“She didn’t tell me anything about you.”

“No?” He looked hurt, and Emily felt bad for being the cause.

“She didn’t tell me anything about any of you. Apart from Charlie.”

“God, she was terrifying.”

“Still is. And Gigi, who’s dead.”

Antoine sighed, then gave a gentle shake of his head and grinned at Emily. “Well, the point is I am rich. Filthy rich. Which means I have the ways and means to get you to Rome without the need for an automobile.” He took out his phone, sent a quick message, then showed her a photograph of a private jet.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Now, I know what you’re going to say. Confined spaces and all that, which is why I’m giving you these, as a parting gift.” He took her hand, dropped into it a small silver tin on which was hand-painted a rose. “Take one about ten minutes before takeoff and it’ll be like you’re floating through the clouds.”

Emily opened the tin, saw a half dozen little white pills staring back. It made her picture him as some sort of dysfunctional fairy godmother, loading her onto a private plane and stuffing her full of drugs.

“Now, there is one condition.”

Definitely a fairy godmother.

“You have to promise me that you will come back and visit one day, very, very soon, or else I will turn up on your doorstep and never leave.”

“I’m not sure Norfolk is exactly your kind of scene,” Emily said with half a smile, her mood somehow lifted by a man who she felt as if she had known all her life.

“I’m old, darling. Boring is probably exactly what I need. Besides, I want to meet Richard, the man with the Dalmatian who made your grandmother believe once more in love.”

“Richard?”

“Ah, seems she still had some secrets left to share.”

“Too many secrets.” The question as to why her grandmother had told Antoine about Richard, but not her, was one that would haunt Emily, at least for a little while. The idea that her grandmother could possibly think she wouldn’t want her to be happy in her final days. That perhaps Emily had somehow diminished her happiness by thinking only of herself, of how she would cope on her own.

“And not enough time. Speaking of which, we best get you off to the airport.”

Time, Emily thought, glancing at her watch and feeling a roll of nerves in her stomach as she once again imagined an egg timer, spilling all the remaining hours away. She tried not to think of what would happen if she couldn’t finish the puzzle before it was too late. The cottage would belong to someone new. Another family would dig up the rose beds, paint all the walls, and remove any trace of who had lived there before.

It had happened when her parents died, strangers moving into what had once been her home, and Emily had always hated the idea of someone else being happy there, jealous that it couldn’t be her.