She’d always had a special relationship with her grandmother. When Martha was eight years old and bullied in school, she’d run away to her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother had held her and listened, something her mother never did. Her mother’s advice had been to “ignore them,” but that wasn’t so easy when they’d wrapped the strap of your school bag around your neck and were trying to hang you from a fence.

Martha had started going to her grandmother’s for tea every day after school. There had been comfort in the routine. The cheerful teapot covered in red cherries. The delicate cups that had belonged to her great-grandmother. But the biggest comfort came from being with someone who was interested in her. It was a routine that had continued until she’d left for college to study English literature.

She’d been starting her third and final year when her mother had called to tell her about her grandmother’s stroke. Martha had packed her things and returned home to care for her. How could she concentrate on Tolstoy or Hardy when her Nanna was sick? Her mother had been appalled, but Martha had ignored her disapproval and slept on the sofa in the living room. Her grandmother had made a surprisingly good recovery. She and Martha had played cards, discussed books and giggled over racy TV shows. They’d even managed to take short strolls in the garden. It had been precious time that Martha would never forget.

And then one night her grandmother had suffered another stroke and that had been it.

Numb with grief, Martha had ignored her mother’s advice that she should return to college and instead taken a job in a coffee shop a short walk from the house.

There was something comforting about making a good cappuccino, creating patterns in the foam. She could cope with it even when she was ambushed by sadness. She liked the fact that she often saw the same people every day. There was the woman with the laptop who made one coffee last all day while she wrote her novel, and the elderly man whose wife had died who could no longer stand being in the house on his own all day.

She’d enjoyed chatting to people and liked the fact that when she left the café she didn’t have to take her work with her.

But then the coffee shop had closed, along with many others, and suddenly what little work there was to be had was being chased by what seemed like thousands of people. She’d worked in the local animal shelter for six months before they’d run low on funds and had to stop paying her.

Her mother never missed an opportunity to remind her that she had no one to blame but herself. Her father, who liked a quiet life, chose to agree with her mother on every topic.