Charlotte, or Charlie, as Emily called her, was her grandmother’s editor: the dear friend who stumbled across the story of Ophelia and Terence when she came to visit one spring night. She saw the potential, convinced Catriona to try to publish it. To put aside the adult fiction she had toiled with for over twenty years. A woman who fought for Emily’s drawings to be part of the very first publishing deal they both signed. She had been there for every book, every tour, every proposal, and always understood their need for privacy, despite the whole world begging for more.

Did she know? Emily wondered. Is she a part of this too?

But that made no sense, because Charlie had called only yesterday, asking once again if Emily knew anything about the existence of a new manuscript. If the rumors swirling around the newspapers were true.

Charlie down. Four more to go.

Gigi had to be Virginia, with whom Catriona traveled across Europe. The person who had bought her closest friend, the sister she never had, a locket when they parted ways. Emily wore the same locket around her neck, inside of which was a photograph of the two young women, taken somewhere in Rome. Two young women with the rest of their lives ahead of them, but who had met again only a handful of times before Gigi died, which was long before Emily was even born.

So not her either. Which left just three, but for the moment it was Noah she wanted to know more about. Because the dates matched. The dates from the diary entries were just under two years before Emily’s mother was born. And Catriona had never told, never revealed, who the father was.

Could it be that the secret, the mystery, her grandmother hinted at before she died had nothing to do with the manuscript after all? Could it be that Emily was being sent to find her grandfather, wherever he may be?

“Seriously.” Tyler sat up and yawned once more. “Stop staring at me. It’s making me nervous, all that thinking you do.” He stood, stretched his arms high, revealing a line of skin between T-shirt and jeans.

“I’m going outside for a smoke,” he said with a grin. “You coming?”

Outside, the morning sky was inky, thick with damp and the promise of more rain. Emily followed Tyler to the back of the ferry, leant over to watch the trails of frothing sea that stretched all the way back to England. Overhead, a gaggle of seagulls flew, every so often pitching down to grab at a fish upset by the boat’s engines.

Back home, more often than not, Emily would sit at her bedroom window, staring up at the sky and counting all the birds that flew through the blue. More and more, she would think about that freedom, that sensation of tilting up and over the ever-changing seasons. Of going wherever the wind took you, never staying in one place for too long.