‘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?’
And tiny Leone smiled and took the book after Carmen carefully wrapped it up in paper and held it tight to her breast, as if she both loved it and was slightly scared of it, which were not, after all, the worst emotions to feel about a book.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.