He gave an exasperated glance at the television. Then he sighed and slewed round in the chair to look me in the eye. ‘Actually, I hung out a bit at dinnertime with Wes and Jason and people.’

‘Really?’ A pleased, bright smile creased my face.

‘Yeah. I was telling them about cormorants.’

‘Really?’ The smile turned uncertain.

Jack sighed. ‘Oh, Mum.’ He sounded, all of a sudden, like Lola. He slid out of the armchair and picked up the precious pair of binoculars that Tony had given him for Christmas. He went to stand by the window that looked out on to the back garden and trained the binoculars on the roofs of the houses opposite. I should call Tony, I thought, and talk to him about the truancy episode. I doubted that Jack himself was giving anything away.

I cleared up the mugs and plates.

‘I was up at Grandad’s today. Sorting out his things.’

Jack continued his scrutiny of the pigeon population.

‘I brought some bits and pieces back with me, I don’t know whether you and Lola want to keep anything? They’re in a box in the car. You could bring it in for me.’

He leaned on the table while I unpacked the box. My hands shook a little. He clicked the lighter once or twice but couldn’t make it ignite, and glanced without much interest at the books of notes. I shook the photographs out of the envelope and spread them out to show him the picture of his grandmother and me in my smocked frock. The aunties’ forgotten smiles beamed out of the sheaf at us.

‘Some of Ted’s girlfriends,’ I said unnecessarily.

Jack picked up the picture of the woman sitting on a stone wall and studied it for a minute. ‘She was at the funeral,’ he said.

I remembered the woman in the dusty fur. I knew now why the picture had stirred a recollection. ‘I thought I recognised something in the picture. What was her name?’

‘Audrey,’ Jack said.

That’s right. ‘You’ll be his daughter,’ she had said. ‘I’m Audrey.’

Now Jack was flipping through the little brown address book. ‘Here,’ he said.

Sure enough, there was the name, no surname, almost the first entry. There was no address either. Ted must have known her well.

Jack said, ‘Do you know what? She must live really near to us. Look.’ The first digits of the telephone number were the same as ours.

‘So she does. Well, did, I should think. She probably moved long ago.’

‘You should call her and ask if she wants any of this.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed in surprise. ‘Yes, I could do that.’

After Jack had gone up to his bedroom I rang Tony.

Suzy answered the phone. In the background I could hear a lot of children’s noise. Their twins were nearly four.

‘Hiiiiiiii, Sadie,’ Suzy trilled. ‘How are you?’