Emily couldn’t help but stare at the sight of all that beauty in one person, smiled at the idea he could have been someone her grandmother once loved. She looked a little closer, tried to determine if any of his features were akin to her own, then glanced again at Noah, but found no obvious similarities on either man that might have given her a clue as to whether she shared DNA with one of them.

Below the photograph someone had scribbled a quote from Alice in Wonderland, along with a smiley face and the date.

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then. 12 July 1965.”

Did you write this? Emily wondered as she followed the loops and kinks of the inky script, stared at the happiness on her grandmother’s face, at the ease with which she held herself. When did it all change, and which one of those breathtaking men broke her heart in two?

Turning the page once more, Emily stopped when she saw a photograph of her grandmother standing at an easel by an open window. Her hair was mostly pinned on top of her head in a haphazard bun, with a few loose curls at the back and around her ears. The painting was of a pair of bluebirds, perched on a branch and sharing, or fighting over, a worm. It was a painting that hung in the study back home in Norfolk, but Emily had never before known it was painted here, by her.

“This is the last one I have of Catriona,” Madeleine said as she perched against the desk. “Before she left.”

“With Antoine?”

“With Antoine.”

“Not Noah?”

Madeleine gave a wry smile. “Seems you don’t need anyone’s help to figure it out after all.”

“Why did she leave?” Emily wished she could make them all come to life somehow, or that she could dive into the past, experience what it was like to be her grandmother, just for a day. The beginnings of an idea, of a picture, wavered at the edges of her mind, and she automatically looked around her for a pen.

“I don’t know all the details. But my mother did say that Antoine and Noah never did get along. She often spoke of those six like they were her own children, she was so proud of them all, more than any other group before or since. But the two men were at constant odds with one another.” She looked carefully at Emily, at the curve of her lip, the brightness of her eyes that never rested for long on any one thing. “Not surprising when you look at the woman they were fighting over.”

“Can I keep these?” Emily seemed not to notice the way her tongue lisped over the last word as she flicked between the two photographs. So preoccupied was she with the images from her grandmother’s past, she didn’t give herself time to understand how much more easily the words were now falling into place.