As Mum talks to Grandad about his garden, Nanna busies herself with putting more freshly boiled water in the teapot and re-filling the plate of flapjacks from the seemingly bottomless tin. I’ve forgotten just how orderly this house is, how well everything seems to sit with everything else. There’s the porcelain salt and pepper pots in the middle of the table, shaped like a boy and girl. Nanna always places them so they look as if they’re holding hands. On the top shelf of the dresser, in front of the posh plates that never get used, stand the same row of my school pictures, from Year One right up until the one from last spring. And the people in the room as well; they fold into kitchen chairs like it’s the most natural place to be in the world.

I watch Mum as she talks with Grandad. Mostly she’s listening. He tells her about the right time to ‘put the garden to bed’, what needs covering for the winter and what needs leaving, when to get your early potatoes in. I think of Dana’s garden; how it doesn’t seem to need much looking after. From how she talks about it, everything just seems to happen on its own.

Mum is always sad, but even though she’s smiling at her father, nodding along and asking questions, she seems sadder here than she does at home. Nanna comes and puts a hand on her shoulder and asks whether Grandad could do aubergines again next year, or if she’ll have to make do with courgettes, courgettes, courgettes again as normal.

Maybe that’s why Mum looks so sad. For her, there is no ‘as normal’ anymore. She grew up in this house, surrounded by its warmth, its everything fitting with everything else: the people, the furniture, everything so solid, secure, immovable. She probably thought this would be how she and Dad would end up. And then, for her, for both of us, it’s like someone took that future and shook it so hard that all the pieces have flown apart. All those pieces that used to fit are now so far away from each other that it’s impossible to remember what fitted with what.

And there are some very big pieces missing altogether.

*

Dinner that night tastes like old times, and afterwards, as hasn’t happened for years, Nanna gets the photo albums out.

‘I don’t suppose anyone has these anymore, do they?’ she ponders, as she always does, lifting the heavy, leather-bound book from its almost sacred place on the bookshelf. ‘With all of the internets and Face-whatsit-webs, no one prints photos anymore, do they?’

‘No, Nanna,’ I say, smiling.

‘Now shuffle up, and let Nanna embarrass you with old-fashioned technology.’