The photographs took up an entire wall, thirty or more in various sizes arranged in five rows, one per generation. The shape they made was Christmas tree-like, branching down from a single picture at the top into three progressively broader rows, and ending – the trunk – in three pictures of the present generation. Josh.

‘Dad did it years ago,’ Kath said, ‘when I was seven or eight. It was a big project, all the copying, framing. We were warned about the genealogy, I suppose.’

The picture at the top was a formal photograph of two men standing shoulder to shoulder, stiff in three-piece suits and sharp white collars, watch-chains, clipped moustaches. They were probably about thirty but the formality made them ageless. George & William Legge, founders of Legge Bros Springs, Bishop St, Birmingham, said the handwritten caption. 1889.

In the next row down they appeared again but visibly older, late fifties maybe, flanked by two younger men – a son apiece, Robin guessed. This time they were outside, in front of a brick building with wide wooden doors.

On their own, maybe ten years later, the sons stood proudly either side of a long-bodied, open-topped car. Kath pointed at the man on the left.

‘Edward. He was killed in the First World War. At Passchendaele. He hadn’t had children so the business came straight down our side of the family. George was my great-grandpa.’ She tapped the glass over another picture, a man standing with a posse of ten or twelve cross-armed men in shirtsleeves: You and whose army?

‘In the second war, the factory was making parts so our grandpa had a reserved occupation. He was in the ARP, so he was up on rooftops at night, as well, watching for bombers. This is him in the Sixties, with Dad. And look at Dad in this one.’ She pointed at Gerry in a brown suit and cream shirt with long collars. ‘Fashion by The Sweeney.’

Robin bent her head to look at the last row. In the middle of the three pictures, Josh stood with his dad in the same spot by the wooden doors where his great-grandfather had been pictured with the car eighty-odd years before.

‘That was his first day,’ said Kath.

He’d been twenty-two, Robin knew; he’d started the summer he’d graduated from Aston, she’d just finished her first year at UCL. He looked so young now but at the time, it had seemed incredibly mature, working, earning a salary, training to take over a business one day. Like his dad and his dad before him, he’d started on the shop floor then moved through each of the various departments, the tool shop, packing, sales, learning it all from the bottom up. In the picture he was smiling broadly, a hand over his eyes against the sun, shirt and jeans. ‘He was so excited,’ she said. ‘I remember.’