Florence had kept a journal since she was nine. She documented everything — train tickets, dried flowers, the names of good coffee shops. Rupert had kept nothing. He said he trusted memory more than paper. This was, she later pointed out, demonstrably untrue.

They met at a secondhand bookshop on a Tuesday in November. She was looking for a particular edition. He had already bought it. He offered it back. She declined. He suggested they read it together, which was either the most forward thing anyone had ever said to her, or the most natural. She is still deciding.

What she is not deciding is that she keeps the receipt from that day. It is in the front of her journal. It is, she thinks, the first page of a much longer story.

“Some things are worth keeping.”

— From her journal, Nov. 2022