‘Why?’

‘They have to figure out…how old things are. Stuff like that.’

‘Was that why she was at our castle? Trying to figure out how old it is?’

‘I guess.’

‘It’s five hundred and sixty-three years old,’ Matty said. ‘Crater told me. It’s in a book. Mama could have just read the book.’

‘People like your mama would have written the book. She could have worked it out. Maybe you could ask her how.’

‘She does make good cake,’ Matty said and Kelly slid deeper into the hot water and felt as if she’d died and gone to heaven.

What did they want? Where would she take things from here? No matter. For this moment nothing mattered but that her son was sitting by her kitchen fire eating her grandma’s cake.

She hadn’t taken dry clothes into the bathroom. This was a tiny cottage and her bathroom led straight off the kitchen. She hadn’t been thinking, and once she was scrubbed dry, pinkly warm, wrapped in her big, fuzzy bathrobe and matching pink slippers she kept in the bathroom permanently and with her hair wrapped in a towel, she felt absurdly self-conscious about facing them again.

There was hardly a back route from bathroom to bedroom unless she dived out of the window. Face them she must, so she opened the door and they both turned and smiled.

They’d been setting the table. There were plates and spoons and knives in three settings. Rafael had cut the bread on the sideboard. The sense of domesticity was almost overwhelming.

‘That’s much better,’ he said approvingly, his dark eyes checking her from the fluffy slippers up.

‘You look pretty,’ Matty said and then amended his statement. ‘Comfy pretty. Not like the ladies my papa brought to the castle.’

She flushed.

‘You’re pink,’ Matty said, and she flushed some more.

‘I guess the water was too hot.’

‘At least you’re warm,’ Rafael said. ‘Sit down and eat. I know we’ve done this the wrong way round-cake before soup-but it does seem sensible to eat. That is, if you don’t mind sharing.’