Grandma wants to show me some chords on the red guitar but I tell her my fingers are too sore, so we move on to the box of photographs. This will be a horrendous task, days probably, because I have to describe each picture to her, and then write what she tells me on the back. Some she doesn’t recognise, and these, the easy ones, get dropped into a bag to be burned. Others have stories to them about people and places I don’t know, although every now and then there’s a photo of Dad as a baby with Grandpa and Grandma looking so young I hardly recognise them. Grandpa has a long droopy moustache and round-rimmed glasses. Grandma’s frizzy hair sticks out sideways like a gorse bush and she has one of those peasant blouses that fall off the shoulders, not quite to cleavage level. She looks awesomely quaint. I hold a photo in front of her eyes and she says, “Is that my Indian wrap-around skirt?”

“Seems like it.”

“Damn me if it wasn’t just the niftiest thing. Indian cotton skirts and patchwork dresses. Leather sandals. It was all about being children of the earth.”

“Dad says you made sandals from seaweed.”

“Kelp. But it was a very brief fashion. They wore out in one morning.” She laughs. “That photo was taken at a gypsy fair when Alistair was seven months old. Write it on the back.”

There’s a kind of slow, sick feeling bothering me, but it’s a while before I realise what’s causing it. Then it hits me with a thud. In sorting these photos she’s preparing for the time when she’s gone. She knows she’s going to die. I’m now wondering if this entire holiday is a kind of goodbye to happy times in the past. The sadness of it blurs my eyes so I make a mistake and start putting good photos in the rubbish bag. She leans forward and yells, “You nincompoop! What are you doing?” and I feel embarrassed.

We have to stop to make lunch, which is homemade bread and mussel fritters. Neither Will nor I eats mussels, usually, but these have been ground up so they don’t look like dead shellfish, and she’s put in chilli and tomato and stuff, so they don’t taste like it, either. We eat them with salad and they’re actually amazingly good, and then, when I’m pouring everyone more lemonade, a car stops. The mailman! I run to the window. It starts up again, not a car but a red van, passing between the trees. Oh yeah, the man has picked up my phone!

I slap Will on the back. “He’ll bring it back tomorrow!”

“No he won’t,” says Will. “Wednesday. It’s twice a week, remember?”

No, I don’t remember, but brother poo-face obviously does. Well, Wednesday then. I come back to the table and continue filling the glasses. The kitchen is hot again and even the lemonade is warm.

Grandpa says, “You kids coming for a swim this afternoon?”

I look at Grandma. “You’re absolutely sure there are no sharks?” I ask.

“Nobody said there were sharks,” Grandma says.

“You did!” I tell her. “We talked about it and you told me not to believe everything I heard!”

“I never said there were sharks!” She glares at Grandpa. “He probably told you. Silly old fool, he’ll say anything for a laugh.”

“Be blowed if I did!” he said.

“Be blowed if you didn’t,” she replied.

He leaned over the table towards her. “Woman, you got a tongue in you so long, the back doesn’t know what the front is up to.”

I look at Will who shuts his mouth tight, glaring at me to remind me that I’ve started one of their useless arguments.

“You mean it’s your ears,” she huffs. “Half the time you don’t hear what you’re saying.”

I have to interrupt. “Grandma, you told me there were sharks. Then when we went to get mussels, you told me not to believe it.”

She turns to me, her eyes bright. “Never! I never said there were sharks. What I said was ‘look out for sharks’, which is entirely different.”

At that, she and Grandpa laugh like mad, as though this is the comedy show of the year, and it’s me they’re laughing at. I am extremely disgusted with their behaviour. It’s all a big act, a two-clown circus. It occurs to me that all their quarrels may be nothing more than performances for their own amusement. Well, I am not amused. But seeing as it’s so hot, and considering there are no sharks, I will go for a swim after all.