‘I am going to the Quaker house. They have a meeting there, and a homeless drive.’
‘Cor. You really are very Quakery.’
‘I’m not really,’ he said. ‘Well, apart from the Christmas thing. Loads of Quakers celebrate that. We just never got the habit. But sometimes it is … comforting. In a foreign land. To sit among brethren, doing familiar things. You don’t have to believe all of it. And it is good to sit among silence sometimes.’
‘I can see that,’ said Carmen. She frowned and remembered something she’d read somewhere. ‘Hang on. Is it true that Quakers can’t lie?’
‘Yes,’ said Oke. ‘Although that may be a lie.’
He saw her face.
‘I am joking of course. Then I am going to visit my favourite tree.’
‘You have a favourite tree?!’
He nodded and she was about to ask more when the coffee shop door banged behind her.
‘You abandoned me!’ said Blair. ‘All those people, just looking at me. It’s a security issue you know.’
‘Is it though?’ said Carmen, sceptical.
Oke looked at both of them. Blair looked him up and down, then turned the full beam of his attention onto Carmen.
‘You must be freezing,’ said Blair, performatively taking off his new expensive jacket and covering her shoulders with it. ‘Come on. Let’s go have fun. And also, can you phone the airline for me again? My seat change hasn’t come through. Nothing works. Christ, it’s awful.’
‘Nice to see you,’ said Oke and Carmen smiled, glad he wasn’t annoyed. He turned up the steps towards the Quaker meeting house as Blair was about to take her back to the café.
She excused herself, and dashed back in.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to Dahlia, who rather stiffly said it was fine and not to mention it. But she added that she wasn’t really in the business of overcharging people and Carmen said she knew that and left a huge tip which actually then felt like she’d made everything slightly worse. She screwed up her face and headed back up the hill to the bookshop, which now had its pavements perfectly swept and a rather jolly-looking Mr McCredie standing outside in his reindeer kit. A woman was walking along very, very slowly with a bundled-up toddler who had so many clothes on he looked like a bouncy rubber ball.
‘Mummy! Mummy! Man! LOOK! SANTA!’ he shouted, his high voice loud in the silent street. His eyes were wide as he regarded Mr McCredie as one would a vision from the past, and Mr McCredie smiled broadly and bowed to the child, and the snow kept falling.
‘Just come back to my hotel room. Finish the booking,’ Blair had urged.
‘Blair,’ she said. ‘Am I seriously the only woman you know in Edinburgh?’
‘Yes. So?’ he reflected. ‘Well, that girl in the coffee shop was cute.’
‘Go get her then.’
‘Oh no, it’s too boring to meet new people and pretend to be nice to them. Come on. You’re right here and my hotel room is only … well, up like nineteen flights of steps.’
‘No no no no no. Get out of here: I have to sell some books.’
Carmen shook him off – he looked genuinely startled by this – and went back to work.
And sure enough, as more and more people ventured out to take a look at the beautiful landscape and make snowmen in the Grassmarket and throw snowballs at the traffic wardens which was very bad and something obviously you should never ever do, the shop got busier and busier.
In a way, Carmen was wondering to herself, in the past she had certainly hopped into bed with people far less attractive and attentive than Blair, then laughed herself stupid about it with Idra later. Her sister was turning her into a prude, she decided. Also, to be entirely fair, it wasn’t as if Blair was giving her even the faintest of empty promises about how much he wanted to see her again or how special he thought she was.