Of course I’m disappointed, but it’s not like the money has been taken away from us, it’s been invested for the future, which is sort of old-fashioned and sweet of them. Rather like the photos, meaning they’re thinking of a time when they can be with us in another way. I wish Will would understand this. He can’t, and maybe I’m expecting too much from a little kid. Because he talks big, I forget he’s only eleven. He is pretty upset, I can tell. He says this holiday is a “dunger”, a word he picked up from Grandpa, and that he’s never coming here again. But I noticed that when Grandpa mentioned the car, he changed his tune. Bet you anything he wants to drive.

It’s photos again this morning, sorting them one by one. This picture is black and white: a man in tight swim-trunks with bulgy bits, on a diving board.

“Does he have glasses?” she asks.

“No. He’s going to dive, Grandma! He’s pretty cool, and he’s got something around his neck.”

“Shark tooth?”

“I don’t know. Could be.”

She takes the photo from me and holds it against her glasses. “Stone the crows, girl, that’s your grandfather. Put down the date – 1956.”

Grandpa? That is so embarrassing! I recognise some of the other pictures. The little kid sitting on the beach with a dog is my dad, I can tell by his hair – Dad’s hair I mean – and the big boy in school uniform is already the serious adult who wants to solve all our problems but usually makes them worse. I find pictures of Dad playing cricket, Dad on skis, Dad and his parents by a campfire, and one of Dad on a beach with a weird surfboard. It’s just a wooden plank, round one end and curved in at the other.

“It’s all we had in those days,” Grandma says.

Most of the photos are of people that neither Grandma nor I recognise, which is just as well because we throw heaps out and soon the box is nearly empty, the job almost finished.

We stop, and I help her make a cold lunch. Not too difficult: lettuce salad, rice salad, hard-boiled eggs and watercress sandwiches. When I’ve set it out on the table, she says, “We’re nearly out of bread. Do you want to make some new loaves?”

I think about it. “Yes, I would.”

“Nothing much to it,” she says. “If you do it now, it’ll be risen after lunch when we light the fire.”

It turns out that, like scone-making, there’s nothing much to bread. What she calls a smidgen of salt goes into the flour. The yeast and sugar are stirred into warm water out of the tap, and for the third time she tells me I have her hands. Well, I have to say this, short fingernails are better than long ones when kneading bread, and I do like the touch of it. She tells me to put oil instead of flour on the bench to prevent it from sticking. Over and over it goes in a smooth white lump.

“Knead it until it feels like your thigh,” she says.

Sounds odd, but that’s the texture, although if my legs were as pale as this I wouldn’t get into a bikini. I grease the bread pans and put two balls of dough in each.

She makes a clicking sound of approval. “Two big loaves. One for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow, and the other to take out fishing.”

“Fishing?”

“It’s not just the leg of lamb they’re after.” She jerks her head towards the road. “They’re bringing back Hoffmeyer’s boat. Your Grandpa’s all set on us doing a day’s fishing tomorrow.”

I don’t say anything. I can’t go fishing tomorrow, I really, truly can’t. At lunchtime the mailman will be bringing back my phone.