting. And this was the impossible thing: he had somehow fallen in such a way that his back had slid down the balustrade and his bottom had landed squarely on the decking, leaving him in an upright seated position, his legs and arms floppily at rest, like a children’s doll propped against a wall.

‘Grandpa!’ Ben, coming out of a dream, crouched down and took hold of Ron’s right hand.

The old man, his face like that of a corpse, cold and urinous, eyes rolling back, pulled his hand free.

Norma whimpered. ‘I knew he would push himself too hard! Should we get an ambulance?’

As his mum looked for signs of injury, Ben wondered if this was the beginning of the end that he had heard so much about. But a jolt passed through the old man at the sound of the word ‘ambulance’. He flailed. His eyes were on his grandson.

‘Grandpa?’

Ron’s lips peeled away from his ivory teeth. He looked so deathly that Ben had to close his eyes.

‘I fall like a cat,’ Ron said, his voice surprisingly robust. ‘I’ve told you, it’s one of my many talents.’

‘Are you hurt?’ Ben said.

‘How many hours do you have to drive on your L-plates?’

‘Wait, what?’

‘How many—’

‘One hundred and twenty.’

‘And how many have you done?’

‘Seventy-six and fifteen minutes. I have forty-three hours, forty-five minutes to go.’

‘Your maths is improving.’

‘I know.’

‘I wonder how far you’d have to go to get it all done in one trip.’

‘You stupid man,’ Ben’s grandmother was sniffing. ‘You stupid, stupid, stupid man!’ To Ben she said, ‘Please don’t ever live in the past, darling, that’s what makes you old ahead of your time.’

But Ron was nodding at Ben with an inner smile, as if after a long struggle he had arrived at a satisfactory solution.

When Gordon came up from his surf, he showered and dressed in a fresh set of clothes for the first time in he didn’t know how long. He buckled a belt and put on real shoes with laces. He combed his hair. Kelly might be pleased that he was showing signs of life.