Skylar looked sternly at the children.
‘There wouldn’t be any stealing, would there?’
Carmen and the children exchanged glances – the children’s faces were terrified.
‘Because you know we’ve talked about things that are kind? And unkind?’
‘I took it,’ said Carmen instantly. ‘I’ll get you another one. Or two maybe.’
‘You ate an entire hamper? By yourself?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘All the crystallised ginger?’
‘I love crystallised ginger.’
‘You ate an entire box of crystallised ginger? Between yesterday and today. After most of a pie and a can of beans?’
‘Chill out, sis,’ said Carmen. Nothing could dent her good mood today.
‘That can really mess with your stomach pH?’ said Skylar. ‘I mean any amount of sugar is poisonous, but that sounds lethal?’
‘Well, if I die you can say I told you so,’ said Carmen, winking at the children and deciding to keep her exciting Blair news until Sofia wasn’t being annoying. Plus she wouldn’t put it past Skylar to have some dig about how someone texting her would give her brain cancer?
The house had quietened by the time she had to go to work; the children had joined their friends in St Mary’s Cathedral Gardens down the road, the vicar cheerily promising to judge a snowman competition. She opened the front door.
In the first shining moment, she saw the whole strange-familiar world, glistening white. The roof of the terrace opposite was mounded into square towers of snow, and beyond them all the walls and houses and churches were buried, merged into one great flat expanse, unbroken white to the horizon’s brim. Carmen drew in a long, happy breath, silently rejoicing.
And now her phone was dinging.
‘Babe, I’m stuck! Didn’t you know what I meant? There’s no flights out!’
‘Could be worse,’ typed Carmen. ‘You could be stuck in somewhere that isn’t one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world, freshly blanketed in snow.’
‘Ugh,’ came back. ‘And I only have suede shoes.’
‘Can’t your glamorous sidekick go buy you some wellingtons?’
‘She left last night, left me to catch a ducking plane on my own. Which now isn’t going.
‘Ducking autocorrect.’
‘It’s okay. I get what you mean.’
Carmen stifled a smile. Aha. What a big baby he was.
She walked along Princes Street to get the full effect of the capital under snow.
The castle looked like a dream, like something from Game of Thrones, the road lined with people trying to catch the pink clouds floating behind it on camera, even as the snow still danced in front of her face and flakes landed on her coat. Underneath, the snow was powdery and soft, not yet iced over and brown, or hideous slushy puddles.
She stuck her phone back in her pocket – it was too cold, taking off her gloves to type every time – and dodged the photographers.
The mound steps were slippery, the road nearly as bad, but she did not regret taking the long way round as she more or less climbed her way up and over the top of the Lawnmarket, watching people move about in awe, and children racing each other for the exceptional pleasure of breaking the pristine ice of a puddle; a few optimistic sleds were already clustering in Princes Street Gardens.
By the time she got to the shop, she was pink in the face and Blair Pfenning was waiting outside for her.