After the curry had bubbled too long on the stovetop, Bette set about stirring the pot as vigorously as she could so that the overcooked chicken had absolutely no chance of retaining any recognisable shape.

‘Don’t hurt your poor arm, Grandma,’ I said, but she kept pounding away at the goo until it was mush. I tried not to grimace at the slop the meal had become.

‘Do you still play the piano, Grandma?’ I said.

‘Oh. No. I don’t play anymore.’

‘Oh, I just wondered because I saw there was a piano in the coffee room. Those cookies you made were out of this world, by the way,’ I said.

‘Oh! I’m glad you liked them,’ Bette said, out of breath with stirring vigour.

‘I loved them. You’ll have to teach me how to make them.’

‘I could do that.’

‘Baking is clearly your thing,’ I said, and then to make up for what might have been perceived as a backhander I said, ‘Could you maybe play something on that piano for me sometime?’

‘Oh. No I don’t think so, dear.’

‘But you could probably remember something, right? I’d love to be able to play the piano.’

‘I don’t like to go in that room when we’re not having coffee. I like to keep it nice.’

‘But it wouldn’t be messy to just play a little something?’ I tried, turning on some granddaughter sweetness. ‘Please, Grandma, for me?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Grandma, but she was shut down like the lid of the piano itself, a wooden tight-lippedness over the keys of her teeth.

I watched Bette tip in black-and-gold thickened cream. It would have killed Nassim to see what I was seeing. I smiled to myself at the thought, and then I imagined what a child of mine and Nassim’s might cook – some weird Dutch-German-English-Lebanese fusion, no doubt. I wondered which superpower was greater, the van Leeuwen cooking incompetence, or the El-Amin culinary skill and talent. But I stopped myself short. I couldn’t think like that. I shouldn’t think like that.

As Bette began dishing out the watery and insipid-looking pale yellow curry onto the plates of over-boiled rice, Hessel came in the back door scuffing his boots. Earlier in the day, through the window at Bromley Cairn, I had watched Hessel drive in slowly, pulling the horse float behind, and then carefully, so carefully, walk Europa Pearl down the ramp and back into the stable. We hadn’t seen anything of him since.

‘How’s Polly?’ Bette asked him now, and Hessel shook his head at her sadly. It wasn’t until we were sitting that he finally spoke again. ‘Vet should never have sent us home. It’s actually quite a turn she’s taken,’ he said.

I thought he was going to continue, but instead he coughed and scooped in the first mouthful of his dinner, and began to chew with an old-man click in his jaw. Bette hummed as she ate, the sound going in and out with the rhythm of her chewing and the breath going up and down at the back of her throat.