Janet set us about the steps of making pastry and peeling potatoes. The main steps were actually written on a handout, but she still stood in front of the class explaining why you cook potatoes from cold water instead of pouring boiling water into the pot. The kiss-asses were making notes. Ruby and I inspected the paper instructions.

“You want to peel and I’ll make this into bread crumbs somehow?” I said, surveying the pastry ingredients with suspicion.

“OK, but what about him?” Ruby nodded in the direction of the old man, who was holding a potato peeler in one hand and the sheet of paper right up to his nose in the other.

Ruby looked at me with puppy-dog eyes and I sighed and nodded.

Half an hour later Ruby and I were in stitches.

Morris, our new old-man friend, was mostly lovely but seemed deeply suspicious of anyone as peppy as Janet. When she cheered because the Kiss-Asses made an edible sauce, he said, in what he thought was a conspiratorial whisper but was actually a roar over the clattering din of the kitchen, “I think she’s on one of those legal highs you hear about on the news.”

I half expected her to respond that she was high on life, but she politely pretended that she hadn’t heard. You can get away with a lot when you’re old.

“How come you girls are here on your summer holidays helping an old man learn how to cook?” Morris asked as we waited for our pie to cool enough to take a slice. It looked golden and flaky and I had perfected a scalloped edge that made the teacher almost wet herself with glee. I had high hopes. Perhaps Dad’s cooking curse had not been handed down to me.

“Saoirse wanted to learn a life skill and I want to help out at home,” Ruby answered.

“Aren’t you a good girl. None of my kids ever cooked a day in their life when they were at home. Spoiled rotten. Well, that was my Anna’s fault. She doted too much.”

Ruby and I exchanged looks. I’d already assumed Morris was recently bereaved given he was here learning to cook by himself, but I hadn’t wanted to bring it up.

“What was she like?” I asked gently.

“Anna? She was a grumpy old sod. But she made me laugh. Always f’ing and blinding about one thing or another. It was just her way. But she was a devoted mother.”

“How did you two meet?” Ruby asked, poking the pie crust to see if it was still too hot.

“We met at a party. I think it was 1962. A friend of mine. I can’t remember his name now. I was nineteen, she was seventeen. She was the prettiest girl there. I was no slouch myself, you know.”