I made two cups of tea and took them into the living room where Grandpa was already rummaging around in the biscuit jar.

“Where are all the custard creams?” he muttered, discarding a ginger nut on a plate.

“You ate them,” I reminded him.

“Why didn’t you bring any?”

“You didn’t ask me to.”

“I know why you forgot them.”

I couldn’t forget something I hadn’t been asked to bring, but all right. “Why’s that, Grandpa?”

He leaned forwards with a twinkle in his eye. “You’ve been canoodling with Lady Gabriella.”

Well… I had.

Although I did have a slight aversion to the word canoodling.

But how the hell did he know that?

“Who told you that?”

“Edith saw you in the coffee shop on Sunday. Are you courting her?”

“It’s complicated,” I said slowly. “She is my employer’s daughter.”

“And a societal class or ten above us.”

“That, too.”

“Doubt she cares about that, though.”

“Your guess would be correct.”

“She never has.”

I frowned. “You know her?”

He chuckled. “Boy, I’ve lived here my entire life. Of course I know her. I remember when she was knee high to a grasshopper and collecting fifty pence pieces for a sponsored silence.”

“Did she ever complete it?”

“Not once.” He laughed. “Although I don’t suppose that surprises you.”

“Not really.”

“She was a good child. Always involved in everything that was going on. If there was a bake sale, she was the first to put her name on the sign-up sheet. If a craft fair was on, she was there with her little embroidered purse full of coins she’d earnt, dragging either her nanny or one of her family members around the church so she could buy things she’d ultimately never use but would donate to children who couldn’t afford it.”

I looked down at my hands, a vision of a tiny Gabriella dragging her aunt around the church.

“When she was a teenager, the local council proposed closing the play area in the park and building on it. She was the first to stand up and argue with them, even though she was only… oh, fourteen? Fifteen, maybe?” He tapped his chin. “She went to church and lobbied the reverend, handed out flyers to the congregation, even got the Women’s Institute group to petition the mayor.”

“Did she win?”

“It’s still there, isn’t it?” Grandpa’s eyes twinkled. “Her grandmother was a fierce but wonderful woman. We were very good friends, and there’s a lot of her in Gabriella. Not to mention her mother was one of the kindest women I’ve ever met. I daresay young Gabi has all the best qualities of both sides of her family.”

“Were either of them doggedly determined to always get their own way?”

“The girl stopped an entire council building a housing estate by single-handedly organising a revolution in the village. What do you think?”

The laugh bubbled inside me until I could no longer control it. “That’s a yes, then.”

“It’s to be admired, really. In a class where many women are expected to sit down and look pretty and have babies, she revolted against it from a very young age.”