Rome is clearly getting to me. Either that or it’s all the pasta and gelato (yes, even in December I will eat my body weight in ice cream, because it is just heavenly). Every morning I hear the church bells, calling me out to the streets. I have ambled through flea markets and spent all my money on antique trinkets that I do not need but hang in the window to catch the light in such a way as to push rainbows onto my notebook.

I love everything about this city. The chatter of women as they hang their laundry from balconies, the shouts of children running up and down the streets. The very history etched into every dusty red brick that makes my heart ache for someone to share it all with.

CMR

16

STARLING

Sturnus vulgaris

Back to the wall Emily sat, legs out straight, with feet turned in, like a rag doll. She felt ragged and bedraggled and agitated and all kinds of other things her mind couldn’t find the words for.

So sure had she been that this was where the next, potentially final, clue would be. Hidden in the very same place her grandmother sent Ophelia at the end of the very last book. In the library where she hid the atlas, ready for the next person to discover it.

It was the exact same library Catriona had sat in, day after day, carving out the beginnings of her second novel. A story of two women living the same life, only three generations apart; one Emily now believed was about the choices her grandmother made and the life she turned away from. It made her question whether her grandmother’s decision to leave had haunted her ever since, and she suspected this journey was, in part, Catriona’s way of showing her how easy it was to accept your existence. Because owning up to your mistakes could be terrifying.

And you can’t escape your past, she thought. The ghosts just never let you be.

“Are you sure this is the right library?” Tyler was looking back at the building, eyes hidden behind a pair of aviator sunglasses, but Emily had no need to see to understand his doubts, his frustrations. She wanted to be gone from here, from him, just as much as he did her.

“Yes,” she said quietly, but she felt like screaming at him. It was the oldest public library in Rome. It was next to a church. Her grandmother’s initials were carved on the underside of the table where she told Emily she had always sat, at the very back, close to the wall, half hidden behind a giant, wooden globe.

“The librarian said so too,” Phoebe replied, kicking her toes against the wall.

The librarian had become rather flustered, rather animated, upon discovering who Emily was and why she was there. He had babbled an apology in broken English about not having a book for her, but asked if she would like to see the desk where Catriona Robinson had sat, written all of her books?