‘You,’ said Carmen, bending down, ‘are going to be the greatest big sister ever. Do you want to meet him?’
‘John!’ Jack was shouting. ‘James! Jacob! Joseph!’
‘Well, I haven’t decided,’ said Sofia. ‘I’m not sure it should be a J name. We’re always getting the Ps mixed up.’
‘But I thought you liked things nice and symmetrical,’ said Carmen, smiling.
Sofia smiled down at the newborn.
‘Well, sometimes you can mix things up a bit too,’ she said, and Sofia and Carmen smiled at one another.
‘Wow,’ said Phoebe. ‘He looks like a tomato.’
‘Phoebe, that is Very Rude,’ started Pippa.
‘No,’ said Sofia firmly. ‘He does. Doesn’t he?’
‘Well, call him Tom then,’ said Carmen.
‘I’m not calling him Tomato d’Angelo,’ said Sofia. ‘Mind you … ’
They were still amicably bickering as the nurse came to shoo them all out and make way for the wan-faced women lumbering up and down the corridor, waiting for their own babies as the day shift arrived and new life appeared in the world, and everyone acted as if this was perfectly normal.
‘Goodness,’ said Carmen, yawning as her father drove them back to the house. ‘I am going to be terrible at work today.’
‘Auntie Carmen, you’re not going to work today!’ announced Pippa. ‘You have to come to our school concert because Mummy can’t.’
‘Well, we can come to that,’ said their grandmother. ‘Once Sofia’s settled.’
‘But we want Auntie Carmen to come,’ said Phoebe in a small voice.
Irene looked at her younger daughter, and for a moment couldn’t speak. She squeezed her arm instead.
‘Oh, I’ll phone Mr McCredie,’ said Carmen. ‘He can do without me for a half day. I think I’ve got everything pretty much set up.’
Mr McCredie didn’t know what hit him when he woke up with a hangover and had to open the shop entirely by himself. A week to Christmas and there was a steady stream of punters from the very instant he opened the door while fiddling with his coffee cup.
Everything – the Paddington pop-up book, the skiing anthology – all went as the final shopping day loomed and people started to get anxious. He received several offers on the train set, each of which made him lapse into gloom, which customers often took for silence as if he was mulling it over, and generally they upped their offers to no avail.
He was quiet, but thoughtful. Carmen’s reaction to his news – sympathy, coupled with amazement that anyone could still worry about it in this day and age – had struck home.
He had been so terrified of letting people know, letting them in after the cruelty he had grown up with at home and at school. The shame, the shame of decades, which had dogged him through relationships, through the death of his parents. His mother had said nothing, ever; left nothing. He had been nothing but a crashing disappointment to his father. The world of books, vast landscapes to play in and hide in, had become his home, and he had hidden in here until almost everything – years, money, life – had gone.
But now, as he saw the happy faces, as his fingers flew while wrapping up brown paper packages with string for excited children and other cheerful customers, and observing the excited tourists taking photographs of the window, he wondered why he had turned away from this for so long.
Carmen had phoned in a gush, so happy that her sister had had her baby and that she now had to take care of the children that day, apologising profusely, and her happiness had bubbled over the telephone. She definitely made him feel more cheerful when she was around.