When the silence, the look, had gone on for too long, he said, ‘You might find the answer to the vexed question of how to boil a potato in one of my mother’s cook books. They’re over there, behind the television.’ He didn’t bother to check that they were still there. Nothing had been changed in this room in his lifetime. ‘And, in case you’re interested, I’m partial to a touch of garlic in my mash.’

‘Garlic?’ She pushed the glasses, already sliding down her nose again, back into place. ‘Good choice,’ she said. ‘Very good for the heart, garlic.’

‘Are you suggesting that mine needs help?’

‘Actually, I was thinking about your father. Isn’t heart disease supposed to be hereditary? Although, now you come to mention it, maybe yours could do with some work in other departments.’

‘What makes you think that?’ He wasn’t arguing with her conclusion, merely interested in her reasoning.

‘Well, let me see. Could it be because you’re the one with your daughter up to her elbows in axle-grease while you stand back telling her what to do?’

The smile that went with this, reassurance that she was teasing, was no mere token but shone out of her, lighting up her face in a way that could make a man forget that she was too thin. Forget the hair. Forget anything…

‘I’m not telling her anything. She wasn’t exaggerating when she said she knew what she was doing.’

Her smile became a look of sympathy. ‘That must be a worry.’

‘My father never forgave me for not wanting to follow him into the business. Given a second chance with Xandra, it’s clear that he hasn’t made the same mistakes with her that he did with me.’

Or maybe, being a girl, she’d had to beg to be allowed to ‘play’ cars with her granddad.

He wondered if his old man had seen the irony in that. Probably not. He’d doted on Xandra since the moment she’d been born. Indulged her, as he’d never been indulged. Maybe that was the difference between being a father and a grandfather. There was not the same responsibility to be perfect, do everything right. And getting it wrong.