On Sunday morning, Adam picked her up. His car was only marginally newer than hers but certainly bigger. His grandmother, Pat, was already in the front seat but Jessica didn’t mind sitting in the back. The older woman certainly seemed keen on getting to know Jessica. She asked what she did, how old she was, where she came from, what her parents did for a living and everything in between. Everything took twice as long to explain because, as Adam had said, his nan’s hearing wasn’t too great.

Even from their car journey, Jessica could tell the woman was a politically incorrect nightmare. After being introduced to each other, Adam had barely reached the end of Jessica’s road when his grandmother embarrassed him. ‘I thought he was gay all these years,’ she said.

Adam coughed and tried to quieten her but she either didn’t hear him or didn’t care and continued to talk. ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with all of that. You wouldn’t have had it in my day. Well, I guess you probably did but it was all behind closed doors back then. Sometimes you don’t know if they’re boys or girls nowadays, do you? There’s one that works at the local shop. You’re afraid to ask, aren’t you?’

Jessica didn’t really know if you should laugh or be offended but it was clear the woman had no malice.

Adam drove them the two hours or so it took to get to Prestatyn in north Wales. She had never been to the Welsh resort before. It wasn’t the best seaside place she had visited but she had definitely seen worse. Adam parked the car and Jessica helped him take a wheelchair out of the boot. They took it in turns to push Pat along the front. It wasn’t a particularly warm day but at least it was dry. The woman had an opinion on everything from seagulls to local politics to what was clearly her favourite topic of conversation: ‘kids today’.

A car had parked next to Adam’s and three children clambered out of the back seat. His grandmother spent fifteen minutes telling Jessica that when she was that age, she would have walked everywhere. She described two lads playing football on the beach as ‘hooligans’ and thought a young child who dropped an ice lolly was a ‘troublemaker’. Everything was punctuated by her opinion that they would be fine because Jessica was a police officer, as if two lads playing football needed the full force of the law bringing down upon them.

On their stroll down the front, they had been walking behind an older man, likely in his fifties, holding hands with a girl twenty years or so his junior. ‘Do you think that’s his daughter?’ she said plenty loud enough for the couple to hear.

Adam had tried to mumble something about not being sure so, even louder, she asked a second time. ‘Bit odd if it is his daughter,’ she continued. ‘Can’t be his wife or anything. Look at them.’ If they heard, they didn’t react.

Jessica knew she probably shouldn’t but she found Pat quite charming. As they reached the end of the front, Adam went into the public toilets and left Jessica sitting on a bench with his grandmother. He had whispered a ‘sorry, I can’t hold it’ in her ear before dashing inside. When they were sitting together, the older woman reached out a hand towards her. ‘Jessica?’

‘Mrs Compton.’

‘Call me Pat.’

‘Yes, Pat.’

‘I just wanted to say thank you for coming.’ The woman was looking directly at Jessica, the wrinkles in her face and lack of hair betraying her age, even though her eyes were full of youth.

‘It’s not a problem.’

‘He’s a good lad. I keep telling him I can look after myself but he won’t have it.’

‘I think it’s sweet.’

‘Do you know he speaks French? And Spanish or something . . . ?’ Jessica went to say that she did know but didn’t get a chance. ‘. . . I don’t know where he gets it from. It must be his mother, his dad could barely speak English properly. I don’t know why you need it myself.’ The woman laughed gently to herself.

Jessica knew Adam’s parents had died when he was young. ‘How did they die?’

The woman stopped mid-laugh. Her eyes almost transformed, from showing young enjoyment to pure sadness. ‘Hasn’t he told you?’

‘I never asked.’

‘I think he would tell you if you did.’

Adam came back from the toilets, shaking his hands to get them dry. They walked back the way they came and his grandmother almost instantly returned to the way she had been, complaining and inadvertently making Jessica laugh.

Clouds had started to gather by the time they arrived at the car and the journey back took longer as Adam drove carefully in the rain. Pat slept for a lot of the trip and Adam asked Jessica if she minded him dropping his grandmother back before her. The two of them helped her back inside and made her a cup of tea as she sat in an armchair watching television.

Adam’s house looked as if an old person lived in it. Jessica could tell it hadn’t been redecorated in years but it still had a homeliness to it.

‘Sorry about her,’ Adam said when they were alone in his kitchen.

‘It’s all right, she’s fun. I’m not sure she should take up after-dinner speaking though.’

‘At least she didn’t say anything bad to you. When she was going on about me being gay in the car I thought she was going to ask if you were a bloke in drag.’

‘Christ, I don’t look that bad, do I?’

‘No, of course not, I just meant . . .’

‘I’m joking, Adam.’

‘Oh right, yeah, sor . . . of course.’

‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Yeah, no worries.’

‘How did your parents die?’

Adam gulped and stared at her. It clearly wasn’t a question he had been expecting. ‘Um . . .’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘No, it’s . . . I don’t really talk about it. People don’t find it easy to deal with . . .’

‘It’s okay, I don’t need to know.’

Adam turned around and picked up the kettle, pouring hot water into a mug. With his back to her, he started to speak. ‘When I was a baby, my mum got upset a lot. Nowadays people would call it post-natal depression and be able to help her but back then . . .’ Jessica wanted to say something but her mouth had gone dry. She shivered as a tingle went down her back. ‘. . . She ended up killing herself when I was two. I don’t even remember her. Then Dad, well, I don’t know for sure. He killed himself a few months later. No one wanted to tell me about it but I went back and looked in the papers from the time. I think he just wanted my mum, not me.’

Jessica croaked out an ‘Oh, Adam . . .’ but couldn’t stop her voice from cracking.

He still hadn’t turned around but had put the kettle down and was stirring the drink. ‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago. I don’t even remember them.’

Jessica urged herself to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. She felt embarrassed she had told him about her problems that seemed so insignificant in comparison when he had been living with this his entire life.

She reached her arms around his chest and hugged herself into the back of him. Neither of them said anything until Adam released himself. ‘I’d better take this through.’

He picked the mug up from the worktop and walked through with it to his grandmother. Jessica followed him into the living room. Pat was slumped to one side of the chair, snoring gently. Adam switched the television off and pulled a blanket from a drawer underneath the sofa and placed it over her.

‘She’ll sleep all night now,’ he said, walking back to the kitchen with Jessica and closing the door quietly behind them. Adam tipped the drink down the sink. ‘Thanks for today,’ he added.

Jessica could tell he didn’t want to say any more about his parents. ‘Not a problem, I had a good time. I’m not going to the bingo next time though.’

Adam laughed. ‘She’d never hear any of the numbers anyway and then start shouting at people.’

‘What have you got this week?’

He smiled as he spoke. ‘Well, now you’ve stopped firing stuff over to us, we can get through the backlog that’s built up.’