London, 1862

Memory is a hoarder’s closet, in which we can never find the item we want, while the things we’d rather avoid insist on tumbling out. We could be searching for the name of the person we met last Tuesday, only to be crushed by the recollection of mispronouncing hors d’oeuvres at dinner with our in-laws.

Science has discovered that a memory is more likely to stick when strong emotion is attached. Pay attention, it tells our brains. This is important. Just as a medieval scholar might draw a tiny pointing hand in the margin when he finds a passage worth remembering, we create markers for our future selves.

That was why Reina Martin would always remember the first time someone called her a bastard.

It happened on a winter day after she and her best friend, June, had gone skating in Hyde Park. On the way home, the ten-year-old girls stopped at the street corner where Mr. Budge, the chestnut man, had set up his pitch. Hand-painted signs on his wheeled cart proclaimed Warm yer mitts and Nuts for a penny.

The girls huddled next to the tin stove. As Mr. Budge lifted the domed lid to turn over smoking chestnuts with an iron scoop, a billow of sweetly scorched air warmed their faces.

“Got me a farthing,” June told Reina, who was busy searching the pockets of her wool coat. “How much you got, Queenie?”

Reina frowned at the name. “Are you making fun of me?”

June looked indignant. “Course not! It’s what your name means in Spanish, you said.”

“I’m not a queen, though.”

“You’re queen of book-reading. I’m queen of cooking. We can be queens of anything we want.”

Mr. Budge smiled. “What’ll it be, then, majesties?”

Reina pulled a penny from her pocket. “We’ll share one, please.”

Ceremoniously, he scooped chestnuts into a paper cone while they bounced on their heels in excitement.