On the walls around it were pinned dozens of scraps of paper, each adorned with quotes, doodles, and outpourings of love. Used Metro tickets, Polaroid pictures, a restaurant receipt, all stuck to the wall and one another with sticky tape, pins, even lumps of chewed gum.

As she leant closer, she mumbled through a few of the poems and notes, wondered if ever something of her grandmother’s was pinned here. If ever her fingers used the typewriter to begin one of her books, those she had written before Emily was born.

This was where it all began, where Catriona Robinson turned her love of literature into a career, a life. Where she found inspiration, kindred spirits, a reason to keep going no matter the odds. Which one of them did she confide in, turn to for help, when she was as poor as a church mouse, raising her daughter alone? Did any of them know who the father was, if he was still alive?

From somewhere deep within the store came the sound of a piano being played. Following the notes like a rat to the piper, Emily weaved from room to room, spied a couple of narrow beds, under which more books were stored. At the end of one room was a ladder propped up against the wall, and above this was another bed, fashioned out of a shelf with a faded piece of material used as a curtain of sorts.

Where had she slept? Which bed bore the weight of her? So much about her grandmother was a mystery, but walking in her shadow only seemed to make Emily miss her all the more.

“Emily?” Tyler’s voice called her over to where he stood by the piano, holding a brown paper package, tied up with string.

As Emily approached, the man playing the piano turned his head, nodded his welcome without ever halting the movement of his fingers. He was older, but not old enough to be who she had dared to hope for.

Emily snatched the parcel from Tyler, turned it over to see another sticker, this one of a mermaid with golden hair, playing a harp made from shells. She paused a moment, tried to guess which book her grandmother had chosen to hide within. Would it be the one about a boy who was afraid to put his head under the water, just like Tyler used to be? Someone whom Ophelia took swimming with mermaids, down to the bottom of the deep blue sea, and managed to overcome his fear of the unknown.

Part of her wanted it to be the last clue, the last book. But already she felt disappointed because she knew there would be so much more to come.

“Where was it?” she whispered to Tyler, trying not to show the anger in her voice, trying not to let her feelings pour out all over the floor.

“I asked the woman at the front desk,” he replied, squinting up at the bookshelves behind him.