Yusuf, who had come to tell me his report card was good and his mother wanted me to come to dinner, sat down and pretended very hard to be interested in the wall of thread until I could get my face in order.

That was the evening I stopped lying to myself about the few weeks and the sensible plan.

Sitting there with a cup I didn’t want going warm in my hands, watching Lottie boss Yusuf around the little kitchen in the back, I saw plainly what the shop was, and what it had always been, and what it would go on being only if someone kept the lights on.

It was not a business.