Page 64 of Book People

Mrs Bennet nods. ‘Yes, I was. We went to school together. All that.’

‘Mum never talked about her,’ I say. ‘So I never knew her.’

‘No, well, she wouldn’t,’ Mrs Bennet says. ‘Rose was a difficult woman. She was unfailingly loyal but she had her opinions, and woe betide anyone who got on the wrong side of her. Fierce, that one.’

‘How interesting,’ Sebastian murmurs, glancing at me. ‘Seems that might run in the family.’

I ignore him and lean forward, fascinated. ‘Do you know what happened between her and Mum? Mum would only say that she left Wychtree because we weren’t welcome here.’

Mrs Bennet looks at me carefully. ‘You’ve the look of her. Blonde hair and grey eyes. Pretty. Rose was like that too. Very suspicious of men. Didn’t like them.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Her father was a bad ’un. Used to beat her mother.’ She shakes her head. ‘Terrible stuff. Rose was very protective of her mother. Was a stickler for propriety too. Though she wasn’t above breaking the rules herself. That’s how she fell pregnant with your mum.’

Shock pulses down my spine, and along with it comes a sudden rush of anger. No wonder Rose didn’t like men, not if her father was abusive. ‘Mum never talked about my grandfather either. Or my dad.’

‘Not surprised. No one knew who your grandfather was, though there was plenty of speculation. Rose tried to protect your mother from going down the same path she did, but Rebecca was a free spirit. Headstrong. Very much like Rose in her own way – that’s why they butted heads so badly.’

‘Hmm,’ Sebastian says.

I try to ignore his tall figure next to me, but it’s difficult because he’s standing far too close and I’m all too aware of him. He also smells delicious, which doesn’t help.

‘Did Rose ever talk to you about my grandfather?’ I ask.

Mrs Bennet shakes her head. ‘Not one word. Was the big scandal in the village at the time.’

‘What about my great-grandmother? What happened to her?’

‘Kate,’ Mrs Bennet says. ‘Her name was Kate. Like you.’

I blink. I had no idea. None at all. ‘Seriously?’

‘Yes. Poor woman. She had a terrible husband and then her teashop closed not long after Rose was born.’

‘She had a teashop?’

‘Oh, yes. You inherited that building, didn’t you?’

‘I did. Mum left it to me. But . . . she never said anything about a teashop.’

‘The shop was Kate’s initially. That’s where her teashop was.’

This is all news to me. Mum had said she’d inherited the building, but that was as much as she’d ever said about it. I’dassumed she’d inherited it from Rose, but I’d never imagined that it had actually been in our family for longer than that.

‘What happened to her shop?’ I ask. It’s not lost on me that Kate the First had been a business owner, and now so am I.

Mrs Bennet sighs. ‘I don’t know much. I was only a little ’un. But there was a lot of talk at the time. Her husband made her close it down just before the war started. A woman running a business on her own was unusual back then and her husband didn’t like it. He turned it into a newsagent’s.’

Instantly, I’m outraged on Kate’s behalf. ‘What? That’s appalling!’

Mrs Bennet shrugs with the kind of calm that people only get after living a long time and seeing everything. ‘It was what it was. Anyway, her husband died in a car accident – good riddance to bad rubbish, I say – and she lived quietly here until Rose was around twenty-one. Then she – Kate – ran away.’

I blink, not sure if I’ve heard her correctly. ‘She ran away?’

Beside me, Sebastian has gone very still.

‘No one knows what happened to her,’ Mrs Bennet says. ‘Rose went to the police, and there was an investigation, but all the trails went cold. Kate was declared legally dead in the early seventies.’

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