Malcolm hadn’t taken his dad to the seafront for a couple of years. Some weeks he got the notion, without taking it any further. The old boy wasn’t too steady on his pins – that was what he told himself. He didn’t like to think it was because people might stare at the pair of them: an elderly man, melted ice cream running down the back of his hand from the cone he was holding, being directed towards a bench by his son. They would sit down and Malcolm Fox would wipe the ice cream from his father’s slip-on shoes with his handkerchief, then use that same item to dab at the grey-flecked chin.

No, that wasn’t it at all. Today it was just too cold.

Fox paid more for the care home than he did on his own mortgage. He’d asked his sister to share the burden, and she’d answered that she would when she could. The home was private. Fox had looked at a couple of council alternatives, but they’d been drab and acrid-smelling. Lauder Lodge was better. Some of the money Fox had shelled out had gone into the pot and come out as Anaglypta and pine freshener. He could always smell talcum powder, too, and the lack of any unpleasant aromas from the kitchen was testament to quality venting. He found a parking space round the side of the building and announced himself at the front door. It was a detached Victorian house and would have been worth seven figures until the recent crunch. There was a waiting area at the foot of the stairs, but one of the staff told him he could go to his father’s room.

‘You know the way, Mr Fox,’ she trilled as he nodded and made for the longer of the two corridors. There was an annexe, built on to the original structure about ten years back. The walls had a few hairline cracks in them and some of the double glazing suffered from condensation, but the rooms were light and airy – the very words he’d been plied with when he’d first inspected the place. Light and airy and no stairs, plus en suites for the lucky few. His dad’s name was on a typed sliver of card taped to the door.