‘Such nonsense,’ he replies, pouring the fat evenly to dress the sandwiches. He passes me a pan of steaming milk. ‘Do the honours, lad.’

We take our coffee the same way: four spoons of instant from a catering drum of the stuff, three spoons of sugar, mixed with Gold Top warmed on the stove. It may not be the breakfast of champions, but it is the breakfast of insomniacs.

‘Got to keep eating the bacon,’ he muses. ‘Only thing that keeps my mind off those terrible pains in my chest.’ He makes this gag about twice a week, but I manage a chortle all the same.

Gramps takes the plates through to the living room where he’s laid the table with the red-check cloth usually reserved for Sunday roast and Friday night Chinese. Talk radio waffles from the portable stereo on the sideboard. Today they’re taking calls on the topic of depression and anxiety.

‘That old chestnut again,’ Gramps says with a smirk and a glance in the direction of the speaker as he tucks a sheet of kitchen roll into his shirt collar.

It’s always talk radio with Gramps, never music; he’s not really a music man. He owns just two albums – one Elvis Presley and one Michael Bublé, and he only has the latter because he found the CD in the little Vauxhall he bought when he retired. There was a time when there’d be an unspoken pre-breakfast race to the radio: the blues and roots hour on Gold if I beat him, angry people ranting down a phone if I didn’t. These days, I just leave it to him.

‘Last day of school, Ollie,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Can’t believe it. How on earth have twelve years gone by since I dropped you off for your first day? Remember it?’

‘Sure.’ I remember it well. It was not long after I’d come to live with Gramps. Riding up front in his creaky gardener’s pickup truck that smelled of diesel and grass cuttings, my feet only just making it to the edge of the bench seat, feeling like I was a mile up in the air. As my fellow kindergarteners were extracted from boosters in boring hatchbacks, they stared in envy. It was like turning up in a Ferrari. ‘For elevenses,’ I remember him saying, handing me a half-packet of ginger nuts from the top of the dash. Such a generous supply had made me immediately popular come break time.

I smile at Gramps as he scoops a run of brown sauce off his chin. My appetite has appeared from nowhere, and I take a massive bite of sandwich before it has a chance to evaporate.

‘It’s not really the last day,’ I say. ‘Still have to go in for exams.’

‘But everything’s your choice now. It’s all different from here.’ He tips his coffee mug in a cheers gesture.