By the time they catch up with Nan she’s in the communal room chatting to two residents who ask her to join them in a game of cards.

‘Will you come back for me a bit later, dear?’ she asks. ‘I just want to have a chat to these nice old folk.’

Claire looks from Chloe to the matron. ‘I think that’s settled it,’ she says.

Chloe wants Claire to hurt, as much as she is hurting now. Her hands twist inside the deep pockets of her coat, her fingernails cutting crescents into her palms.

Nan sits happily with her new friends as Chloe walks over to a huge window that overlooks the grounds. There’s a small wooded copse beside the care home. An area of it has already started to be felled – presumably this is where Park House will be extending, Chloe thinks. Beyond that, she can just make out a lake. It’s a bright day, despite the cold, and the sun twinkles in golden silvers on top of the water. As she turns around, a nurse is bringing a cup of tea to an old man in an armchair beside her.

‘Excuse me, where’s that?’ she asks her.

‘Ferry Meadows,’ the nurse answers. ‘Lovely view, isn’t it? On a clear day you can even see the steam train running along the back of the park.’

While Nan plays cards Claire and Chloe unpack her things, hanging her clothes in the small wardrobe and putting photographs on her new bedside table.

When they’ve finished, they call Nan in to have a look. She wanders into her room with one of her new friends and picks up a photograph of Granddad taken just a few months before he died.

‘My Hughie,’ she says, holding up the picture frame. ‘You’ll meet him, of course, when he’s back from the war. Doesn’t he look handsome?’

Her blue eyes turn paler when she talks about him, as if they become a window back to her youth. What good does it do to pull her back into a world where they’re separated by death? Right now he’s as real to her as Chloe is standing in her doorway. Nan looks up and sees her.

‘Oh, hello, young lady,’ she says. ‘Are you here to take the drinks orders? I like a drop of Drambuie in the afternoon when I’m on holiday.’

Claire tries to comfort Chloe with clichés on the drive home. Chloe answers her by gazing out of the passenger window.

‘She’s in the best place, Chloe,’ Claire tells her.

Chloe wonders why she has to make it sound like Nan is dead already.