‘Why, thank you.’ He nods, taking her dig exactly as they both knew he would. ‘In short,’ he says, ‘I am returned! The non-prodigal son! Well no, not actually a son—’

‘Returned to London?’ she says, interrupting him. ‘For good? Really, Richard?’

He grins, gratified by her reaction as he takes another large and messy bite of pie.

‘Don’t tell me,’ she says, trying to hide her pleasure and failing miserably.

‘Therein lies a tale!’ they both say together, as they have done many times before, him with his mouth full.

‘Therein lies a tale indeed . . .’ Richard says, wiping his mouth with his sleeve as he smiles. And he does not, cannot in fact, take his eyes off her for even a moment.

It is the colour that strikes her first. The sun glinting off the emerald glow, a pebble of reflection hidden amongst the stony shingle beach where Natalya sits, mending a fishing net. It is beautiful. A rounded piece of green glass, sanded smooth by the rough seas. It is worthless. It is irresistible. It feels solid in her hand, weighty, as if it holds a thousand stories within it.

She takes a moment to stretch her back, stiff from sitting, breathes in the scent of sea-salt mud flats. The landscape around Mersea fascinates her. Estuary life so similar yet so different to the sea-faring islands from which she has travelled so very far.

Natalya wonders what London might smell like, what fragrances and stenches might linger in its streets and rivers. Not long now, she thinks to herself. In exchange for food and board, she has been retying and fixing the nets of a few of the local fishermen. They knew a good deal when they saw one and so too did Natalya. She had turned up in the eye of a storm, exhausted and wet through, dripping torrents of rain from her worn woollen clothes. She was taken in by one of the local families, fed soup and hearty meals, given a bed and a warm welcome worth more than its weight in gold. One more day, she estimates, looking at the net, and she will be done. One more day and London beckons.

The trade card her cousin sent some years back has long since disintegrated on her journey south but she can still see it in her mind’s eye. An illustration of a compass and, above it, in various typography – BM Calder. Mathematical Instrument Maker. 428 The Strand, LONDON. Benjamin – the black sheep of the family. Like myself, she thinks. If you could have predicted her life for her, read the runes at her birth, Natalya should be married by now, bairns in arm, settled peacefully on a smallholding on one of the scattered northern isles. And yet, here she is. Disowned. Shamed into leaving. The wind catches one of her boot-laces, loosening it so it flaps against her boot for a moment before being retied.