‘The what?’ Bette bent her head to look out the window as if some new boulder-hill thingies might have landed in the night. ‘Oh them. They’re cairns,’ she said. ‘Now there’s a good old Scottish word for you, straight from my ancestral home.’

‘Anna.’ Hessel put down his utensils and pronounced my name like it was a sentence in and of itself. ‘Anna, I am very pleased and proud to meet you, and very happy to extend my hospitality. But I must confess myself to be somewhat confused by your sudden and late-night arrival.’

‘Oh, um, well . . .’ I tried not to cough out my tea. It had been easy with Grandma – the author of the letter – but the letter had said not to tell that she had written it and I wasn’t sure who she meant not to tell, so I froze and panicked, but then Bette herself said, ‘It was me.’ And she smiled proudly as Hessel turned to her. ‘I wrote to Anna and invited her to come. Did I forget to tell you?’

There was a strange moment then. Bette’s busyness and Hessel’s grandiosity evaporated. Their eyes held each other. I heard a blackbird chatter outside. And then Hessel picked up his knife and fork again. ‘Woman, you forget everything now. I’m forever cleaning up your forgetting messes.’ When Hessel spoke, his Dutch accent gave his words a pointed edge and I didn’t quite know how to take him, but Bette blithely went back to cooking my egg and Hessel turned cheerfully to me again and said, ‘Do you want to know the best thing about being old and forgetful, Anna?’

Suddenly I felt like I was trespassing. What was I doing here? Hessel was waiting for an answer. I smiled apologetically and shrugged.

‘You can hide your own Easter eggs!’ he exclaimed.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, straight away, to him and to Bette, accidentally cutting across his punchline. ‘I know I should have double-checked if I could come and stay, but I didn’t have your number. But it’s actually all okay, because I should probably go back to the city later today, and I have somewhere to stay there –’ I was surprised to find myself suddenly out of breath with the lie. It sounded as though I was about to cry, but it was just that all the oxygen seemed to have been sucked out of me for a moment. Pregnancy was weird, so weird.

Hessel frowned at my seeming distress. ‘Poor girl,’ he said. ‘Not your fault. But of course you are to stay here. We have everything the city has. I didn’t mean to chase you away with my gruff manner. Stay as long as you like.’ I was trying to get together a polite sentence formulation, some unassailable but civil way to explain that I really was about to pack up my things and leave, when Hessel turned again to Bette.

‘So what did you say in this letter? Just “Hello hello” and “Come and stay”?’