The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 5

This novel takes the form of journal entries written by Emma M. Lion, a 20-year-old orphan living in the London neighbourhood of St. Crispian's in late 1883. Emma is the rightful owner of Lapis Lazuli House, a residence long mismanaged by her Cousin Archibald Flat. She shares the house with Archibald, a cook named Agnes, and Archibald's incompetent valet Parian. Her tenant, Niall Pierce, a photographer with a permanent limp, occupies the adjoining studio called Lapis Lazuli Minor.

The journal opens on All Saints' Day, nine days after Emma buried Maxwell Stuart, a young man deeply important to her. The church bells remind her of his burial, and grief runs beneath the surface of her daily life, manifesting as lost appetite, sleeplessness, and distracted staring. Pierce notices she has barely eaten but Emma deflects his concern. She reflects on a recent late-night gathering in a graveyard with Pierce, the Duke of Islington, and Young Hawkes, St. Crispian's unconventional vicar, three men who have become an unexpected circle of friends.

Emma's domestic life is chaotic. Parian spills violet paint while redecorating the rooms Archibald gave him after telling Parian that Emma had died. Emma's banker, Mr. Penury, has mandated she find employment. She and her friend Mary Bairrage, a typist, review a comedic list of potential careers, but nothing is resolved. Mrs. Penury, the banker's wife, sends Emma ten pounds for the list's entertainment value. On Guy Fawkes Night, a holiday marking the foiled 1605 gunpowder plot against Parliament, Emma falls into an exhausted sleep and misses the bonfire entirely; Pierce stays with her out of concern.

Emma's curiosity is sparked when she overhears women at a tearoom discussing The Roman, St. Crispian's resident ghost, who reportedly visits a historian's daughter in her garden. She devises a plan to map The Roman's movements through the neighbourhood. First, she must overturn Lapis Lazuli House's ban from the neighbourhood's quarterly publication, St. Crispian's Gazette, incurred through Archibald's past offenses. She recruits Islington and Hawkes as character witnesses for a hearing before the editor, Mr. Harper. Both men testify, and Lapis Lazuli is reinstated on a provisional basis, with Hawkes's church paying the fine.

Emma places an advertisement in the Gazette seeking sightings of The Roman, triggering a disagreement with Pierce. He argues that immediately after burying Maxwell, her impulse to chase another ghost is troubling. Emma insists The Roman has nothing to do with Maxwell and accuses Pierce of projecting his own discomfort, since The Roman once warned that Pierce would bring an end to Lapis Lazuli House. They reach a standoff but reconcile before Pierce departs for photography commissions in Norfolk and Scotland.

While Pierce is away, Emma's grief becomes more visible. Her cousin Arabella Spencer writes that Emma's refusal to discuss Maxwell follows her lifelong pattern of silence about unendurable things. Agnes grows worried about Emma's weight loss. When Pierce returns, he confronts Emma directly, listing the signs she has been masking. He takes a single photograph that reveals her looking hollowed out and abandoned. Emma places the portrait inside a box labeled "AFGHANISTAN 1880," acknowledging that the toll of grief deserves to be documented alongside the costs of war.

Hawkes intervenes more gently. During a rainstorm, he tells Emma she needs not food but the sea, promising her a ship, pirates, stars, and luck. Before leaving, he whispers something in Irish Gaelic to Pierce's cat, Tybalt, who thereafter becomes Emma's devoted companion. Days later, a copy of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson appears on Emma's doorstep with a card bearing a drawn lion. Emma reads voraciously and, upon encountering the narrator's reflection on successive deaths, breaks down and cries thoroughly for the first time, emptying herself of grief. For the first time in weeks, she is hungry. She recognizes that Hawkes has found her a ship.

Parallel storylines develop alongside Emma's recovery. She accompanies Mary to King's College London, where Mary must reveal to Professor Fletcher, a widower with eight sisters, that "Martin Bairrage," the male pseudonym under which she secured typing work, is actually Mary herself. The professor accepts the revelation with equanimity. Separately, Jack Hollingstell, a man to whom Emma owes a favor, calls in his debt by taking her to Essex to pose as his wife before his dying mother, Abigail. Emma is furious but relents when she realizes Abigail is dying of tuberculosis. Abigail privately confides that she knows Jack is lying but asks Emma to watch out for him. Abigail dies before dawn. Jack later returns to Lapis Lazuli after midnight. Emma makes him chocolate, and he acknowledges he is now in her debt, washing the dishes before leaving as a quiet tribute to his mother, who worked as a scullery maid.

Emma's social world expands through a dinner at Lady Sheridan's, where Islington seeks her out and uses her first name publicly, creating gossip. On the carriage ride home, he shares a memory of asking Emma's late father what he wished for his daughter. Her father hoped Emma would be "wise, and good, and true to the beatings of your own heart," spared the extremes of wealth and poverty so neither would spoil her soul (180). Islington confesses he borrowed that wish for himself. When Emma reveals her financial difficulties, Islington promises not to let her fall.

The Roman mapping project draws in an unlikely ally when Archibald produces a stunning hand-drawn cartographer's map of St. Crispian's, revealing a hidden artistic talent overshadowed by Emma's father's work. Emma appoints him Master of the Map, and together they accumulate dozens of reported sightings. Meanwhile, Emma accidentally acquires another unwanted suitor after hosting a memorial service for Lord West's prize sweet pea. Hawkes officiates, Islington delivers an impromptu eulogy, and Lord West misinterprets Emma's kindness as romantic interest.

As Christmas approaches, Hawkes maneuvers Archibald into visiting his sister, clearing the way for a peaceful holiday. On Christmas Eve, the four friends gather in the drawing room, where a gold chair sent by Mrs. Penury has arrived to fill the fourth seat Hawkes once said was needed. Emma gives each man an embroidered cushion bearing a Latin phrase chosen for him. They give her books: Islington, a gilded copy of Plutarch's Lives; Pierce, a custom-bound volume of Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself"; and Hawkes, her father's heavily annotated copy of a book about Ireland, its pages filled with Declan Lion's handwriting, which reduces Emma to tears.

On New Year's Eve, Hawkes invites Emma to a private confession at the church. Behind a makeshift curtain, Emma speaks aloud for the first time about Maxwell's burial, describing the grief as a sword piercing her soul. Hawkes instructs her to envision her future. She sees herself at a table near a window, alone and content, surrounded by books, with a fire and daffodils. Then she hears footsteps on the stairs, belonging to someone who sounds like the other half of home. Hawkes also delivers a message from The Roman, who has asked Emma to stop tracking his movements. Emma agrees to take the map down.

Walking home, Emma encounters Pierce leaving for a New Year's party. They exchange quiet good wishes, his sleeve brushing hers as he passes. Emma retreats to her garret and closes the journal with the image of those mysterious footsteps on the stairs, a promise of a future she is finally brave enough to trust.