Page 102 of Book People

‘Hello, Sebastian,’ my father says, and smiles.

I do not smile back. ‘What the bloody hell are you doing here?’ I demand, because he is the very last person I need, or want, to see in the entire world.

‘Well,’ he says. ‘I let myself in. Obviously I still have a key.’

‘Obviously,’ I bite out. ‘But that doesn’t answer my question.’

He glances out of the front window to Portable Magic again. ‘I saw an ad for the festival. Thought I’d come along to see it.’

‘You’re a bit bloody late, aren’t you?’ I growl. ‘You weren’t even at the cosplay cocktail night.’

He ignores this. ‘Your great-grandfather would have been proud of you.’

A curious feeling that I can’t pinpoint winds through me. I shove it away. ‘I didn’t do it for him,’ I say acidly. ‘I did it because you left me a lot of debt to pay back.’

Dad sighs. ‘I know. Neither I nor your grandfather were any good at managing this place.’

I don’t expect the admission and it interrupts the anger building in my gut. Still, I’m not willing to let him off the hook. ‘No,’ I say, not bothering to hide the belligerence in my voice. ‘You weren’t.’

He doesn’t respond for a long moment, still staring across the road at the pretty little bookshop sitting there, owned by the pretty little bookseller I gave my heart away to, and who doesn’t even know it, because I’m a fucking coward. Like all the Blackwood men.

A silence falls, a lead curtain of quiet.

‘I’m staying with Jean Abbot,’ Dad says eventually, not looking at me. ‘I didn’t think you’d want me here.’

‘Jean? Are you—’

‘You probably don’t want the answer to that question,’ Dad interrupts. ‘But yes, it’s exactly what you think it is.’

I don’t know what to say. I haven’t spoken to him for months, possibly years, but apparently he’s been having a life, all while I’ve stayed here, cleaning up the mess he left me.

The thought makes me even angrier than I am already. I open my mouth to say something pithy and cutting, but then he says, ‘She told me you’re seeing the great-granddaughter of the original Kate Jones.’

I feel as if I’ve been punched hard in the gut.

Fucking village telegraph.

‘I was,’ I force out. ‘But I’m not now.’

‘That’s a shame. I thought history might repeat itself.’

‘What history? You mean like Mum nearly leaving you? Like Grandma left Granddad? Hardly. Thought I’d skip all that nonsense and go straight to—’

‘Cutting yourself off from everyone?’ Dad says calmly.

The words slice through me, sharper than a scalpel.

‘We all thought we weren’t good enough for the women we loved,’ Dad goes on. ‘And that, I’ve now learned, made us self-fulfilling prophecies.’ He sighs. ‘The only one of us who ever had guts was your great-grandfather.’

‘Guts? Him? I read the letters in that box, Dad. He left the first Kate in a violent marriage and then he killed himself. No fucking guts there.’

‘Hmm.’ Dad nods, still looking out the front window. ‘That’s one ending, certainly. But there is another.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your great-grandfather didn’t kill himself.’

Shock pulses down my spine. ‘But there was an inquest and his body was never found. There were clothes by the side of the river . . .’

---