Rose held hers in the air before taking a sip and settling in her seat as Martina started to serve them all. The food smelt delicious, and she couldn’t wait to taste it.
‘Rose, Benjamin has told us that you didn’t know that Valentina was your great-grandmother,’ Alvaro said. ‘That must have come as quite a shock.’
‘It did. I received the letter regarding the Santiago estate after my mother passed away. All of the correspondence had been addressed to her, you see, and it was very difficult not having her or my grandmother to talk to about any of it.’
‘So, you think they might have known about it?’ Martina asked.
Rose shook her head. ‘In the beginning, I did wonder whether perhaps my grandmother knew, or at least had some inkling about her adoption, but the more I’ve discovered, themore it appears that all of this was kept a secret. No one in my family knew.’
‘That’s why you never came here to see Valentina?’ Maya asked. ‘You truly never knew about her?’ She paused. ‘Or your inheritance?’
Rose met her gaze. ‘Truly. I’d never heard the Santiago name in my life, and I never knew we had any connection to Argentina. I certainly didn’t know I had any inheritance other than the flat in London that my mum owned.’
‘Tell them about the little box,’ Benjamin said, as everyone began to eat.
Rose took a small forkful, her taste buds exploding. It tasted every bit as good as it smelt.
‘For goodness’ sake, let the girl eat!’ his mother said. ‘She won’t get a chance to eat any paella if we keep asking her questions.’
She laughed. ‘It’s fine, I don’t mind.’ Rose gave them a very short version of how she’d come to be the recipient of the little box with its clues, and how it had made no sense to her until she’d received the letter from the lawyer in Buenos Aires. And when she paused for breath, she saw that they’d all stopped eating.
‘A piece of blue silk?’ Benjamin’s mother said. ‘Felipe’s polo shirt?’ she asked, turning to Benjamin.
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘It was the first thing I thought of when I saw it.’
‘Rose, do you have the clues with you?’
‘I do. I have them in my bag.’ She’d had the strangest feeling ever since she’d received them, and she’d rarely left home without them.
She dabbed her mouth with her napkin and went to get her bag, which she’d left by the front door. When she returned, theyall stopped talking, and she took out the little box and placed it on the table, pushing it across to Alvaro.
‘The lawyer told me that Valentina had watched my grandmother from afar,’ she said. ‘But for some reason, she never tried to approach her, deciding instead to leave her fortune to her. And that’s the part I’m struggling to understand.’ She paused. ‘And I came across the name you just said, Felipe, on a photo in Valentina’s wardrobe.’
Benjamin’s father gasped when he saw the figurine. ‘This was made by my grandfather,’ he said. ‘And this was left for your grandmother? By Valentina?’
She nodded. ‘It was.’
The table fell silent then, and Rose was left wondering whether she’d done the right thing in sharing her story or whether she should have stayed silent.
‘Rose, has anyone told you how our families are connected?’ Benjamin’s mother asked. ‘Has Valentina’s lawyer told you anything?’
She looked to Benjamin. ‘I had a feeling that there was more to the connection between your family and the Santiagos than I understood, but no one has explained it to me.’
‘Alvaro, I think it’s time someone told Rose about our families. She deserves to know the truth.’
‘The truth?’ Rose asked.
‘My great-grandfather worked for Basilio Santiago,’ Benjamin’s father said. ‘He’s the reason my family moved here from Spain in the 1930s.’
‘Your family moved here so that he could work for the Santiagos?’
‘They did. He was given an opportunity for a better life, to work for a man he respected and came to call a great friend, but as wonderful as that was for the years they worked together, everything changed when Basilio died.’
‘I’ve seen Basilio in Valentina’s photos, or at least I presumed the man with her was her father.’
‘Valentina was Basilio’s only child, and from the stories that were passed down, he adored her more than anything in the world. She was left everything in his will when he died but, unfortunately, she had to fight for what was hers. As did our family.’
Rose tried to process what she was being told. ‘With everything you know, does it make any sense to you that Valentina would leave clues that pointed to your grandfather in that little box?’
