This is a story set in Malta and Europe in the near future. In the form of a letter from a mother to her daughter Maddy, it shows a family trying to navigate the crisis in the region caused by a rapidly warming climate. See previous chapters in the story and read a note by the story's author. We stayed with Anselmo for nearly four years. The first couple of years were relatively good. Prolonged drought further south meant that olive yields had already suffered in Malta, North Africa and Greece – increased irrigation could not always cope with the effects of prolonged drought, and temperature peaks sometimes above 45°C. But up there near Rome the drought had been a little less cruel; when we got there the trees were not quite as stressed as the ones we had left behind in Malta. Yet after a first season where we harvested a comparatively bumper crop, the following years saw us hit by a weather double whammy that led to crop failure in two successive seasons. First we were smashed by an ice storm that felt like it came straight from the Arctic (figure of speech – the Arctic that year twice saw 30°C plus temperatures). For three nights in a row the temperature went as low as -8°C,...