The Christmas Bookshop(30)

‘I will,’ he said, nodding his head politely and dinging his way out of the shop.





A few days later, Carmen received an extremely surprising phone call just as she was looking round the shop with a distinct sense of satisfaction.

She had come in early and the lights of Victoria Street were still glimmering in the early morning darkness and, among the glitz and sparkle of the other shops, for once theirs stood proud too, the train trundling around. She was adding little figures every day just for fun, a cow here or there, and today she had a plan to put Santa next to the chimney on the top of the little station.

And a new box of books had arrived wrapped in polystyrene which normally she would have complained about vociferously, for the waste of it. But maybe, today, she was going to crumble it into pieces and let it tumble like snow …

She was thinking happily about this – as well as thoroughly enjoying a warm mince pie she’d bought from the coffee shop down the road, which normally she would have felt a bit guilty about but there was no doubt about it, all this endless marching up and down but mostly up Edinburgh hills, as well as Sofia’s meticulously balanced meals, was having a rather positive effect on her waistline, which meant there was room for a mince pie now and then, and they made the shop smell so nice – so she answered the rotary telephone cheerfully: ‘Good morning! McCredie’s bookshop!’

A very confident English voice said hello back and asked to speak to the manager and Carmen without blinking once said she would be absolutely fine.

‘Well,’ said the voice. ‘You know Blair Pfenning is coming up to Edinburgh on a publicity tour?’

Carmen had not known this but she was more than aware of who Blair Pfenning was: the huge bestselling writer who wrote about the power of the spirit to create love. Or possibly the power of love to create spirit. Carmen wasn’t a hundred per cent sure on all the details because her first love was fiction, but she knew he was always on morning TV laughing with Phil and Holly on the sofa, and had very white teeth.

‘Um, so?’ she said.

‘He’s looking for somewhere picturesque to shoot a piece for BBC Scotland,’ said the voice. ‘And one of the staff up there brought her daughter in for a reading and suggested using you as a backdrop. Do you think it might be possible?’

Mr McCredie had appeared and was listening in. Carmen looked at him and he shook his head fiercely.

Carmen thought about it. They’d once used Dounston’s as a backdrop for a glitzy period piece as the shop had a beautiful wooden staircase over a stained-glass window which looked wonderful as long as you didn’t film any of the patchy torn carpet beneath their feet, and covered up the peeling ‘NO EXIT’ signs. It had been exciting for about five minutes, then the reality of having about a thousand people in shorts traipsing about with miles of wire and cables and shouting into walkie-talkies and pushing past actual real shoppers and telling everyone to be quiet all the time, over and over again, had actually turned out to be a total and complete pain in the arse.

‘I’m not sure—’ began Mr McCredie. She shushed him.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘You know this is an incredibly busy time of the year to disrupt the shop like this.’

‘We understand,’ said the voice.

Carmen blinked. This could be very, very good for them.

‘We’ll need him to do a signing,’ she said.

The voice on the other end paused. ‘Well, we’d have to see about that.’

‘Our Christmas decorations are very beautiful,’ said Carmen. ‘And of course we’d have a lovely display of the books to go on camera.’

‘On camera,’ Mr McCredie was moaning in agony. She gave him one of her looks, then quickly leafed through the catalogue on her desk.

Feeling the Christmas Spirit of Love sprang out at her: it was one of his. There was a picture of Blair, white teeth gleaming, looking worked-out in a red jumper and a hat, sitting next to a huge Christmas tree surrounded by cheery multicultural children. Carmen wasn’t sure it was necessarily a good look. He looked a little bit like a sperm donor.

The woman sniffed. ‘He can give you half an hour.’

‘How long do you want the shop for?’

‘Oh, it won’t be long.’

‘That means hours,’ said Carmen. ‘I want forty-five minutes for signing.’

‘He’s going to be tired, coming in transatlantic.’

‘Maybe he can draw on some of that festive spirit and positive energy,’ said Carmen.

The woman on the other end of the phone laughed. ‘Okay. He’s all yours. Get the turn-out though, won’t you? I don’t want it to be two crazy ladies and a dog.’

‘Yes!’ said Carmen, after she’d put down the phone. ‘Ching ching ching!’

‘Oh lord,’ said Mr McCredie. ‘And that was very rude about two crazy ladies and a dog.’

‘We are going to turn a profit if it kills me,’ said Carmen. ‘Although judging by the look of this book, it will be a zillion crazy ladies and absolutely no self-respecting dogs.’



It was amazing, once she started putting it about on social media, how many huge Blair Pfenning fans there were.

‘Seriously?’ she said when Sofia mentioned she might just be able to swing by from the office.