The Christmas Bookshop(28)

She sat down on a little stool, wishing she wasn’t quite so much on view, held up the beautiful glowing picture of a little girl who was wearing very few clothes in the snow – in contrast to the children, who had so many layers of arctic-ready Puffa jackets on none of them could raise their arms above their head – and they oohed and aahed agreeably. Carmen began:

Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and evening – the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked feet …

She was gratified at the widening eyes and the children edging in closer to hear.

‘NAKED FEET?’ said one of the boys.

‘It just means bare feet,’ said Carmen, as some sniggering started.

‘Yes, please be quiet,’ said Pippa, and for once Carmen was pleased at the girl’s ability to give everyone a solid telling-off, as she certainly couldn’t have done it – all these blonde women were making her feel slightly intimidated as it was.

She carefully led the children through the lighting of the matches – the amazing goose, the wonderful Christmas tree, the angelic grandmother. After the student’s fascination, she had dug out a Rackham edition – the child haunted, the Christmas tree a glistening, extraordinary apparition – and the children paid rapt attention.

But in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall – frozen to death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. ‘She wanted to warm herself,’ people said.



There was a silence in the shop.

‘What?’ said Phoebe. ‘You are kidding me.’

‘Where is the girl gone?’ said one of the boys.

Pippa’s face was full of dismay.

‘Could you read to the end please, Auntie Carmen?’ she said in her usual polite way, but there was a trembling edge to her voice.

‘She DIES?’ burst out Phoebe, tears already threatening ‘Oh goodness, she does die,’ said one of the blonde women. ‘I had completely forgotten that.’ Then, more quietly: ‘Shit.’

‘I didn’t … I don’t know this story,’ said one of the other mothers. ‘It doesn’t sound remotely appropriate.’

‘It’s the greatest children’s writer of all time,’ said Carmen, then cursed her quick tongue.

‘So … she really does die? In bare feet in the snow in a corner all by herself with no mummy or daddy?’ whispered a tiny girl Carmen hadn’t noticed before, whose eyes were now bigger than her entire face.

‘Well … I mean, she does get to go with her grandmother?’ said Carmen hopefully.

‘Her DEAD GRANDMOTHER? That definitely means she’s dead then,’ said the same boy who had had something to say about naked feet. At this, the girl brimmed over uncontrollably and, as is often the case, it proved rather infectious, until there was a clutch of sobbing infants at Carmen’s feet, mothers tutting at her and she suddenly wished that she too had conveniently frozen to death in a corner the previous evening.

‘Well!’ she said, glancing quickly through the rest of the book. Her eye alighted on The Snow Queen but as soon as she picked it up and read a line about shards of ice entering people’s eyeballs, she decided that on balance discretion was the better part of valour.

‘Thank you all so much for coming.’

‘BUT! SHE’S! DEAD!’

‘I think on balance,’ said Carmen desperately, ‘I’m going to give the candy canes to your mothers and they can decide what to do with them.’

This earned her several looks of sharp enmity from the other parents, of which Sofia was acutely aware but Carmen was not.

‘Aha!’ said Sofia. ‘Here’s another page! I just found it! Where she wakes up and she was only sleeping.’

‘Let’s see the picture,’ said the boy.

‘There’s no picture,’ shouted Phoebe, who was nearest. ‘She’s dead. She’s really, really dead!’

Another storm of sobbing commenced.

‘I’ll take one of those candy canes,’ said one mother desperately, backing out of the shop.

‘Yes, me too,’ said another, pulling the little boy away until eventually it was just Sofia and Carmen left in the shop.

‘Well. You had a shot,’ said Sofia in a voice that was a lot more patronising than she’d intended. Carmen eyed her.

‘I’m sure you can tell Mum and you’ll all have a good laugh,’ she said, straightening up. ‘God, why can I never get anything right?’

‘That’s not true,’ protested Sofia. ‘I mean it!’

Behind her, it turned out that the shop wasn’t quite empty. The little girl with the huge eyes was still there.

‘That was a very sad story,’ she whispered to Carmen.

‘I know,’ said Carmen. ‘I forgot stories all have to be happy and jolly these days.’

The little girl shook her head.

‘I liked it,’ she said, still whispering.

‘We’ll take it,’ said the well-heeled-looking mother. ‘That’s a beautiful edition, in wonderful nick too. Children’s books today are so terribly anodyne, don’t you think? Love yourself love yourself be kind blah blah love yourself. I think we can get a little beyond that, don’t you, Leone?’