“We’ll think about it” was not normally a good sign. Max, however, was an optimist. She crossed her fingers all the way to school the next day; she had to uncross them to write, but she carried on pleading with the universe in her head, and doodled maps in maths and snaked tiny footprints all over her history book. At the end of the day she slid-skidded-stumbled home through the icy streets at top speed and went to her armchair to read about Turkey, and tug hopefully at her two long plaits, and look through the skylight, and generally wait for her parents to make up their minds.

“Please let them say yes,” she begged the little slice of sky above her.

The little slice of sky wasn’t bothered. A bird wheeled overhead, then went off somewhere else without her.

As things turned out, the universe did intervene on her behalf – or Sister Marguerite did, which felt like the same thing. Sister Marguerite played at Pierre’s chess club. She was the only person who could beat him, which annoyed him a lot, but you aren’t supposed to be annoyed with nuns so he had to be nice about it. When she heard the story, she offered to take Max herself.

“It’s a stroke of luck,” said Max’s mother at dinner that night. “She spent some time in Istanbul when she was young, and she’s keen to see it again. And she’s a nun, so obviously she goes in for the whole charity thing.”

“Isn’t she a bit…” Max’s father rubbed his beard, as if the right word might fall out of it – “odd?”

Max’s mother pursed her lips, in a way that suggested that odd charitable chess-playing nuns were one of the trials of life, and she would rather not talk about it. “A little. But she’s a nun. I’m sure she’ll take good care of Maximilienne.”

So, just like that, it was settled.

While Max fizzed with excitement, and had to be told not to wriggle, the others talked about chess and showjumping and the neighbours, and made coffee, and watched the evening news. Max found it difficult to concentrate. The headline was a break-in at a fancy vault in Paris, where lots of people locked away their diamonds and gold and so on. The police had turned up before anything could be stolen, which everyone on television seemed very relieved about, but Max couldn’t get very excited about diamonds that were so valuable you had to lock them away and not look at them. It would have been more exciting if they had been stolen. So she stopped listening, and thought about Istanbul instead.

What would it be like? And what would Great-Aunt Elodie be like?