Having lived for so long with Auntie Jane, I had always been comfortable in the company of the elderly and found the old lady’s little anecdotes fascinating. I thought how her descriptions of times gone by might have made a wonderful biography. It crossed my mind that this could be a future project. Having been raised in the countryside, she described a world very different from the one in which I’d grown up.

‘There wasn’t any work,’ she explained. ‘Frank landed a job in the quarry nearby, so we moved here; autumn 1955. I’d just turned twenty-one. Bet you can’t imagine me ever being that age!’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Here, let me show you something.’

She lifted the tea tray onto the floor, then went to another cupboard in the sideboard and produced an old, leather-bound photograph album, opening it carefully on the table. She put on her glasses and leaned forward, squinting a little at the picture on the opening page.

‘That’s me. I’d be about thirty.’

The photograph had been taken in the garden on a summer’s day. She was standing by the fence, a quizzical smile on her face, her huge brown eyes staring intently, perhaps teasingly, at the camera. The image bore no resemblance to the stooped, gossamer-haired creature she had become. Mrs Barley had been voluptuous and striking; thick, dark locks tumbled in waves past her shoulders.

‘Oh my gosh, you were beautiful, Mrs Barley!’

She smiled sadly. ‘It doesn’t seem so long ago, you know. Frightening, how quickly the years have flown.’

Continuing to turn the pages, she gave a sudden gasp as though seeing something for the first time. ‘Here’s Frank.’

I looked at the picture, then examined it more closely, my heart quickening. Mr Barley stood leaning on a spade, shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows, his dark hair combed back. He had indeed been handsome in his youth; tall, wiry, with piercing dark eyes. But the moment I saw the picture I knew who he was. Because I had seen him before – and not just in a photograph. He was, without a shadow of a doubt, the man I had seen in Mrs Barley’s garden.

I looked up at her open-mouthed. Should I say something? I felt a sudden unpleasant chill surround me and gooseflesh prickled my arms. But Mrs Barley appeared oblivious to my discomfort. She was lost in the past, a faraway look in her eyes. She stroked the picture lovingly with her forefinger.