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She grinned. “You see? The perfect excuse.”

“In that case, you might be even happier to see me.” He unrolled the scrunched-up to top of the bag to reveal a pair of parchment-wrapped sandwiches. “I thought that you might be hungry, so I brought some dinner by.”

She thought about the dish cooked by Mrs. Atkinson that was no doubt sitting in the oven at home, waiting to be heated up and eaten alone at the flat’s dining room table.

“Sandwiches sound like just the thing,” she said. “Let me give you some coupons for whatever’s in them.”

He shook his head. “There’s no need. I once did a little work for Mrs. Reynolds’s son when he had a problem with the lease on the building for his hardware shop a few roads down. She doesn’t mind adding a little extra to an order from time to time.”

She put her hand to her chest in mock horror. “Mr. Gray, are you admitting that you are dealing on the black market? And you, a solicitor.”

He shot her a smile. “I thought that the girl who used to pinch oranges from the stand outside of Mrs. Reynolds’s shop wouldn’t mind.”

“That is just one of the many grievances Mrs. Reynolds has against me,” she said.

“I remember you always used to smell like orange oil afterward,” he said.

She blushed. When she’d been younger and just learning how to primp, she used to take the peel of the stolen oranges and rub it behind her ears because she couldn’t afford scent. To think that he would have remembered a little thing like that…

“Will you come back?” she asked. “I can’t promise much in the way of dining facilities, but I can make us some tea.”

“Now that is a fair trade for sandwiches,” he said.

She led him to the office and cleared a bit of space for him before going to make tea. When she returned, she found him looking around, the unwrapped sandwiches sitting on their paper next to her notebook.

“Here you are,” she said, handing him a cup.

“Thank you,” he said. “It must have been quite the job tidying this place.”

“It was more than a tidy,” she said. “My mother’s record-keeping system baffles me. It took me until the first week in March to sort through the paperwork, let alone reconcile the account books.”

He winced. “Was it really that bad?”

“I found receipts for fabric purchased in 1932 in the same box as a bag of buttons and bits of ribbon, and that chair you’re sitting on was held up by an order book from 1929,” she said.

“How is the flat?” he asked.

She stilled. “I don’t know.”

“Sylvia, you have been up to the flat, haven’t you?”

She cleared her throat. “No. Not yet. The shop has been keeping me so busy, I’ve hardly been able to give it a thought.”

Working at the shop had been hurdle enough. She wasn’t yet ready to climb the steep stairs to the upper floor and immerse herself completely in the life she’d once had.

“Do you know, I tried to help Izzie sort through all of this when you both first inherited,” he said.

“And you didn’t run away screaming?” she asked with a laugh. “You are a wonder, William.”

“I nearly did.”

“I can’t say I blame you,” she said.

He sat back, seeming to study her.

“You’re making me nervous, William. What is it?” she asked, half-joking.

“How do you think the shop was doing before your mother’s death?” he asked. He must have seen her surprise about such a direct question because he quickly added, “I would ask your sister, but I fear Izzie might have been too close to assess it fairly.”