Lily drops the purse and runs down the path to the back door, a snail cracking underfoot as she turns into the garden. The back door is unlocked, and this alarms her even more than the locked front door. She steps into the trapped heat of the conservatory, clambering past all the folded-up garden furniture. A wasp batters drowsily at the plastic roof. She steps into the living room.

Here is Edna. Facedown on the carpet. She has fallen forward into the fireplace, and the coals form a reddish halo around her head. The room smells of burned hair and makes Lily think of freshly chopped fingernails. She falls forward onto her knees and lets out the oddest noise—a sort of strangled, keening note. Edna’s lumpy body is heavy and stubborn but she pushes on one arm, gets her up, turns her over. The coals shift and spill, the fire flaring back to life until Edna’s head comes to rest once more in the embers. The orange glow of the firelight pulses in its charcoal prison. The heat licks at Edna’s hair, causing it to blacken and curl, the smoke launching heavenward in a sweet, sickly incense.

Edna.

The right side of her face remains largely untouched, just a brush of soot like she’s been up the chimney. But the left . . . The left is a half-mask of black and red ruin, her dentures lying half exposed and melted, her hair—that wispy, half-dead hair that she coveted so—is gone, exposing the scarred pink dome of Edna’s skull. The eye is the worst, though. The left eye. Sitting loosely in its socket, a bubbling, hissing mess of milky jelly. There’s no chance this eye can see anything anymore, and yet it looks straight into Lily’s heart.

She backs away and sits down heavily in the armchair.

You have to ring for help, says an echo somewhere behind her. Edna always knows what to do.

Call Oscar, Edna says.

“Yes,” says Lily. She glances out through the conservatory door and registers the furniture is in, all wrapped up and put away neatly. She wonders how Edna could have managed it all on her own.

day five

The Library at Alexandria, circa 48 BC

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The Library at Alexandria, circa 48 BC

Plutarch tells us of the siege of Alexandria, how Julius Caesar was forced to set fire to his own ships, the fire ultimately spreading to the docks and on through the city to the great library, with its 400,000 scrolls, parchments, and tablets.

You’re no great historian, but you do like reading. What would you have done without the library? You spent more time there than anywhere. It was warm and dry, and generally the librarians left you alone. Provided they didn’t notice you. But then you were always good at hiding, weren’t you?