When Viola was tasked with preparing a cash flow statement for one of Haines Watts' biggest clients, she breezed through the figures, unperturbed, in two February afternoons, which was most unusual. An account that size should normally take weeks. She'd never once muddled her numbers.

At least, not yet.

But when director, Darren, called her to his office, suddenly that tuna sandwich and third espresso at lunch didn't seem to sit quite right in her belly.

His office was a large glass box on the fourth floor. Her nostrils twitched as she entered. A synthetic waft of fresh paint and new upholstery greeted her. The door closed with a neat snick.

"Please, take a seat,” said a voice from behind the computer.

And she did, in the velvet-padded swivel chair, an awkward distance from his desk. Darren's fingers danced over the keyboard at impossible speed, signing off an email to payroll, she gathered, to process her final paycheck. She cursed her mind that hopped from one worst-case scenario to another. Already, she was wondering whether her Sainsbury's bag for life would manage to hold the contents of her drawers. And, heaven forbid, she musn’t forget her ceramic mug from the staff kitchen.

Darren's middle finger struck the Enter key with far too much zing for a Tuesday.

"You've been with us, what, seven years now, Viola?"

A slow nod.

"Firstly, regarding our latest client, Harrisons & Tate. The accounts you've been working on...they're flawless."

Her fumbling hands fell still in her lap.

"And not just that, you returned them in record time. I think it's time we started talking about the next steps for you."

And that’s how it started, Viola’s ascent to the fourth floor. From account executive to account manager to regional manager, she climbed the ranks, diffidence dissolving at each new rung. Her pay check doubled. Quadrupled. Eventually a partner, it became her choice how many noughts she added to her final figure.

Years blurred by, without regard, like the rush of green from the train window on her morning commute. Cursory joy hid in strange places: in the sip of Sancerre from her monthly wine subscription; coming home to a rickle of parcels on her doorstep after a weekly splurge; the finale of her favourite series, The Bridge. On her something-something birthday (an age she’d never voluntarily declare), she treated herself to a ritzy apartment way above the rug of smog that blanketed the city.

As she was unboxing her things, her hands met something which she recognised by shape alone. With warped handle, lovingly moulded by the potter’s clumsy hands, she raised the mug to the light. Her eyes brimmed with something bittersweet she couldn’t describe.

“What have I done?”

Her words were bare, the walls of the apartment repeating them back to her. She realised then, that the answer to this was in fact another question—the same question—in its negative.

Somewhere, in the flush of adolescence, her mind had latched onto an idea: that prosperity lay in reputation. Yet in her hands lay a symbol of her youth, a fired truth, and a connection to something far more beautiful.

Five decades earlier, in a town called Moshi, Northern Tanzania, a young girl and her father knelt in the rust-orange dirt around a square wooden slab. Onto it, he slapped a ball of clay. It was cool in the soft of her palms, staining them the same rich brown as the back of her hands, and warming under her touch. It could be moulded, this way and that, to make shapes, animals, people, and—with practice and patience—a mug.

The girl stared, unblinking. She’d created something from nothing, shaped by her own hands.

And then came the rains that turned the grounds golden.

Viola clutched the treasure to her breast. She felt something settle, a decision. Her homeland was calling, and this time she listened.