‘You’re wrong!’ Marina said forcefully, standing up now. ‘It could change everything for us! Look at how we struggle. I had to give up my car because the insurance went up. I can’t afford a new washing machine. I work two jobs. I’m exhausted all the time. I can’t remember the last time I put on a dress and went out. I’m forty-five but I feel eighty.’

‘I wish I did.’ It was a quip, a joke, but her granddaughter was near tears, her body tense with panic and resentment.

‘You owe it to me to hear her out,’ Marina said bitterly. ‘I could have signed it, you know. She came to me first; she didn’t know about you. I could have just taken all the money for myself and no one would ever have been able to take it away from me. I could have changed my life, like that.’ She clicked her fingers. ‘But I didn’t, because I love you. Because I had never met the man doing this so I knew it had to be you they were looking for.’ She crouched down by her grandmother’s knees, looking up at her through teary eyes, and the old woman instinctively reached out to cup her cheek, caressing her beautiful face. ‘I knew the money wouldn’t interest you. It never has. You’re happy here, you have your friends, all you need. But I thought there must be a reason why he is doing this. No one gives away ten million euros for no reason. I thought it must be important.’

Charlotte saw how the old woman’s eyes narrowed at the figure. She looked . . . angry. ‘He thinks I can be bought.’

‘Señora Quincy, please listen to your granddaughter. I am not privy to the client’s reasons for doing this but you should perhaps know one pertinent detail: my client is dying,’ Charlotte said in a low voice. ‘Pancreatic cancer. He’s been given only a few weeks left to live.’

Her words settled in the room like snow on the ground. Señora Quincy was quiet then for a long time, her crooked fingers absently stroking her granddaughter’s curved cheek as her eyes lifted off and stared into the distance, seeing into a forgotten past that had seemingly come roaring back into her life and now pulsed here in this very room. She rolled her lips into a thin line, her clear eyes watering slightly, the free hand in her lap pulling and releasing slowly in small fists.

Finally though, she drew herself back to the present, looking first at Marina, then Charlotte. ‘Tell him I don’t want the money.’ Her granddaughter gasped but she held a hand up to silence her. ‘But if Arlo wishes to see me one last time, then I will see him.’ Her gaze was level and cool.

Arlo? Charlotte hesitated. Was it a shortening of Carlos? It was just about close enough, and the old woman had come to that name completely unprompted. ‘Okay, I will pass that message back to him. But you should know, he suffered a stroke last week,’ she said gently. ‘He’s currently in hospital. He was unconscious but is now recovering fairly well, I understand.’