‘How did you two meet?’ I said.

‘Your grandfather and I?’

‘Yes. I love a romance story.’

Grandma Bette looked at me and sat up straighter. She smoothed her dress over her legs. ‘Well, I was quite old when I met Hessel. Everyone thought my chance had passed. But I didn’t really mind. I had good friends in the town. I liked working for my father. I did the accounts for the business, you see. I’ve always been naturally good with numbers –’

‘I’m good with numbers too!’ I said. ‘Mum’s hopeless.’

‘Oh yes, I know,’ said Bette. ‘She always was. So is Hessel.’

‘So you met Hessel where? At a dance?’

‘No. He walked right in the door at the property business and asked for a job!’ Bette reported this act as though it was the most outrageous thing a young Dutchman could have done in their small town. ‘He joined the business as a salesman,’ Bette said. ‘And he really could sell anything, it was quite amazing. People just loved him. He was very charming. I was thirty-two, he was twenty-three, and, well, we just started going around together.’

‘Was it a scandal?’ I asked. ‘With such an age difference?’

Bette leaned back, obviously enjoying this version of her youth. She seemed proud even as she remembered. ‘We were the talk of the town,’ she said, smiling as though she had just delivered a punchline.

‘And then you moved together out here?’

‘Yes, we started out with the same dream there – together we would get Bromley up and running again. So we put the small house on the block – it was all we could afford at the time – and we started working on Bromley, but it only lasted for a little while because then I had Cathy and Hessel’s passions transitioned from motorbikes and Bromley Cairn to breeding racehorses and . . . well, as I said, Hessel never was good with numbers.’

‘Europa Pearl is beautiful though. I can see how horses would be hard to turn your back on once you’re hooked.’

Bette seemed unmoved. ‘Yes. Well. We lost most of the land. And poor Bromley was left to rot.’ Bette sighed and looked out the window. ‘I would have dearly loved to have lived in her, just once. I have seen some early photographs of her and she looks so magnificent. So beautiful and alive and splendid. But sometimes dreams and life just don’t add up, I suppose.’

‘Oh well,’ I said, unsure how to improve Bette’s sudden plunge in mood. ‘Never say never.’

‘Well,’ said Bette, clasping her hands decidedly in her lap, folding the subject away with a final thought: ‘At least the Bromley paddock and house are still yours. Yours and mine and your mother’s. I’ve kept them safe for us. I’ve done that much at least.’

I was unsure what to say. ‘Thank you, Grandma,’ I said. And then I remembered the photograph. ‘Hey Grandma,’ I fished around in my back pocket with one hand, the other hand still on the wheel, ‘who is that in this photo?’ Bette turned with interest and took the photo I held out to her. ‘Who is that boy?’ I said.