Page 17 of Book People

I met Aisling the first day I came to Wychtree. I wandered into the café she’d just bought, desperate for a coffee, and we got to talking, since we were both starting up new businesses at the same time.

She’s an incredible baker and supplies ‘plant-based delicacies’ to Lindsey’s bakery as well as her own café. I’ve been trying to emulate her approach to the bakery with Sebastian and his shop, i.e. show how businesses can be supportive of each other and not each other’s competition.

Most people don’t want the vegan treats she makes, so she also provides the more usual ones, but she says that the veganside of the business is growing, especially in the summer when the tourists come.

I love her doughnuts especially and I can’t get enough of them, while, in return, she’s a fanatical reader of mysteries, and gets me to order at least ten every couple of months. She also pins bookshop events to her noticeboard in the café and has a little stand of books on her counter that I supply, which does a fairly brisk trade.

She’s dry and funny and I like her a lot, but I haven’t told her much about my life before I came to Wychtree. I haven’t wanted to get into it, even though I know the gossip mill here has gone into overdrive on the subject anyway.

She does know about my family history, though. The locals always do.

‘There’s no goss,’ I tell her, and bite into my doughnut.

‘Bullshit,’ she says. ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you the whole time. Like a wolf with a rabbit.’

I swallow my bite of doughnut. It’s delicious as always, but I give her a glare. ‘I’m not a bloody rabbit.’

Aisling raises a brow. ‘Aren’t you? You were certainly giving him big eyes last night.’

I redden. ‘I was trying to have a normal conversation with him that didn’t involve us arguing for a change. Also, I kind of wanted to know if it was me he didn’t like or the bookshop.’

‘Both, I would imagine.’

I sigh. ‘I get the bookshop, I really do. But I don’t understand why he doesn’t like me. I’m not that bad. He’s not like that to everyone else, is he?’

‘You mean, cold and aloof?’

‘And rude, don’t forget rude.’

Aisling’s mouth twitches in amusement. ‘I’m afraid he reserves that one just for you. He’s not rude to everyone else.Aloof, yes, and reserved. But that’s the Blackwoods for you. They’ve always been like that.’

‘Why?’

‘First of all they’re men. Second, they’re emotionally constipated. And third, every woman any of them have ever hooked up with has either left or died.’ She gives me a solemn look. ‘Mrs Bennet says they’re cursed.’

‘Mrs Bennet would.’ I lean on the counter, fascinated at this insight, because it’s news to me. ‘Seriously, though?’

‘Sebastian’s namesake, his great-grandfather, had his wife walk out on him not three years into their marriage. Then his grandmother hated the village, and left his grandfather for London after a few years, and then Sebastian’s mother died when he was about ten. I went to school with him, so I remember it. Village gossip said she would have left his father eventually if she hadn’t died.’

I’m appalled. And intrigued.

I hadn’t known he’d lost his mother as a kid. That must have been really tough. ‘Oh no,’ I murmur. ‘That’s awful.’

‘Yeah. Then George Blackwood, his dad, started drinking. It was all bad, really. I don’t know the details, but I heard that George was going to lose the bookshop, so Sebastian took over and borrowed massively to keep it going.’

I remember him last night, telling me fiercely that books were his livelihood, his history, his legacy. Making me want to cringe at my burblings about opening my own bookshop. Mine had felt like a cherished dream, while his . . .

His was a vocation. A calling.

He was a priest and his god was books.

‘You’re getting that look in your eye,’ Aisling says.

I redden further. ‘What look?’

‘The look of a woman who discovers a man’s tragic backstory and is now one hundred per cent more interested in him than she was already.’

I make a disdainful sound and take another bite out of the doughnut. ‘Come on, Ash,’ I say, my mouth full. ‘We’re failing the Bechdel test.’

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