The Christmas Bookshop(31)

‘Have you seen his teeth?’ said Sofia. ‘So straight!’

‘I thought you only read Interiors magazine and the Edinburgh Law Review.’

‘No!’ said Sofia. ‘I read! Self-help can be very useful.’

She gave her sister a meaningful look.

‘Really?’ said Carmen. ‘As useful as Rainbow Rowell? Or Douglas Adams? I doubt it.’

Sofia, though she was clearly excited, turned to Carmen seriously. This could be just the thing to put some get up and go into her sister.

‘And his advice, you know. Find something true to your spirit and your soul and do it every day.’

Carmen frowned.

‘What, make packed lunches?’

‘No,’ said Sofia. ‘Find your centring bliss.’

Carmen’s glance went to the wine fridge.

‘Not like that. Anyway. I think he’s super.’

‘I think he sounds up himself,’ said Carmen, looking at him online where there were lots of pictures of him showing off his horses.

‘“Being with my horses is the only place I can feel truly free”,’ she read. ‘See. All his friends are horses. He obviously doesn’t have much conversation.’

‘Maybe he’s rich and lonely,’ said Sofia.

Carmen sniffed. ‘Yeah, that’s what young, fit, super-rich guys with all their hair are. Suffering from a terrible lack of company.’

‘Well, you should wash your hair just in case.’

Pippa marched in with her bassoon.

‘I’m going to be leading the school show!’ she announced. ‘Mrs McGillicuddy said so!’

‘Oh darling, that’s wonderful!’ said Sofia while Pippa smiled defiantly at Carmen, as if it were a victory over her too for not having praised her enough. It had not escaped Pippa that Carmen often seemed to be siding with Phoebe, and that would not do. Not at all.

‘Congratulations,’ said Carmen, without offering to listen to it. She assumed there’d be enough of Sofia’s children doing enforced showing-off between now and the big day.

‘I think you should get Phoebe to audition, Mummy,’ said Pippa, as if they were two friends the same age. ‘Don’t you think it would be good for her confidence?’

Sofia looked unsure.

‘Oh darling, you know what happened last year.’

‘What happened last year?’ said Carmen.

‘Oh, it was so awful. She froze in front of the entire school!’ said Pippa with much relish. ‘It was just so embarrassing. People talked about it for months. POOR Phoebe,’ she added with a long sigh. ‘Poor, poor Phoebe.’

Frowning, Sofia took out oatcakes and soya milk for snacks.

‘Why am I poor Phoebe?’ said Phoebe, trailing in, her scarf rucked off her shoulders, one of her plaits falling undone and what looked like paint down her jumper.

‘I was just saying what a wonderful singer you were,’ said Pippa. ‘And how it would be nice to get a chance to hear you sing this year.’

Phoebe turned a dull shade of pink and shuffled towards the fridge.

‘Yes, we never hear you sing these days,’ said Sofia, adding ‘Wash your hands’ without thinking about it.

Phoebe made a non-committal noise and then a disgusted face as she looked at the oatcakes.

‘I hate those things,’ she said. ‘Can’t we just have biscuits?’

‘Not if you want to be healthy,’ said Pippa. ‘I think they’re yummy, Mummy.’

Didn’t Sofia realise she was being played? thought Carmen. Maybe she was just too tired and pregnant to notice. Jack swooped in without saying anything, grabbed a handful of the oatcakes, crammed them in his mouth and carried on out to the garden to hit a ball against the wall.

‘I’m sure Auntie Carmen would like to hear you sing,’ went on the inexorable Pippa.

‘I don’t mind,’ said Carmen. ‘You can sing or not sing, I don’t care. Nobody sings worse than me anyway.’

‘I know,’ said Phoebe. ‘I’ve heard you in the shower.’

‘I know!’ said Carmen. ‘And that’s with the good acoustics.’

They grinned at each other. Pippa immediately took out her bassoon and started on an extremely loud rendition of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’, all ninety-five verses.

‘You got Blair Pfenning!’ said Sofia in a tone that she thought was proud and encouraging but Carmen thought was patronising and irritatingly astonished.

‘Just wear a bit of lipstick!’ she added, as Carmen headed downstairs. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’





Carmen couldn’t believe it. At 9.30 in the morning, in the freezing cold, snaking all the way down Victoria Street and into the Grassmarket, there was a queue! A queue, to get into their shop! This was completely unprecedented.

It was almost entirely women, with a few men staring at their phones and not looking up or around, possibly in case anybody recognised them. The women were dressed up in tweed coats and smart scarves, boots clopping across the cobbled road. Carmen’s mobile phone went off after she’d wandered up the Grassmarket to get the good coffee. The little café was done out beautifully for the holiday season in a Nordic snowflake theme, with little paper snowflakes tumbling from the rooftops, and every cappuccino coming with a little flake on the side. Carmen treated Mr McCredie to a cappuccino, but she accidentally ate the flake before she made it all the way up the hill.