The Christmas Bookshop(25)

‘Is it?’ said Mr McCredie, looking around. ‘It was my parents’ home really. I never quite … found a way to move on.’

Once again, Carmen got the sense of sadness coming from him, chiming completely with the room, full of unwound clocks. Not anger, like you found in some men, not bitterness. Just sadness, like a child who has had a treat taken away and doesn’t quite know what to do with themselves.

‘Good house for parties,’ said Carmen, meaning it. Through another door to the side was a small kitchen and another set of stairs, but here was big enough for a ballroom.

‘Oh, there used to be … yes. There used to be parties in here,’ said Mr McCredie, his eyes growing misty. ‘My mother loved a party. We’d have a band; there’d be music and dancing … ’

‘An amazing place to grow up.’

‘You’d think,’ he said shortly. ‘Oh yes … I had everything, I suppose.’

Carmen looked at the pictures on the piano. His mother had been very beautiful: long dark hair, strong brows, a strong chin and a little mouth like his. His father was rather fierce-looking, with a big mop of hair and quite a beard. He was actually very attractive, Carmen thought.

‘Was your granddad really an explorer?’ she said before she realised what she was saying.

He blinked, but then obviously assumed that most people in Edinburgh would know his family. Sofia had said they were well known, thought Carmen, relieved that she hadn’t dropped herself in it.

‘Well, he went on the Graham Land expedition,’ said Mr McCredie, showing her an old photograph of lots of men grinning cheerfully below the decks of a ship, wine bottles open. ‘He was really just a boy then though.’

‘That’s amazing,’ said Carmen genuinely. ‘Explorers in the family! I didn’t even realise it was a job. Were you never tempted to head for the snowy wastes?’

Mr McCredie looked down. ‘Oh, yes. But I’m not sure I’m the type.’ He frowned. ‘Where are those medals? I’m sure he got given one once.’

‘It must be worth a lot, surely,’ said Carmen.

He looked at her.

‘I doubt it,’ he said. ‘Nobody cares about these things these days. Unless you were on the expeditions where people died.’

At which Carmen wondered then why it was that he had absolutely no idea where they were, and nobody who would care for them after he’d gone.

‘Well, I’m here to fetch your Christmas decorations,’ she reminded him. ‘If they’re in the attic, I can probably scout for the medals at the same time.’

Mr McCredie had picked up one of the pictures of his mother, a studio shot from the 1940s, as she looked on at a three-quarter angle, past the frame, her lovely brows and high cheekbones outlining her face.

‘She’s gorgeous,’ said Carmen, but he didn’t answer her.

The loft was at the top of the next flight of stairs, up from a landing with several large doors off it – this house was huge. An old ladder racketed down as Mr McCredie pulled the string. He frowned.

‘I don’t know when I was last up here.’

‘You don’t get the decorations down every Christmas?’

‘I never get them down at all.’

Carmen frowned at this, then, armed with her phone torch, ascended into the unknown.





Carmen could straighten up once she got into the attic. There were little windows poking out, and from the back window there was a superb view over the top of the Grassmarket out towards the hills beyond, which she stared at for quite a while. It was also completely freezing up there though. A bit of insulation wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The attic was full: old boxes, suitcases with initials stamped on, tea chests and old frames. There were skis so ancient they had leather bindings on them and were made of wood. Carmen blinked and wondered if they had traversed the Antarctic. It was kind of amazing. No sign of any medals though. She wondered if Mr McCredie had perhaps sold them years ago and simply forgotten.

Carmen was getting dusty, but she didn’t mind that. Mr McCredie was bouncing rather awkwardly on his small toes down below.

‘Be careful up there.’

Carmen poked her head through the hole. ‘Doesn’t anyone in your family ever throw anything away?’

Mr McCredie blinked.

‘Why would one?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Carmen, thinking of the rucksack that constituted most of her worldly possessions, for once with a certain amount of fondness. ‘Doesn’t it ever weigh you down?’

Mr McCredie looked up from his chintzy pink drawing room, with the china, the pictures in their silver frames, the old piano desperately needing tuning, the embroidered footrests and ornate poker set.

‘I don’t know,’ he said, his little eyes peering over his spectacles. ‘It’s the only home I’ve ever known.’

Carmen smiled. Maybe if her parents had expensive antiques rather than odd liquors brought back from Spain and a large Virgin Mary marked ‘A GIFT FROM LOURDES’ that used to light up with fibre optics which she and Sofia had loved but hadn’t worked in years, then maybe she might have felt the same way.

But then, it didn’t look like he was enjoying it at all.

‘There is SO MUCH STUFF up here,’ she hollered.