‘Grandma, I’m so glad you’re looking to find someone new,’ I say. ‘You had a miserable time married to Grandpa and you so deserve to meet somebody lovely. I will absolutely do everything I can to help you.’

‘That’s sweet of you, but there’s not a lot you can do. The fact is, I don’t know any eligible men,’ Grandma says, reaching for the tissue up her sleeve and blowing her nose. ‘I thought maybe … I could go to Tauntingham and see if there’s anybody there …’

I have visions of Grandma roaming the lanes of sleepy Tauntingham with her project diary out, making notes as she hunts for elderly gentlemen.

‘I’m not sure that’s the most effective method,’ I say carefully. ‘Have you thought about Internet dating?’

She makes a face. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

I stand up. This is the best I’ve felt in ages. ‘I’ll get my laptop,’ I say, already heading out of the door.

*

I do a quick half-hour of research before I start on Grandma’s dating profile. Apparently, what makes for a successful profile is honesty, specificity, humour and (more than any of those other things I just said) a good profile picture. But as soon as it’s set up, I realise we have a problem.

There is not a single person her age registered to the site in under an hour’s drive from here. It’s not just that Grandma doesn’t know any eligible gentlemen in the area – there aren’t any. Bee bemoans the lack of good men in London, but she has no idea how lucky she is. When there are eight million people in your city, there’s going to be someone single.

I turn slowly in my chair to look at my grandmother.

When I think of Grandma, I always think of her as an absolute force of nature, bending the world to her will. I can’t imagine there’s a more youthful old lady out there. Her boundless energy has never shown any signs of running out as she enters her late seventies – she really is extraordinary for her age.

But she doesn’t look like that Grandma right now.

She’s had a truly terrible year. The death of one of her only two granddaughters, supporting my mum through losing her daughter, then Grandpa Wade walking out on her … It hits me quite suddenly that I think of my grandma as invincible, but that’s so ridiculous – nobody could go through what she’s been through unscathed. Look at her, sitting here, contemplating dating Basil the bigot. Things are not right at Clearwater Cottage.

Which I’d already have known, if I’d come home once in a while.

I reach for the laptop again. Every time I remember that I can’t go to work on Monday I feel wretched, useless, afraid. I need something to do, to help, to stop me thinking about all the ways I’ve messed up.

I change the search area on the dating site, and suddenly: hello, four-hundred men between the ages of seventy and eighty-five, looking for love.

‘I have an idea,’ I tell her. ‘Hear me out, OK? There’s hundreds of eligible men in London.’

Grandma turns her empty mug between her hands. ‘I told you, Leena – your mum needs me here at the moment. I can’t come down to London.’

‘Mum will be fine.’

‘Oh, she will, will she?’ Grandma says.

‘You need a break, Grandma. You deserve a break. Come on. Tell me: why was it you wanted to go to London when you were younger?’

‘I wanted to change the world,’ Grandma says, with a little smile. ‘I suppose I thought London was the place where the … big things happened. And I wanted an adventure. I wanted to …’ she waves her arms grandly ‘… to hail down a cab with a dashing stranger and let him take me home. To walk across London Bridge on a mission with the wind in my hair. I suppose I wanted to be somebody important.’

‘Grandma! You are important! Hamleigh would fall apart without you, for starters. How many times have you saved the village shop, now? Five?’

She smiles. ‘I’m not saying I never did anything useful. I made your mother, and she made you and Carla, and that’s enough for me.’

I squeeze her hand. ‘What was the job? The one you turned down, for Grandpa?’

Grandma looks down at the table. ‘It was for a charity. They set up community centres for youngsters in deprived areas. It would have been typing and fetching coffee, I expect. But it felt like the start. I had chosen a flat, too, not far from where you live now, though the area was rather different back then.’

‘You were going to live in Shoreditch?’ I say, fascinated. ‘That’s so …’ I can’t imagine what my grandmother would have been like if she’d taken that job. It’s such a strange thought.

‘Hard to believe?’ she asks wryly.

‘No! It’s so great, Grandma. You have to come and stay with me! We can have an adventure in Shoreditch, just like you wanted to.’

‘I’m not leaving your mother, not now,’ Grandma says firmly. ‘And I’ve got far too much on my plate here to be going away. That’s that, Leena.’

There she goes again, that’s that-ing. I’m feeling a little buzzy, the way I used to feel at work; I haven’t felt this rush for ages. I know this is the right thing for Grandma – it’s exactly what she needs.

I think suddenly of what Bee said, about finding myself, getting myself back. I’ve been hiding in London, buried in work. I’ve been avoiding my mother. I’ve been avoiding it all, really. But I’ve got two months to sort myself out. And given that I can’t even look at the house where Carla died …

It feels like this might be the place to start.

‘Grandma … what if we swapped?’ I say. ‘What if I came up and looked after all your projects, and you had my flat in London, and I stayed here?’

Grandma looks up at me. ‘Swapped?’

‘Swapped places. You do the London thing! Try dating in the city, have your adventure … remind yourself of who you were before Grandpa Wade. And I’ll come up here. Switch off for a bit in the countryside, try to – to get my head around everything that’s happened, and I’ll look after your little projects, and … help Mum out if she needs it. I’ll do whatever it is you do for her, you know, any errands and stuff.’ I feel a bit dizzy, all of a sudden. Is this a good idea? It’s quite extreme, even by my standards.

Grandma’s eyes turn thoughtful. ‘You’d stay here? And be there for Marian when she needs you?’

I can see what she’s thinking. She never says as much, but I know she’s been desperate to get Mum and me talking again ever since Carla died. As it happens, I think Mum is coping a hell of a lot better than Grandma thinks – she certainly doesn’t need to be waited on hand and foot – but if Grandma needs to feel I’ll do everything she does for Mum, then …

‘Yeah, sure, absolutely.’ I twist the laptop her way. ‘Check it out, Grandma. Four-hundred men just waiting to meet you in London.’

Grandma pops her glasses back on. ‘Gosh,’ she says, looking at the pictures on the screen. The glasses come off again and her gaze drops to the table. ‘But I have other responsibilities here too. There’s the Neighbourhood Watch, there’s Ant and Dec, there’s driving the van to bingo … I couldn’t ask you to take all of that on.’