“Aren’t you going in?” Tyler asked as Emily moved from window to window, tilting her head to watch a sleepy dormouse emerge from out of a ruby red teapot.

“No,” Emily replied as she walked on by. Because it wasn’t there that the atlas was discovered. It wasn’t in amongst the shelves of shortbread, delicate china cups, and hordes of tourists that the story really began. No, that was next door, in Hatchards, England’s oldest bookshop.

As soon as she went inside, it felt like stepping back in time; back to all those mornings spent devouring the words of Roald Dahl, Enid Blyton, and more. All the days when she would run up the curved wooden staircase to the second floor, eyes bright with anticipation, then seek out a new delight to be read, curled up on a green leather sofa until she was told it was time to go home.

“Isn’t that Aunt Cat?” Tyler was pointing at a collection of photographs on one wall, including Bette Davis, Anthony Hopkins, and, indeed, Catriona Robinson. Photographs of when they had come to sign their bestselling books, the moment captured and framed for all to see.

Emily gave a small nod, then walked on without looking. It had been taken the last time she was here, when Emily was just sixteen and with all the insecurities of youth, hating the way excited readers crowded around her grandmother. And hating even more the way they stared at her scar.

Only ten minutes ago she had stepped off the bus and into Trafalgar Square, marveling at how different it all seemed, yet somehow exactly the same. They had sped past St. Paul’s, the Old Bailey, and Covent Garden, where Emily went every year at Christmas to watch The Nutcracker, before ice skating at Somerset House.

Her grandmother would have known where the train would end up, which bus Emily would have to take to get from the station to find the next clue.

Did it mean she wanted Emily to remember, not to hate the memories, but to embrace them for the happiness she once had? But all of the good was stitched together with all of the bad, and it was remarkably difficult to separate the two.

She could sense Tyler watching her as she made her way up to the second floor. So many of her memories were tied up with him, and it made her wonder if he had been chosen for this very reason. To force her to look back.

“Crikey,” Tyler said as they came to a stop in front of an entire wall dedicated to The Tales of Ophelia and Terence. “It’s like some kind of fairy-tale shrine.”

Row upon row of books, flanked at either end with giant cardboard cutouts of a girl and a duck. There was bunting hanging from the ceiling, decorated with favorite characters from the books. In the window nook there was a forest scene, with a silver tree around the trunk of which a Chinese dragon was curled, and a mermaid sat on a swing made out of seaweed, hanging from one of the branches. At the very center of it all was an atlas, with each of its pages edged in gold. On either side, the shelves were filled with board games, and pencils, notebooks, and mugs. Anything and everything you could possibly think of, emblazoned with the images Emily had herself created.