This is all rather complicated, so I let it pass.

‘So,’ she says. ‘What is the point?’

‘Humans love the seaside because… the air is fresh, and salty – and the sea goes on forever, and the waves make this never-ending sound… and… it’s tied up with memories of childhood, too, because children all love the seaside.’

‘Why?’

How do you explain a child’s love of – well, anything – to someone who has never been a child? This is a new difficulty in our world.

‘Let’s wait till we get there, and then perhaps it will be clearer.’

Pamela skips up – and I mean it, she actually does skip – and claps her hands.

‘Do you know how long it is since I was at the seaside?’

‘No, dear. How long?’

‘No, really – do you know? Because I can remember going with the grandchildren, but I can’t work out how long I was demented.’

‘Does it matter?’

‘No, I suppose not. Look, the charabanc is here!’

She skips off to look.

Winifred looks at me and raises an eyebrow.

‘Charabanc? Why does she use this archaic term?’

‘It’s sort of jocular affectation. Once, before everyone had cars, in the early days of public transport, any trip like this involved a charabanc. Now, because we are old, and in reference to that lost era, unknown to me except in faded postcards, we pretend to belong to it – oh, never mind. It’s a kind of joke.’

‘Some aspects of human conversation are completely impenetrable,’ she says.

I want to say, no, really? But she won’t get the tone. Probably. I can never tell with her.

We all rush out to the coach. The charabanc. There is no orderly queue, just a crowd of overexcited 80-somethings, 90-somethings, and of course one 100-something, all pushing and shoving onto the bus.

The Helpers stand back, perhaps wondering what they have let themselves in for.

As soon as we’re off, the singing starts. ‘Ten Green Bottles’, of course. And an old chap at the back does a solo of ‘Lily of Laguna’. I turn and catch Winifred’s eye, and give her a wink. We’ve talked about singing, and she has found a theory that it comes before language in human evolution. From the look on her face, the theory doesn’t explain why a coach full of happy people will almost always burst into song.

It takes an hour to get there. As we reach the top of the last hill, we get our first view of the sea. I want to cry. I am crying. I never thought I’d see this again.