I stare at the jar on the sideboard with my eyes narrowed. My wrist is still singing with pain from a quarter of an hour trying to wrench off the lid, but I’m not giving up. Some women live alone all their lives and they eat food out of jars.

I give the jar a good glare and myself a good talking-to. I am a seventy-nine-year-old woman. I have given birth. I have chained myself to a bulldozer to save a forest. I have stood up to Betsy about the new parking rules on Lower Lane.

I can open this wretched jar of pasta sauce.

Dec eyes me from the windowsill as I rummage through the drawer of kitchen implements in search of something that’ll do the job of my increasingly useless fingers.

‘You think I’m a daft old woman, don’t you?’ I say to the cat.

Dec swishes his tail. It’s a sardonic swish. All humans are daft, that swish says. You should take a leaf out of my book. I have my jars opened for me.

‘Well, just be grateful your tea for tonight is in a pouch,’ I tell him, waggling a spaghetti spoon his way. I don’t even like cats. It was Wade’s idea to get kittens last year, but he lost interest in Ant and Dec when he found Miss Cha-Cha-Cha and decided that Hamleigh was too small for him, and that only old people keep cats. You can keep them both, he said, with an air of great magnanimity. They suit your lifestyle better.

Smug sod. He’s older than me, anyway – eighty-one come September. And as for my lifestyle … Well. Just you wait and see, Wade Cotton. Just you bloody wait and see.

‘Things are going to be changing around here, Declan,’ I tell the cat, my fingers closing around the bread knife in the back of the drawer. Dec gives a slow, unimpressed blink, then his eyes widen and he swishes out of the window as I lift the knife with both hands to stab the lid of the jar. I let out a little ha! as I pierce it; it takes me a few stabs, like an amateur murderer in an Agatha Christie play, but this time when I twist the lid it turns easily. I hum to myself as I triumphantly empty the contents into the pan.

There. Once the sauce has warmed through and the pasta’s cooked, I settle back down at the dining-room table with my tea and examine my list.

Basil Wallingham

Pros:

- Lives just down the road – not far to walk

- Own teeth

-Still got enough oomph in him to chase squirrels off birdfeeders

Cons:

- Tremendous bore

- Always wearing tweed

- Might well be a fascist

Mr Rogers

Pros:

- Only 67

- Full head of hair (very impressive)

- Dances like Pasha off of Strictly (even more impressive)

- Polite to everyone, even Basil (most impressive of all)

Cons:

- Highly religious man. Very pious. Likely to be dull in bed?

- Only visits Hamleigh once a month

- Shown no signs of interest in anyone except Jesus

Dr Piotr Nowak

Pros:

- Polish. How exciting!

- Doctor. Useful for ailments

- Very interesting to talk to and exceptional at Scrabble

Cons:

- Rather too young for me (59)

- Almost certainly still in love with ex-wife

- Looks a bit like Wade (not his fault but off-putting)

I chew slowly and pick up my pen. I’ve been ignoring this thought all day, but … I really ought to list all the unattached gentlemen of the right age. After all, I’ve put Basil on there, haven’t I?

Arnold Macintyre

Pros:

- Lives next door

- Appropriate age (72)

Cons:

- Odious human being

-Poisoned my rabbit (as yet unproven, granted, but I know he did)

- Cut back my tree full of birds’ nests

- Sucks all joy from the world

- Probably feasts on kittens for breakfast

- Likely descended from ogres

- Hates me almost as much as I hate him

 

I cross out likely descended from ogres after a moment, because I ought not to bring his parents into it – they might have been perfectly nice for all I know. But I’m leaving the part about kittens.

There. A complete list. I tilt my head, but it looks just as bleak from that angle as it does straight on. I have to face the truth: pickings are very slim in Hamleigh-in-Harksdale, population one hundred and sixty-eight. If I want to find love at this stage of my life, I need to be looking further afield. Over to Tauntingham, for instance. There’s at least two-hundred people in Tauntingham, and it’s only thirty minutes on the bus.

The telephone rings; I get to the living room just in time.

‘Hello?’

‘Grandma? It’s Leena.’

I beam. ‘Hold on, let me get myself sat down.’

I settle back into my favourite armchair, the green one with the rose pattern. This phone call is the best part of any day. Even when it was bitterly sad, when all we talked about was Carla’s death – or anything but that, because that felt too painful – even then, these calls with Leena kept me going.

‘How are you, love?’ I ask Leena.

‘I’m fine, how are you?’

I narrow my eyes. ‘You’re not fine.’

‘I know, it just came out, sorry. Like when someone sneezes and you say “bless you”.’ I hear her swallow. ‘Grandma, I had this – I had a panic attack at work. They’ve sent me off on a two-month sabbatical.’

‘Oh, Leena!’ I press my hand to my heart. ‘But it’s no bad thing that you’re getting some time off,’ I say quickly. ‘A little break from it all will do you good.’

‘They’re side-lining me. I’ve been off my game, Grandma.’

‘Well, that’s understandable, given …’

‘No,’ she says, and her voice catches, ‘it’s not. God, I – I promised Carla, I told her I wouldn’t let it hold me back, losing her, and she always said – she said she was so proud, but now I’ve …’

She’s crying. My hand grips at my cardigan, like Ant or Dec’s paws when they’re sitting in my lap. Even as a child, Leena hardly ever cried. Not like Carla. When Carla was upset, she would throw her arms in the air, the very picture of misery, like a melodramatic actress in a play – it was hard not to laugh. But Leena would just frown and dip her head, looking up at you reproachfully through those long, dark eyelashes.

‘Come on, love. Carla would have wanted you to take holidays,’ I tell her.

‘I know I should be thinking of it as a holiday, but I can’t. It’s just … I hate that I messed up.’ This is muffled, as if she’s speaking into her hands.

I take off my glasses and rub the bridge of my nose. ‘You didn’t mess up, love. You’re stressed, that’s what it is. Why don’t you come up and stay this weekend? Everything looks better over a mug of hot chocolate, and we can talk properly, and you can have a little break from it all, up here in Hamleigh …’

There’s a long silence.

‘You haven’t been to visit for an awfully long time,’ I say tentatively.

‘I know. I’m really sorry, Grandma.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. You came up when Wade left, I was ever so grateful for that. And I’m very lucky to have a granddaughter who calls me so often.’

‘But I know chatting over the phone isn’t the same. And it’s not that I … You know I really would love to see you.’