Issy’s heart sank. Since he’d arrived at the home, although it had taken him a couple of weeks to settle in, he’d seemed to adjust pretty well. The old ladies fussed round him nicely – there were hardly any men there – and he’d even enjoyed the art therapies. In fact, it was a young intense-looking therapist who’d convinced him to start writing down his recipes for Issy. And Issy was so happy to know he was warm and safe and comfortable and well fed. So to hear those words was chilling. Steeling herself, she popped her head round the door.

Joe was propped up in bed, a cold cup of tea by his side. Never a fat man, his weight, she noticed, had fallen away even further; his skin was beginning to sink and drop off his bones, as if it had somewhere better to be. He had kept his hair, though it looked now like fine white fluff on top of his head, oddly like a baby’s. He was a baby now, thought Issy sadly. Without the joy, the anticipation, the wonder of a baby: just the feeding, the changing; the carrying around. But she loved him still. She kissed him fondly.

‘Hi, Gramps,’ she said, ‘thanks for the recipes.’ She perched at the end of the bed. ‘I love getting them.’

She did. Apart from Christmas cards, no one else had sent her a handwritten letter for about ten years. Email was great, but she did miss being excited by the post. That was probably why people did so much internet shopping, she reckoned. So they had a parcel to look forward to.

Issy looked at her grampa. He’d had a funny turn before, just after he’d moved, and they’d put him on some new medication. He’d seemed to zone out a lot, but the staff had assured her that he could hear her talking, and that it probably helped. At first she’d felt a complete idiot. Then she’d actually found it quite restful – a bit like therapy, she thought, probably. The kind where the therapist doesn’t actually say anything, just nods their head and writes things down.

‘Anyway,’ she found herself saying now – almost as if trying it out on her tongue, just to see what it sounded like – ‘I’m thinking of … I’m thinking of doing something new. Of opening a little café. People like little cafés these days. They’re getting sick of the same old chains. Well, that’s what I read in a Sunday magazine.

‘My friends aren’t actually being very helpful. Helena keeps telling me to think about VAT, even though she has absolutely no idea what VAT is. I think she’s trying to be those scary guys off the telly that make fun of your business ideas, because she always says it in a really growly voice, then snorts like this,’ she snorted, ‘when I say I hadn’t thought about VAT, like she’s a total millionaire mogul and I’m just some idiot, not fit to run a business.

‘But all sorts of people run businesses, don’t they, Gramps? Look at you, you did it for years.’

She sighed.

‘So obviously I remembered to ask you all the intelligent questions about it while you were still in a fit position to answer them. Gramps, why didn’t I ask you about running a business? I’m such an idiot. Please help me.’

Nothing. Issy sighed again.

‘I mean, our local dry-cleaner has the IQ of a balloon and he runs his own business. It can’t be that hard, can it? Helena reckons he can’t look at himself in the mirror without seeing someone else who wants to pick a fight with him.’

She smiled. ‘He is a terrible dry-cleaner though.

‘But when will I have the chance to do this again? What if I put all the money into my mortgage then don’t find a job for eight months? I may as well … I mean, it will be like nothing ever happened. Or I could go round the world but, you know, I’d still be me when I got back. Except a bit older, with sun damage.

‘Whereas this … I mean, there’s tax and red tape and health and safety and food standards and hygiene practice and fire regulations. It’s doing it the way you want it, subject to an incredibly narrow prescribed range of things that are actually allowed … It’s probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought of, totally doomed to fail, bankrupt me, all of that.’

Issy looked out of the window. It was a cold, clear day; the grounds of the home were beautiful. She saw an old lady, bent over, gardening in a tiny flower bed. She was completely engrossed in what she was doing. A nurse came past, checked she was all right and then went on her way again.

Issy remembered coming home from school – her horrible modern comprehensive full of horrible girls who made fun of her frizzy hair – and making a strawberry tart from scratch, pastry as light as air, and the glaze as fine and sweet as fairies’ breath. Gramps had sat down in silence with a fork and not uttered a word as he savoured every bite, slowly, and she stood at the end of their terraced kitchen, at the tiny back door, hands clasped over the front of her now far too small apron. When he had finished, he had put down his fork carefully, reverently. Then he had looked at her.

‘You, love,’ he had said, deliberately. ‘You are a born baker.’

‘Don’t talk crap,’ her mother had said, who was home that autumn, doing a course to become a yoga teacher that she never finished. ‘Issy’s got brains! She’s going to go to college, get a proper job, not one where she has to get up in the middle of the night for the rest of her life. I want her in a nice office, keeping warm and clean. Not covered head to toe in flour, passed out from exhaustion in a chair every night at six pm.’

Issy barely listened to her mother. But her heart was aflame with her grandfather’s praise, rarely bestowed. In her darker moments, she did wonder sometimes if any man would ever love her as much as her gramps did.

‘I mean, I’ve done so much admin in my life, I’m sure I’ll figure it out … but when I saw Pear Tree Court, I just realized … I could have a shot. I could. I know I could. A chance to bake for people, to make them happy; to give them somewhere lovely to come – I know I could do it. You know how I can never get people to go home after parties?’

It was true, Issy was famously welcoming and a too-good host.

‘I’m going to see if I can get a six-month lease. Not pump all my money into it. Just give it a shot to see if it can take off. Not risk everything.’

Issy felt as if she was trying to talk herself out of it. Suddenly, startling her, her grampa sat up. Issy flinched as his watery blue eyes struggled to focus. She crossed her fingers that he would recognize her.