Page 68 of Book People

I catch my wayward thoughts and haul them back into line as I notice something else. She’s carrying the small cardboard box Mrs Bennet gave her and her pretty eyes are red, as if she’s been crying.

The feelings I had in the craft shop all rush in on me again. My chest tightens and I have the most absurd impulse to go to her, gather her into my arms and hold her. Ask her what’s wrong, why is she crying, and what can I do.

It’s ridiculous. I’ve never cared overmuch about other people’s feelings before, so I can’t imagine why I should care about hers. Yet . . . I do.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.

Her mouth tightens. ‘I found something out. About H and C. In the box Mrs Bennet gave me.’

I tense even further. ‘What?’

She deposits the box on the counter. ‘Look.’

A pull of foreboding tugs inside me. I remember the note from H about the shadow that looked like a bruise under C’s eye and the expression on Mrs Bennet’s face.‘He was a bad ’un . . .’

Slowly, I take the lid off the box. Some letters are arranged on top, so I take them out.

The red ink in the first one gives it away and adrenaline pours through me as I read it.Dear Rose . . .Then another.I’m sorry.Then another.I’ve been a coward.

Bloody hell. C’s missing letters. Except it’s not just C now, is it? C is Kathryn, Miss Jones’s great-grandmother.

It seems as if she was having an illicit affair with my great-grandfather.

‘Fuck,’ I murmur, as I put her last letter down.You looked so handsome . . .And I stare at Miss Jones as it begins to sink in.

‘Kathryn and Sebastian,’ I say. ‘They were having an affair.’

She nods.

‘And her husband . . .’

She nods again.

Yes. He hurt her.

Christ.

I’m still trying to process that when another thought hits me. ‘We’re not—’

‘Related?’ she finishes, clearly knowing exactly what I was going to say. ‘No. Rose was born near the end of the war, I think. A long time after H left.’

‘Thank God,’ I mutter. ‘But this is . . . incredible.’

She nods, but looks devastated.

I push the box away and try to resist the urge to step out from behind my counter and go to her, offer her comfort. I can’t do that, I can’t touch her. I need something between me and her, otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do.

‘You’re upset,’ I say, stating the fucking obvious in lieu of doing anything remotely useful. ‘Why?’

‘Why do you think?’ Miss Jones’s eyes are full of tears. ‘She loved him and she was with a husband who beat her, and she couldn’t leave. She used to own a teashop, but he made her close it just before the war started.’ The tears slide down her face. ‘She had to live with the love of her life being just across the road and she couldn’t be with him. He sent her another note, but she never returned it, so he thought . . .’

I think of the ripped-up note upstairs. The anger in it. ‘He didn’t know,’ I say quietly. ‘But he suspected.’

‘And she didn’t tell him. All those notes are ones she never sent.’

‘So, as far as he was concerned, she just . . . ghosted him.’

Miss Jones nods, her tears tugging at something inside me that feels unbearable. I don’t want to care. I don’t. Dan called me emotionally constipated and he’s right. Emotions are the key to addiction, that’s the problem, and emotions turned that key in my father and my grandfather, and probably in my great-grandfather too. Love turned them into beggars looking for something, anything, to fill the empty void inside them.

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