“Can’t what?”

“Forgive myself for surviving.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he said.

“What would you know?”

He didn’t reply, he simply sat quite still, looking at her.

The same waitress came back, carrying a parcel that she laid on the table between them. Giancarlo nodded at Emily, but she didn’t want it, nor what was hidden inside. That damn feeling had returned, the one that had been lurking in her subconscious, only dealt with momentarily by the priest, but now it was back and ready to be set free.

“Can you do it, please,” she whispered, watching as he pulled the paper apart to reveal a picture of two girls holding tight to the back of an enormous bird with feathers the color of fire. They were soaring over the earth, high into the heavens, looking down on a village through the center of which a river ran.

Emily let go her relief as she reached across for the book, because it was a story about love. About a girl who carried a bird with damaged wings through a thunderstorm, only for it to die. So she buried it under her window, and the next morning a phoenix rose from the ground to take her and Ophelia flying through the clouds to visit a rainforest, where a whole host of creatures was nesting in the tallest of trees. Ophelia had asked what happened if they fell, only for the phoenix to reply that they simply had to learn to fly.

Giancarlo sipped his coffee, put the cup gently on the table, and Emily noticed that his hand was shaking. She could feel that doubt, that fear, slink back inside her heart as she pulled out a plain white envelope from between the pages of the book.

“There’s something about death that makes you appreciate how fleeting, how precious, life really is,” he said, looking at the envelope as if he might have some idea what it contained. “After the initial pain and horror fades a little, then you realize how fragile we all are. How easily all of this—this life—can be gone.” He paused to wipe his spectacles with a handkerchief. “She wanted you to understand that you were her reason for not giving up.”

Emily thought again about the story within the book Giancarlo had given her and when it had been written, shortly after their return from London. They had gone for a book signing at Hatchards, with all those people staring at her, followed by the disastrous visit to the cemetery, when Emily hadn’t even been able to look upon her parents’ grave. Back in Norfolk, she had locked herself in her room and refused to come down, to engage in anything that remotely resembled conversation.

Catriona had tried everything: pleading, cajoling, not to mention bribery, but not even the sight of Milton at her window had been enough to pull Emily out of her nightmares. For close to a week she had done nothing but cover her thoughts with music turned up to full volume, Jimi Hendrix and his guitar pushing everything else from her mind.