There was a pause and then Trudy gave a strange, slightly strangled laugh. ‘You’re right. This is so strange. This whole thing has been strange.’

‘I know it has,’ Rachel told her, with genuine sympathy. ‘And I understand that this is yet more to take in on top of everything else. But I thought you should know.’

‘I’m glad you told me,’ Trudy said. ‘I am, really. And now… I guess I have to work out what to do about it. I don’t think you know this yet, but this afternoon Bernie Stuart made an official offer, and… well, I’m 99 per cent sure I’m going to take it.’

‘I completely understand,’ Rachel said, though her heart sank. ‘I was expecting that, to be honest.’

There was another pause and then Trudy said, ‘Look, I’m going to have to go. I think I need to spend some time with all this for a while, you know?’

‘Of course,’ Rachel said. ‘And listen, anything you want to talk through, I’m here any time.’

‘Thanks. I know how tough all this must be on you.’

Rachel looked around the bookshop. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘All good things must come to an end.’

‘Must they, though?’ Trudy asked. ‘People say that, but they never explain why.’

Once they had ended the call, Rachel stood in the quiet of the empty bookshop, thinking about Eveline MacDonald and the story she and Toby had pieced together. They’d never really know the absolute truth, only what they had been able to glean from the fragments she’d left behind, but if not for the camera obscura, for the secret locked in that attic room, they wouldn’t even know that much. All that would have been left of her was the lurid and incorrect story told by someone else, in which she didn’t even warrant a name.

Toby felt a bit better in the wake of his conversation with Rachel, despite the substance of what he’d had to tell her. At least now when he thought about the last time he’d seen her, it wouldn’t be that terrible moment in the hallway of his rental cottage, when she’d looked at him as if she’d never seen him before, and moreover as if she never wanted to see him again.

He was packing up the car when the phone rang. He expected it to be Sylvie on the line, asking if he’d left yet, but it wasn’t.

‘Rachel,’ he said, flummoxed. She was the last person he expected to hear from.

‘Hi,’ she said, sounding awkward, so that he was reminded of Stephanie Warren and her disconcerting blushing. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting?’

‘No, not at all. I was getting ready to leave.’

There was a pause and for a second he thought she was going to hang up, pretend that she’d never called him. ‘I owe you an apology,’ she said.

‘You don’t owe me anything at all,’ he told her.

‘I do. After everything you did for me, how I reacted, it wasn’t…’ she trailed off with a sigh.