‘We can’t do it, you know,’ she said quietly.

Rachel frowned. ‘We can’t do what?’

Trudy stepped away from the plinth and turned slowly in a circle, taking in the small domed room.

‘We can’t take it apart,’ she said. ‘We can’t destroy everything Eveline made here. It’s too special, it’s too… important, for so many reasons. When Alan first suggested it, I thought it made perfect sense,’ she went on. ‘We’d still be preserving Eveline’s secret, and we’d still have all her papers. But the more I thought about it… the more it seemed wrong. There have been so many women in the world just like Eveline, who have had talents and accomplished amazing feats that have been forgotten, or ignored, or else the credit has been taken by whatever guy was closest to her at the time. And I know it was Eveline’s wish that no one know the camera obscura, but she’s been dead for two hundred years now. I think we owe it to her to set the record straight. More than that, I think we owe it to women now to say, “Look! Look what this amazing woman did! She was suffering and even though her life was tragic, she made this! It’s still here and it still works and she should be remembered for that, not this other thing that probably wasn’t even true.”’ Trudy turned to Rachel, her face shining in the shaft of sunlight descending from overhead. ‘Don’t you think so too? After all this time, doesn’t she deserve to be celebrated for what she did here? For what she built? We have to tell people, Rachel. We have to make sure that it’s properly protected.’

Fifty-One

The next few days were hectic with preparations for the wedding. Dawn of the actual day found Rachel, with Eustace, already downstairs in the bookshop, helping Gilly with decorations. The tables had been set up the night before, arranged around the bookshop counter as if around a spindle, and onto them Gilly and Rachel had laid all the flowers that had arrived the day before.

Gilly had ordered whatever late summer blooms were still available now that the year had turned towards September: blousy pastel roses, bright cerise cosmos, the sunset blush of calendula, vibrant cascades of sweet peas, dahlias the size of dinner plates. For foliage she had chosen long sprigs of variegated ivy and dusky silver-green eucalyptus. Between them they used cream-coloured grosgrain ribbon to bind these into loose sprays, Rachel following Gilly’s directions. Gilly kept aside a variety of the best flowers and tied a smaller, slightly more formal bouquet for Edie to carry. She’d also found small glass vases to house an arrangement for each of the tables.

‘I need to keep a few loose stems too,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an idea for how to do Edie’s hair, if she’ll let me.’

‘You’re a natural at this,’ Rachel said, as they stood back to admire their handiwork. ‘Everything here is beautiful.’