Oxfordshire, Present Day

SOPHIE LAY AWAKE that night, longing for a good novel to take her mind off that kiss. Just before she’d turned in, Victoria had popped her head into Sophie’s room with a wicked grin on her face.

“So,” she said, “this Eric Hall. Marry, kill, or shag?”

“Kill,” said Sophie, almost certain she was lying. “Definitely kill.”

“I doubt that,” said Victoria, and smiled at her sister before going to bed with assurances they’d talk about it in the morning.

Now Sophie was left alone pondering that damn kiss. God, it wasn’t like she hadn’t stumbled home from parties in Oxford and had a snog in the shadows with some guy whose name she would forget the next day. She had done that several times since Clifton, actually. But this had been sober and deliberate and done with the full knowledge that it could lead nowhere. And she wasn’t even sure she liked him. When she remembered the way he made her laugh and how comfortable she was walking with him along the river or up the garden, she was sure she did. But when she thought of how he had acted at the pub and at dinner with her father, she wanted to hit him. But she couldn’t hit him because he was gone. Her mind shuffled through every page of Jane Austen, looking for a kiss like the one in the garden. What would Eliza Bennet think? Or Marianne Dashwood? I do not like him, she tried repeating to herself as she stared up at the cracked ceiling. I do not like him. But if that was true, then why did she feel so miserable that he would never return?

At three, she finally gave up on sleep and crept downstairs. On a hook in the kitchen she found the key to the library. Even though she had no idea where her father kept the key to the bookcases, just sitting in the dark room surrounded by the smell of all those books calmed her. Tomorrow, she decided, she would go to London and join Uncle Bertram at an antiquarian book fair and Eric Hall would be forgotten. She could just imagine what her uncle would say when she told him about all this: “Dive into life, Sophie; have the adventure!” As she finally fell into sleep, she heard his voice telling her, “Sometimes you think too much.”

—

BAYFIELD HOUSE WAS USUALLY quiet on Sunday mornings. Sophie’s father would don his tweeds and head out into the countryside; her mother would pull on her gloves and slip out into the garden. Church was rarely on the docket. When she awoke late the next morning, however, Sophie heard loud voices and ringing telephones. Doors banged and feet pounded up and down stairs and a car started up in the courtyard and sped away, spewing gravel against the side of the house. In spite of all the commotion, no one seemed to notice that the library was unlocked and that Sophie was lying on the couch. When she finally made her way bleary-eyed into the kitchen in search of tea, her mother was sitting at the table staring at an uneaten slice of toast. Victoria stood looking out the window, her face impassive.

“Good morning,” said Sophie tentatively.

“He’s gone to London,” said Mrs. Collingwood, almost as if she hadn’t heard her daughter.

“I beg your pardon?”

Before Sophie realized what had happened, her sister had wrapped her in an embrace and was sobbing on her shoulder. Sophie’s pulse quickened with fear.

“Your father’s gone to London to attend to business,” said Mrs. Collingwood.

“What’s wrong?” said Sophie, as Victoria dropped her embrace and slipped into a chair. “What business could Father have on a Sunday?”

“Pour yourself a cup of tea and sit down, Sophie,” said her mother, turning at last to face her daughter. Sophie could see that she had been crying—her eternally stoic mother had been crying. Her eyes were red and puffy and she gripped a wad of tissue in one hand. Sophie felt a rock in the pit of her stomach.

“Mother, Tori, what’s happened?” she asked.

“Sit down,” said her mother hollowly.

Sophie sat and reached for her mother’s hand.

“Oh, you poor, poor child,” said Mrs. Collingwood.

“Me?” said Sophie. “What about me?”

Mrs. Collingwood stared at her daughter blankly for several seconds before she continued. “It’s your Uncle Bertram,” she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Uncle Bertram?” said Sophie, dropping her mother’s hand.

“There’s been an accident,” said Victoria.

“What do you mean there’s been an accident? Is he all right? Where is he?”

“He’s . . . Sophie, your Uncle Bertram is dead,” said her mother.

“No,” said Sophie, unable to even process the words. “No he’s not. Tell me what happened really.”

“He slipped and fell down the stairs outside his flat,” said Victoria, reaching for her sister’s free hand.

“No,” said Sophie, pulling away and standing up. “No, I want to talk to him. I need to talk to him. Where is he?”

“He broke his neck, they think,” said Victoria in a dull monotone. “They found him this morning.”

“That’s not right,” said Sophie, whose eyes had begun to glaze over. “I just talked to him.” The air seemed to have left the room. Something was wrong, very wrong. Perhaps she was still asleep and this was only a nightmare.

“Your father’s gone to London to tend to . . . things. He wants to have the funeral here, though, so we’ll have to put on a brave face and . . . Sophie? Sophie, are you all right?”

Sophie thought perhaps there were more words, but they came from the end of a long black tunnel, and then she was falling and falling and then everything was fine. She was twelve years old and she and Uncle Bertram were walking home from a book fair laden with purchases.

“Am I a book collector, Uncle Bertram?” she asked as they reached the quiet streets of Maida Vale.

“What do you do with a book when you get it?” Uncle Bertram asked.

“I read it,” said Sophie. “Or else I ask you to read it to me.”

“And then what?”

“And then I put it on my shelf so I can look at it again whenever I want to.”

“And do you ever want to throw it away or sell it?”

“Of course not,” said Sophie. “What a silly question.”

“I have one more silly question, and then I can tell you if you’re a book collector.”

“What is it?” she asked earnestly.

“After you get a new book and you read it and you put it on your shelf, do you love it?”

“Oh yes!” said Sophie.

“Then you are a book collector,” said Uncle Bertram. “Just like me.”

She laughed with glee. “I’m happy that I’m like you, Uncle Bertram.”

“I’m happy, too.”

—

“SOPHIE! SOPHIE, ARE YOU all right?” Somehow Uncle Bertram was gone and faces swam above her. She lay on something cold and hard, yet her whole body felt sweaty. Everything above her—faces, cracks in whiteness, bits of color—was spinning slower and slower and then she was lying on the kitchen floor looking up at her mother and her sister and Uncle Bertram was dead and her world had been turned upside down.