“You agree, don’t you?”

Emily turned as Phoebe leant across to her, tapped her lightly on the back of her hand.

“Sorry, what?”

“It’s a romance, not a tragedy.”

“They die,” Tyler said. “Not very romantic.”

“Yes, but it reunites the two families,” Phoebe argued. “It’s not romance in its purest sense, but because of what it creates. The sense of sacrifice, not only for the lovers, but their friends as well. It’s about all kinds of love, not just sex.”

“It’s a catalog of errors, and they both kill themselves because they’re too stupid to realize what’s actually happening.” This last part was delivered while looking straight at Emily, waiting to see how she would respond.

“What is it about men and Shakespeare?” Phoebe punched Tyler playfully, rolled her eyes at Emily.

“What is it about women and their need for a happily ever after?” he said.

“I’m not taking sides.” Emily picked up her pen, began to recreate the idea she had about turning words into music, an idea she had first come across when sitting in a store back in Norfolk, listening to the bookseller telling her about the puzzle her grandmother wanted her to solve.

Five days gone, Emily thought to herself. Only five more left to go.

Turning down the volume on all the conversations, she began to hum a tune, one that her grandmother always played whenever she felt in need of a pick-me-up. Her magical go-to that never failed to see both of them leaping about the kitchen, then collapsing in a pile of laughter and exhaustion as “Dancing Queen” came to an end.

Emily smiled as she realized she had been drawing an orchestra of birds. Hummingbirds, which were sort of her own go-to, her favorite. She had first discovered one on holiday in France and mistaken it for a giant bee. They were mesmerizing, with their incredible, iridescent colors, the speed with which those tiny wings would beat. It was a fascination that resulted in her disappearing during one trip to the Natural History Museum, when Tyler accused her of running away. All she had wanted was to see a real one, albeit stuffed, motionless, so that she might try to capture some of that brightness on paper.

“So you do remember?” Tyler was smiling at her, at her work, while he sat forward in his chair.

“Hummingbirds can fly in the rain,” she replied without looking up, then added a bow to one of the birds that sat at the front, holding a violin.

“Can’t all birds fly in the rain?” Phoebe asked, picking at a cuticle on her finger.

“They have no sense of smell, and their tongues look like feathers.” But it was their colors she loved most of all. The blur of wing which changed the pigment, the fragmentation of light that turned into all possible hues on the spectrum. Every time she looked at one, she saw something new.

“She’s like a walking bird encyclopedia,” Tyler said as he stood. “Anyone want anything from the buffet car?”