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she wasn’t as ordinary as I’d thought.
    “Will you tell me your name?” she asked gently.
    I touched my bee charm and reminded myself that I was always connected with my heavenly power source.“It’s Mella,” I said huskily.
    Aurelia’s father hired horse-drawn wagons to transport us and their possessions back to Rome. Reuben went up front with Aurelia’s dad. As vulnerable females, Aurelia and I had to travel in the middle of the convoy. I thought these precautions were a bit extreme, but she explained that there were bandits on some stretches of the Via Roma.
    It wasn’t far to the capital city in miles, but in a Roman-style wagon train, the journey seemed to go on forever. But it gave Aurelia and me the opportunity to get to know each other. I tried not to tell too many lies. My mistress assumed I was a freeborn girl who’d fallen on hard times and been sold into slavery, and I just went along with it. To explain my unfamiliarity with Roman ways, I said I’d grown up in Carthage. Our instructors had mentioned this mysterious ancient country, and it had stuck in my brain.
    Mostly, though, I got Aurelia to talk about herself.
    Aurelia was born in Rome, but when she was a few months old her dad had been posted overseas to administer Roman law to the troublesome Brits and she had to go with him. There were very few Roman kids where they lived, and she’d often felt isolated.
    “This is the first time I’ve had a person of my own age to talk to in a long time,” she told me.
    We both went back to gazing out of the window. The scenery was gorgeous: shady cypresses, lush vineyards and peach groves. Now and then we’d glimpse a small red-roofed farm among the olive trees.
    “My mother described this countryside so vividly that I feel as if I remember it myself,” Aurelia said in a wistful voice. “My mother died when I was ten,” she explained. “People say you’ll get over it but you never do.”
    “True,” I agreed. “But it stops hurting so much.”
    Aurelia’s grey eyes went soft with sympathy. “Did you lose your mother?”
    I swallowed. “My mum and my little sister.”
    The night before I died, Jade sat up in her sleep and said, “You’re my best sister in the universe.” I said, “I’m your only sister you nutcase.” How was I to know it was our last conversation?
    I hastily cast around for a different subject. “I guess you must look like your mum. You certainly don’t look like your dad.”
    She smiled. “I don’t look like either of them. I’m adopted.”
    “Oh, sorry! I didn’t know!”
    Luckily Aurelia didn’t seem offended. “Except for my older brother, Quintus, none of my parents’ natural children survived more than a few hours after birth. When my mother’s last baby was stillborn, she told my father she no longer wanted to live if she couldn’t give him any more children. Next morning a slave found me on the doorstep. My mother thought it was a miracle and begged my father to adopt me. My father was so grateful to see her happy again that he agreed, even though I was only a girl.”
    I couldn’t imagine how it would feel, not knowing who your real parents were. My dad left us when I was six years old, but I knew him at least.
    “So you have no idea who you really are?”
    “No,” she said cheerfully. “I’m a complete mystery.”
    “Wow, that must be so weird. You could have other brothers and sisters somewhere.”
    Aurelia laughed. “When I was little, I was obsessed with the idea that I had a missing twin. I used to see her in my dreams. She looked exactly like me, but did all the naughty things that I was too scared to do! We would have these really long, complicated conversations.”
    “You won’t believe this but I had a twin fantasy, too,” I told her.
    Aurelia smiled. “Probably all lonely little girls have it.”
    Inevitably, we got on to boys. Aurelia asked mischievously if anyone had ever wanted to marry me.
    “In Carthage, we think thirteen