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Luna hitched her duffel bag up on her shoulder and thanked the bus driver cheerily as she bounded down the steps.

“You know where you’re going, love?” he asked.

“Yeah, don’t worry.”

It was, even she had to admit, nice to be able to speak English with people again.

“That bag looks heavy,”

he said doubtfully.

“Nah, there’s barely anything in it, promise.”

Which was true. She’d always depended on being able to shed things and pick things up when needed. Currently, she owed three full outfits, a small selection of t-shirts, two pairs of shoes, minimal underwear, her phone, and a wallet that was so empty she could slide it through the bus doors that were now closing.

The day was pleasantly warm, which wasn’t what she’d been expecting. She’d thought that her arrival in England would be greeted by the normal rain. It looked like she’d lucked out. She was still wearing the same cotton trousers and shirt that she’d had on when she’d left Sri Lanka.

“Afternoon, love,”

an elderly man said, pulling his dog’s lead so that they both skirted Luna.

“Afternoon.”

If there was one thing that could be said about Little Chipping, it was that the people were friendly. Luna should know. She’d spent a fair part of her life here. A part that had seemed very distant when she was in Malaysia or Mali or Morocco, but all too close now that she was back. Things really hadn’t changed at all.

“You’re looking a bit lost there, love. Need any help?”

The man with the dog had turned back.

Luna grinned. “Thanks for asking, but I’ll be alright.”

“There’s a youth hostel up the top of that road,”

he said, pointing. He looked her up and down, taking in grubby hands and feet, messy dark curls, and clothes that hadn’t seen an iron in forever. “Or a wee hotel down the other way,”

he added unsurely, as though he ought to give her the option but didn’t think she could afford it.

She wished she could take him up on either of those offers. However, not only did she not have a penny to her name, having spent the last fifty pence she had on crackers at a shop by the bus stop, but her grandmother would find out sooner or later.

And she dreaded to think what Evelyn Truman would say if a granddaughter of hers was caught in a youth hostel in Little Chipping. Honestly, the president of the bridge club could hardly be associated with such a person.

Although, to be fair, Luna thought as she started walking, perhaps her grandmother had changed. Perhaps these few years on her own had softened her, made her nicer, friendlier, warmer.

It had been years. Years that had gone by faster than Luna could account for them.

She turned a corner and could see the house, all gray stone and gable windows and jolly flowers lining the path.

It wasn’t like she had a choice. As she’d explained to the lorry driver that had picked her up in Dover. “The dosh just isn’t there.”

“You and me both, love,”

he’d said. “Explains why you’re hitch-hiking though. It’s not safe, you know. Not for young girls like yourself.”

“I’m twenty-eight,”

she’d said indignantly.

“And a wee thing, just look at you,”

he’d said right back. “Unless you know some of that Krav Maga or something.”

Luna had looked down at her skinny legs and blown out a breath. She did not, in fact, know Krav Maga. Or any other martial art, for that matter. But she’d always trusted strangers, always thought the best of people, and she didn’t want to stop now. “I’ll be fine,”

she’d said.

“As long as you get some cash,”

he’d said. He glanced over at her. “You got a plan, then?”

“I do,”

she’d said confidently.

“What’s that then?”

“My business and not yours.”

He’d laughed at that and offered her a jelly baby and for the rest of the ride they’d sung along to old Abba songs and he’d told her about his sons and his dogs, showing a clear preference for the dogs.

She did have a plan. Sort of. A plan that hinged on her grandmother having softened with age and loneliness.

A plan that, now that she was standing on the front step of the big, gray house, seemed slightly less realistic than it had seemed on the beach in Sri Lanka.

She took a deep breath and then rang the bell.

There was a brief second after her grandmother opened the front door when Luna thought that everything might be alright. A second when there was a glimmer of emotion in her grandmother’s blue eyes, a slight sparkle of something that might have been love. Then she’d sniffed and raised an eyebrow. “You’re back then.”

She turned and walked down the hall, leaving the front door open.

“I’m back,”

Luna said, coming inside and dropping her bag by the door.

“Don’t leave that there,”

said her grandmother. “Put it away where it belongs. Upstairs. You weren’t brought up in a barn.”

With a sigh, Luna picked up the bag, hitched it over her shoulder, and carried it toward the stairs.

“There’ll be tea in the drawing room,”

her grandmother said as Luna went upstairs.

WHEN SHE WAS six years old, Luna Truman’s life had changed for good. One moment she’d been a happy, dark-haired, normal school girl, the next she’d been living in a big, gray house afraid to drop crumbs from her toast.

Her room was just as she remembered it. So she shoved her bag under her bed and breathed in the stale air. Only then did she pick up the picture from her dressing table.

“It’s been a while,” she said.

Her mother didn’t answer. Hardly surprising since she’d been dead for more years than Luna had known her, and Luna didn’t remember what her voice sounded like. She did smile from the picture frame, though, and Luna smiled back.

“There’s a lot to tell you,”

she said. “But I can’t right now because if I’m not back downstairs in a minute, the old witch will come looking for me. And yes, I know she didn’t have to take me in, and yes, I know that I should be more patient with her and she’s an old woman.”

Age had not softened her, though, Luna thought privately.

She put the picture down, looked in the mirror, ran her fingers through her short curls, decided things weren’t going to get much better, and stomped off back down the stairs.

“Milk?”

her grandmother asked, as Luna walked into the drawing room with its over-stuffed couch. She was holding a silver milk jug.

“No, thanks,”

said Luna.

Her grandmother eyed her outfit with disapproval. Her grandmother disapproved of a great many things. She disapproved of iced coffee, for instance. She certainly disapproved of her daughter becoming a single mother. It was hard to tell whether she disapproved of that more or less than the amount she disapproved of her daughter rudely dying and leaving her with a granddaughter to bring up. She definitely disapproved of said granddaughter.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to stay.”

Luna tried her hardest to smile nicely. “It would be nice if I could.”

“This is your home. Of course you can stay.”

“That’s kind.”

Luna rubbed at her nose and then accepted a cup of tea. This could work out for both of them, she reminded herself. She was sure that her grandmother didn’t want her to stay any more than she wanted to stay. “Of course, I don’t have to stay long.”

Her grandmother paused, teacup half-raised to her mouth. “You don’t?”

Luna took a breath. She’d practiced this on the ferry, mumbling the words to herself under her breath until the other passengers thought there was something wrong with her. It was harder here. Logical, she told herself. Cool and calm. They were both adults. “I think you know why I’m here,” she said.

Her grandmother smiled coldly. “Do I?”

Ah, so she wasn’t going to make this easy. Luna didn’t know why she’d expected any less. “The, um, the money,”

she began, her words stumbling now.

Her grandmother put down her teacup quietly and gently and settled back in her chair with her hands in her lap. “Ah, yes, I thought it might come down to that.”

Luna’s lips were dry. “I’m twenty-eight,”

she began.

“And my opinion has not changed,”

said her grandmother.

“It’s been seven years.”

Her grandmother lowered her chin, but kept her eyes firmly on Luna’s. “Exactly my point.”

“How is that your point?”

Luna asked. “I mean, I can see how handing over my inheritance when I was twenty-one perhaps wasn’t a wise thing to do, but I’m a fully grown adult now.”

“Are you?”

The clock on the mantle ticked in the silence that followed. Luna didn’t know how to answer that question, short of pulling out her birth certificate and a dictionary to explain the meaning of the word adult.

Her grandmother took a breath. “I am the executor of your mother’s estate,”

she said. “Your mother’s money, the money she inherited from my mother, was placed in my care when your mother passed, with clear instruction that you were to receive your inheritance only once you became a responsible adult.”

“But—”

“A responsible adult, not a grown adult,”

her grandmother interrupted. “A case of unclear wording, perhaps, and yet I intend to abide by my daughter’s last will and testament.”

“But I—”

“Disappearing for seven years and showing up like a dirty monkey in cheap foreign clothes does not a responsible adult make.”

Luna opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again. She didn’t think there was any point in continuing this conversation. She should have known better. The arguments that had sounded so good in the Asian sun suddenly didn’t matter at all. What mattered was that her grandmother hadn’t changed in the slightest.

Her grandmother picked up her teacup again. “You’re welcome to stay as long as you like,”

she said. “This is your home, for better or worse. But you won’t be getting your money until you have proven to me that you’re a responsible adult.”