She would not, she thought, squinting warily up at the sky, be sorry to see the end of the year that had just passed. It had been a year of too many questions and too few answers: a year when something unthinkable had nearly happened to her parents, and something unspeakable had nearly happened to Sophie, and Emma had announced she would be spending the next year half the world away; a year when, once again, she had failed to identify a career path that attracted her enough for serious consideration. The only bright spot had been the discovery of Grandma Jo, the strange, spiky, uncomfortably intelligent girl who had grown into the woman the family had loved so. Unfortunately, Grandma Jo was unable to step out of her letters and tell Lulu how to identify her own road to happiness in this world that had shown itself capable of changing so suddenly and so completely; that task was for Lulu alone.

There was a crash as the rain cloud opened, pelleting water from the heavens. Caught without her umbrella open, Lulu ducked into the nearest shop for shelter, a children’s toy shop, its inside yellow and inviting against the steel-gray downpour without. She smiled at the proprietor, and for politeness pretended to peruse the shelves, turning over dolls and plush stuffed animals, idly remembering the time when such items had been a part of her own world. When she had been a child, she recalled, she had longed to be a grown-up; but now, in memory, childhood seemed a rather pleasant and privileged state, a fairy-tale existence in which food and clean clothes appeared as if by magic, nobody ever asked her about her career, and a giant incarnation of Mom or Dad would read her a story in bed each night. Lulu had liked to have stories read to her. She noticed now a shelf of books on one wall of the shop, and wandered over to examine them, wondering which of her own childhood books were still being read to children today. There was one she remembered with particular fondness, about a witch who had boarded a bus at Paddington Station and worked a charm, causing an originally drab and straightforward tale suddenly to erupt into an explosion of colors and unexpected pop-ups, bright flowers, and exotic animals. The book was not on the shelf now, she noted with disappointment; maybe it had gone out of print.

“Want a toy.”

A child’s voice came from behind her, a cacophonous cocktail of whine and menace. Lulu set her teeth; she had never had time for spoilt children.

“Now, we’ve already discussed this, haven’t we, Oliver?” The adult’s voice held the brightly placating tones of one who knew her place in the pecking order. “We haven’t come here to buy a toy for you—we’ve come here to buy a toy for Rufus, because it’s his birthday. Do you remember that it was your birthday only last week, and you got all those lovely toys, didn’t you? Well, now it’s Rufus’s birthday, so it’s his turn, isn’t it?”