‘I used to take the kids for a milkshake after school,’ Rex said. ‘Your dad Con made the most delicious shakes, he used real vanilla pods. We’d never seen anything like it.’ He added that Con was one of the most generous people he’d ever met, often letting customers eat for free if they couldn’t afford their bill.

Manolis smiled. ‘I don’t seem to remember your children. How many, boys or girls?’

‘One of each,’ Rex said. ‘They were a few years older than you. I remember you clearing tables, restocking napkins, sweeping up, emptying bins.’

‘We hoped our kids might one day run this place,’ Vera said.

‘Did they leave town too?’ asked Manolis.

The dinner party went unexpectedly quiet. Sparrow played with his cutlery. Vera wiped her mouth with a paper serviette. Rex finally cleared his throat and said, ‘Karen died when she was sixteen. Blood clot in the brain. And Patrick had a heart attack.’

Manolis stopped chewing. ‘I’m so sorry. I had no idea.’

Vera wiped her eyes, swatted.

‘Not your fault, son,’ Rex said, quaffing his ale. ‘God works in mysterious ways. I’ll always have the memory of vanilla shakes. Seeing you today transported me back to better times.’

Manolis’s lips curled into a soft smile as the image blossomed in his mind. The tall soda glasses with long straws, the shiny silver mixing cups with condensation on the outside, cold from the fresh full-cream milk of fat country cows.

Sparrow swallowed his mouthful, placed his glass on the table. ‘Patrick and Molly got married,’ he said.

Manolis turned to his hosts, saw their eyes turn down. They seemed almost embarrassed. Misfortune had stalked them: their kids, and now their daughter-in-law.

‘They were high school sweethearts,’ Vera said slowly.

‘We loved her like a daughter,’ Rex conceded. ‘Especially since her own parents had passed.’

Manolis extended further sympathies. He couldn’t remember a boy named Patrick Boyd at all.

Vera tossed her empty tin plate on the table, making it rattle. A slammed fork followed. ‘What happened to our kids was nothing compared to poor Molly. The mere thought makes me sick. Imagine if her parents were still alive. The grief.’

Vera crossed herself; Rex followed suit. ‘Perhaps it’s better that Graham and Edith are no longer with us,’ he said.

‘Their daughter’s joined them in heaven,’ Vera said, voice bright. ‘She’s with God now, in the comfort of the Lord.’ Her lilting tone contrasted with the hard lines on her face.

‘What’s happened to Cobb recently would make Graham turn in his grave,’ Rex added. ‘He served ten years as an alderman, you know.’

‘On the town council alongside Pa,’ Vera added proudly.

‘You were a councillor?’ Manolis asked. ‘Like, a politician?’

Rex laughed. ‘Local government is hardly big-time politics. I mean, I could do it in my spare time. But yes, I guess you could’ve called me that.’