With Sylvie still asking Toby about his memoirs as often as she could, he’d tried to get back to work, but he wasn’t really getting anywhere. He had been sitting there for at least an hour, fiddling with a paragraph that wouldn’t come together, when there was a knock at his front door.

He opened it to find Rachel standing on his doorstep with a cardboard box in her arms.

‘Hi,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Sorry to appear unannounced, but—’

‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, standing aside. ‘Come in.’

They went into the kitchen and she hesitated as she saw the table. ‘I’m sorry, are you working? I don’t want to interrupt.’

He pushed his laptop shut as he passed it on his way to get her a wine glass. ‘You weren’t. Really, I had ground to a halt before I’d even begun. Some wine?’

She smiled, still holding the box. ‘That’d be nice, thanks.’

‘What have you got there?’ he asked, coming back towards her.

She looked down at it, apparently reluctant to put it down. ‘I found it under Cullen’s bed, hidden behind a stack of the New Yorker.’

Toby put a glass of wine down on the table in front of her. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Well…’ She put the box on the table and picked up her glass, taking a large mouthful.

Toby laughed. ‘You’re being mysterious.’

‘Sorry. I’m still… processing. I’ve got something to show you that’s… huge, frankly.’

‘Okay,’ he said, eyeing the box.

‘It’s about the camera obscura.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes.’ Rachel sipped more of her wine. ‘Here’s the thing. We’ve always assumed that E.A.M. – and I think it’s a fair assumption, given that those initials are all over every blueprint – was the actual architect and builder of the lighthouse, and that James MacDonald has been credited with the work because it was his idea and on his land. And, because, frankly, he wanted to be and he was the one with the money. Right?’

‘Right,’ Toby said, pulling out a chair for her to sit and then sitting back down in his own.

‘And once we found the mention of Edward McCreedy,’ Rachel said, sinking into her seat, ‘we thought he must be E.A.M., the actual architect who had been diddled out of credit by James MacDonald. Except – that never really fit, did it? All the papers and notebooks cover more than the span of the years the lighthouse was being designed and built. If they were McCreedy’s, why were they all in the lighthouse even after he’d finished building it and been sent to Australia? And that first note – To You Who Finds Me – that doesn’t really fit in with the idea that it was written by a scorned architect about to be transported, either. But without any other candidates available, and with the evidence of the initials, we kind of just went with the idea of Edward McCreedy as E.A.M.’

‘I’m with you so far,’ Toby said. ‘But I’m wondering where this is going.’