She was still complaining as the bell tinged on their way out.
‘I have never met those children before in my life,’ said Carmen hastily.
‘Bye, Auntie Carmen!’ hollered Pippa, clearly on purpose. Carmen decided the best thing to do was just stare straight ahead.
Oke smiled.
‘Uh … my book?’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
Carmen ducked under the counter and lugged out the huge book.
She smiled.
‘You’d think they’d put a Christmas tree on it.’
‘Would you?’ said Oke, but he was joking.
The book was staggeringly expensive. She felt terrible even letting him buy it when clearly he should be spending his money on a good winter coat and a pair of gloves – the air was Baltic. She felt sorry for him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and he opened an old leather wallet and counted out the cash carefully.
‘Oh. And I forgot, the discount is … uh … twenty per cent,’ said Carmen, pulling it from the top of her head.
His eyebrows raised.
‘That’s very generous.’
‘We’re a very nice shop,’ said Carmen. ‘And not prejudiced about non-Christmassers at all.’ She frowned. ‘I didn’t know there were Quakers in Brazil.’
‘You’ve been Quaker-hunting in Brazil?!’
She laughed. ‘No. Sorry.’
He smiled too. ‘It’s true. There aren’t very many of us. But there are a few. Thank you for not being prejudiced about non-Christmassers.’
He looked around at the ridiculous amount of decorations.
‘Well, do feel free to tell your pro-Christmas friends!’ said Carmen.
‘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.