Catriona had invited the man and his dog back to their home, then made Emily wash the dog in an old tin bath while its owner sat in the kitchen and ate plate after plate of roasted potatoes with lashings of gravy. A dog who licked bubbles from her hands, his little tail wagging so hard it sloshed half the water all over the lawn. Then the two of them were gone, with no more than a doff of threadbare cap and a yellow-toothed smile.

Emily had asked her grandmother why he wouldn’t want to stay, why he would choose to go back to such destitution, but she had gotten that look in her eye, the one which meant she was traveling somewhere new. All the cogs and wheels of her mind were turning faster than she could keep up with.

Catriona Robinson had raced into her study and began to write out the bones of a new story, about a boy from Singapore, whose mother lived in a shed at the bottom of her employer’s garden. Someone who had never owned a pair of shoes but walked to school each morning due to an endless curiosity about the world. His classmates teased him about his worn-through clothes, the dirt embellishing his skin, and the fact he was a servant’s child without a father or a home. But still he shared his breakfast one morning with an old hag being taunted by the other children in his class.

It was a play on Cinderella, with a touch of other fairy tales thrown in for good measure, but the message was clear enough.

“It’s about you,” Tyler said. “They’re all about you.”

She started walking, the wheels of her suitcase hopping and bumping with each agitated step.

“Do you think it’s a lesson about money?” Tyler asked as he jogged to keep up. “Aunt Cat could have lived in a castle in Scotland, or on a boat in Monaco.”

“So?”

“Why didn’t she? I mean, the cottage is great, but it’s small. Really small, and you had enough money to buy whatever she wanted.”

“She didn’t care about money.” She wrote because she had to, always told Emily it was in her bones, her blood.

“Most people would have been rich and greedy.” Tyler moved aside to let an elderly lady and her poodle pass. “Your parents were the same,” he said as he caught up with her. “Unlike mine, who always seemed to relish having so much more than everyone else.”

They stood, side by side, waiting for the pedestrian crossing to flash up green, then Tyler rested his hand in the small of Emily’s back as she began to cross the road.

“I remember Aunt Cat telling me not to rely on money. Tried to get me to understand that there would always be someone with more, just as there will always be someone with less.”

One summer in the south of France, when they were all staying in some ridiculous villa paid for by Tyler’s parents, Catriona had bustled into the kitchen, insisting that she help the staff prepare dinner, because she could never forget how close to poverty every rich man lived.