The wheels of the chair sighed through the grass on either side of the narrow path. I remembered something I'd been meaning to ask.

"What were you doing up that tree anyway, gran?"

"Trying to saw a branch off."

"What for?"

"To stop those damn squirrels using it as a diving board to get to my bird table, that's what for." She used her stick to whack a crumpled drinking-yoghurt bottle off the path and into the water.

"You could have asked somebody else."

"I'm not totally incapable, Prentice. I'd have been all right if that hoodie hadn't started dive-bombing me; ungrateful wretch."

"Oh, it was a bird's fault, was it?" I had a mental picture of some beetle-eyed carrion crow swooping on my gran, knocking her off her ladder. Maybe it had seen The Omen.

"Yes, it was." Grandma Margot twisted in her wheelchair and raised both her stick and her voice, "And a few years ago I'd only have been bruised, as well. Brittle bones are one of the things that make getting old such a damn nuisance, too, especially if you're a woman." She nodded brusquely. "So think yourself lucky."

"Okay," I smiled.

"Damn birds," she muttered, glaring at a stand of ash trees on the edge of the plantation with such severity that I half expected to hear a parliament of crows cry out in answer. "Ach well," she shrugged. "Let's head back to the house; I need to go."

"Right you are," I said, and wheeled the chair around. Grandma Margot lit another cigarette.

"That branch is still there, by the way."

"I'll deal with it."

"Good lad."

A lark trilled, high overhead.

I wheeled my gran back along the path by the water, over the main road and up the gravel drive, through the sunlit cobbled courtyard towards the tall house with the crow-stepped gables.