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Despite the early hour, the dining car is packed. When Myra first suggested we take the newly revamped overnight train to Scotland instead of flying, I'd pictured the epitome of luxury and #slowtravel: mahogany paneling and tartan furnishings, observation cars with overstuffed sofas and table service. But the Caledonian Express is more Slumdog Millionaire than Murder on the Orient Express. We spot Mama and Papa at the far end of the carriage and thread our way through the group of Chinese students who seem to have no concept of personal space.

I slip into the window seat opposite my mother-in-law, watching Aseem as he pushes his way to the bar with our rather large breakfast order.

It's only when I tear my gaze away from my husband that I realize Mama's eyes are on him as well. Other than the black kohl rimming her eyes, her face is devoid of any makeup, her skin dewy and almost translucent in the early morning light. I make a mental note to book in with her facialist—her biweekly appointments at Aura Spa are the only thing more sacred to her than her astrologer—and considering the fact that at sixty she can easily pass for a forty-five-year-old, maybe she's on to something.

"He looks tired," she says, turning to face me after a moment.

Of course he does, I want to say. Aseem took a step back from his own start-up and took over the family business when Papa had a stroke four years ago. Ever since then, he's been working himself into the ground trying to turn a product he has zero interest in into something profitable. But there's little point in saying anything. The company, PetroVision, and the petrochemicals it manufactures, is Papa's pride and joy, and the last thing I want to do right now is to upset him, what with his retirement and the transfer of the shares looming.

"He's been up since four a.m. talking to the consultants," I say instead. Though Aseem's been running the company since Papa's illness, Papa's still the chairman and, most importantly, the sole shareholder. It's important he realizes just how hard Aseem's working on this deal. "Something to do with the payment terms for the sale."

 

"Can't your lawyer handle all this while we're on vacation?" Mama says, looking up at Papa, her finely arched eyebrows giving her a look between worry and disdain.

"It's a three thousand crore deal, Shalini. The buyer is my oldest rival," Papa says, barely looking up from his newspaper. "And Aseem's the COO. So no, the lawyers can't handle this."

As Papa carries on about how he built PetroVision up from scratch, how he didn't even have an assistant, let alone a lawyer when he first started, I tune out. It's a story we've all heard countless times before.

Three thousand crores. Roughly three hundred million pounds, just fifty million shy of the King's estimated net worth. The King.

It's a number that would have seemed completely unfathomable to me just a few years ago.

A number that still gets my heart racing.

And judging by how quickly everyone agreed to this trip, I'm not the only one. Ever since Papa announced his retirement, we've all been waiting for him to reveal his inheritance plan.

I let my gaze drift back to the window, to the amber sun slanting across the snow-capped Munros. Once the sale is complete, Aseem won't have to play by Papa's rules any more.

We won't have to play by Papa's rules. We'll finally be free.

The atmosphere in the carriage changes as we pass a particularly dramatic stretch. There's an audible holding of breath before people scramble to the right-hand side, cameras in hand. I press my phone up against the window to snap a few photos as the train skirts along the edge of a cliff, the slowly rising sun bathing the valley and the loch at its heart glittering orange. Despite the obvious beauty, there is something unsettling about the landscape, a harshness that makes it seem unforgiving. Hostile. I put on a goofy grin and scrunch my hair, making sure I look a little sleep deprived and scruffy, then take a few selfies. My #instaperfect life relies on my looking imperfect.

I scroll through the pictures and pick the two best ones, carefully tweaking the color and temperature before posting it on Instagram with the hashtags accidentaladult, offgrid, and discoverscotland. My followers love me for my spontaneity, but the irony is that I only found success as an influencer when I stopped being spontaneous and started paying attention to who my followers are and what they respond to: adulting. My followers are expat millennials with Peter Pan syndrome, so I've now got Excel sheets of hashtags and prewritten captions that give everything from fashion to travel a life advice spin. Everything about my seemingly off-the-cuff posts is planned to a military level of detail, snippets of my life tweaked and calibrated to appeal to my specific brand of followers.

It's exhausting.

But it's paid off. In less than two years, my account, Accidental Adult, has amassed half a million followers. I've progressed from being just another twentysomething trying to make it big online to being recognized and respected in the influencer space.