When we get home Dad asks if I want to walk Lady with him. I say yes because, if I go up to my room, I’m not sure I’d ever want to leave it again.

It’s dark out now and, as we walk, I relish the feeling of the frosty night air. I breathe it in, like I’m drinking a cloud. It’s so different to the hot sticky air in Kuwait, which is like eating honey. Lately it’s felt more suffocating than sweet, like it might swallow me whole and spit out my bones.

We walk round the neighbourhood without speaking, Dad humming a tune quietly. Lady’s occasional sniffs and snorts break the silence, but it’s comforting. As I tread the familiar route with them both my attention shifts to the sky.

It’s something I’ve done since I was a child. Some people make shapes with clouds, Mum and I used to do it with stars. But I never knew, until the last memory, that this game came from my grandmother.

‘What can you see?’ Mum asked, our heads touching as we lay side by side on her balcony. She had a blow-up mattress and on warm summer nights she would get it out and we would lay there with a blanket, some popcorn and milkshakes.

‘It kind of looks like a turtle.’

Mum lay silent while she considered this.

‘Come on?’ I said. ‘So? What does it mean?’

‘Well, this is an interesting one . . .’ She paused for effect. ‘Did you know some breeds of turtle travel for over 10,000 miles a year?’

‘Nerd,’ I said, grinning.

‘How very rude!’ Mum retorted. ‘But also true. Anyway, do you want to know the rest, or do you want to interrupt me again?’

‘Sorry, go on.’

‘So, as I was saying, they travel very far each year, and that means you’ll make waves in whatever you want to do. You won’t give up, you’ll push. And you’ll win in the end.’

‘I like that,’ I said, satisfied.

‘But –’ Mum held a finger up to show she had more to say – ‘you will always carry your loved ones with you, because the turtle’s shell represents comfort and home. Do you think you can carry me around everywhere on your back? Shall we try it?’

I snorted. ‘You made that last bit up.’

‘Maybe,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t want you to grow up and leave me.’ I could hear the pout in her voice.

‘I won’t,’ I said. She must have been thinking about how she had left her own mum.

‘Even when you’re thirty?’

‘Even when I’m thirty. We’ll meet up for brunch or whatever it is grown-ups do.’

Mum laughed. ‘And we’ll talk about our annoying colleagues.’

‘What else do grown-ups do?’