“Old newspapers mostly. Turns out the building, or its foundations, were much older than anyone thought. Some Italian workers had left parts of sandwiches, and biologists were able to grow some tomato plants from the old seeds they found. Plants that had become all but extinct. They also found a couple of canvases.”

“Was that one?” Ruth pointed to the painting they’d been looking at, at the back of the studio.

Professor Massey laughed. “You think that’s garbage?”

He didn’t seem insulted, simply amused. Pleased even.

“Professor Massey painted that,” said Reine-Marie, jumping in to smooth over a potentially embarrassing moment, though she seemed the only one uncomfortable over what Ruth had said.

“You can see the paintings they found in a display case near the front door,” said Massey. “Nothing remarkable, I’m afraid. No Emily Carr or Tom Thomson stuffed in for insulation.”

As they talked, Reine-Marie studied page after page of photographs of young men and women. Most of the students were white. Most with long greasy hair. And tight turtlenecks, and tighter jeans. And petulant, disinterested expressions.

Too cool for school. Too cool to care.

Reine-Marie stopped and turned back a page.

There, unmistakably, was Clara, with hair that looked like Einstein’s. Wearing a shapeless smock and a huge, happy grin on her face.

And beside her on the sofa, the same sofa Reine-Marie had just been on, various students slouched. Professor Massey, younger and even more vigorous, was standing behind them, speaking to a young man.

They were locked in earnest conversation. A cigarette hung from the young man’s mouth, a puff of smoke obscuring his face. Except for one eye. Sharp, assessing. Aware.

It was Peter.

Reine-Marie smiled at the photograph, then returned to searching for Sébastien Norman. But when she found the section on the professors it was a disappointment.

“I’d forgotten,” said Massey, when shown the section. “That was the year the editors decided not to use our actual photographs. Maybe in response to the Salon des Refusés, they published pictures of our art instead. I think they deliberately chose the most embarrassing examples.”

He took the book back and turned a few pages, and grimaced. “That’s mine. The worst thing I think I’ve done.”

There were columns of bright paint, with slashes through it. It seemed to Reine-Marie quite dynamic. Not bad at all.

But then, artists probably weren’t the best judges of their own work.

“May I take this?” she asked, indicating the yearbook.

“Yes, as long as you bring it back.”

He spoke, not surprisingly, to Ruth. He said it so tenderly that Reine-Marie was tempted to answer for her.

“I’ll be waiting,” he said to the old poet. “I just sit where I’m put, composed of stone and wishful thinking.”