The Christmas Bookshop(10)

‘Huh. What about a bicycle?’

‘How good are you at riding bicycles up steps?’ said Sofia.

‘Can I borrow your car?’ said Carmen, looking out at a bunch of leaves swirling down the street in a high wind.

‘A car?’ said Sofia. ‘In central Edinburgh?’ She sounded like Carmen had suggested getting to work on a dragon. ‘They’ll kill you.’

‘Who?’

‘The … traffic wardens.’ Sofia looked suddenly anxious, as if even saying their name might summon them. ‘Don’t risk it. I beg you.’

She turned away and went to the annoyingly spacious and well laid out cupboard under the stairs where she retrieved for Carmen a massive engulfing expensive padded parka.

‘Try this.’

Carmen glanced down at her well-worn leather jacket.

‘I’m okay.’

‘I mean it. You’ll freeze.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Carmen, looking at Google Maps.

‘Go up the steps here and then along and then down the steps there,’ said Sofia. ‘Or you could go round the castle and up the castle steps.’

‘I don’t want to go up any steps,’ said Carmen. Sofia smiled nicely. ‘Do you want me to make you a packed lunch?’

‘No, thank you.’

Carmen would have loved a packed lunch but she wasn’t going to give her eight-months-pregnant sister even more of a reason to get up and prove herself effortlessly more competent at everything.

‘I’ll find my way. Don’t fuss! And I can make packed lunches!’

‘Yes, please,’ came a little voice by her side. ‘I like Nutella sandwiches.’

Sofia gave a loud strangulated laugh before casting a worried glance at Skylar, who was cross-legged on the rug meditating quite obtrusively.

‘Ha, as if we would ever have Nutella in the house.’

‘I had it at a party once,’ said Phoebe in a wistful tone as if describing a paradise lost. ‘I will never forget it.’

Carmen wondered if buying them all enormous jars would do as Christmas presents.

‘No, don’t worry about it,’ said Sofia. ‘I do them all on Sunday nights and take them out of the freezer as we go.’

‘What is it today?’ said Phoebe.

‘Hummus and radishes!’ said Sofia. ‘Isn’t that amazing? I’ve made it into a happy face for you in your lunch box.’

‘Radishes don’t make anyone happy,’ said Phoebe.

‘I love radishes, Mummy!’ said Pippa, appearing in the kitchen doorway. Somehow already in her blue school uniform and neat tartan kilt, she looked immaculate, ironed, put together, her shiny hair shimmering in a neat ponytail.

Sofia smiled at her.

‘Well, good for you,’ she said. ‘Would you like some extra raisins?’

‘Oh yes, please!’

‘“Oh yes, please”,’ mimicked Phoebe. ‘“Oh please, please, I would like more STUPID RAISINS because I am STUPID PIPPA”.’

Carmen headed for the door, just in time to hear Sofia admonishing Phoebe for her rudeness.

‘And wish Auntie Carmen good luck on her first day in her new job.’

‘Good luck, Auntie Carmen!’ sang out Pippa.

Phoebe frowned.

‘I hope the other people are nice to you,’ she said in a tone of voice that made clear she didn’t expect that ever to be necessarily the case.

‘Thanks,’ said Carmen, who was rather worried about that herself.



Sofia wasn’t wrong about her up and down steps theory. She had insisted she take Princes Street. There was another way, but it involved upper streets and lower streets and, without wanting to be insulting, she said she wasn’t sure Carmen was quite ready to take that in. Carmen had agreed with her.

So instead, she walked along the main road of the capital. One side was lined with the usual big city shops and brands, but on the other, ridiculously, was a set of formally laid out gardens with bandstands and fountains. These ended abruptly at the foot of a cliff which rose hundreds of feet in the air, an ancient grey castle perched on the top of it as if in a different realm altogether. This was a city in the lowering grey cloud, busy with its own affairs in the sky.

Running through the gardens, as if to make things even more ridiculous, ran several railway lines clogged with locomotives, like a giant’s train set.

It was quite the oddest place Carmen had ever been to, and, even more weirdly, everyone she passed, heads down, most clad in pompom hats and parkas similar to Sofia’s, (which Carmen, shivering in her leather jacket, now regretted passing up) didn’t even seem to notice that half of their main shopping street had been ripped away and replaced with a fairy-tale.

She found the steps behind what appeared to be a huge Greek temple – Well of course, she thought – and, panting and realising how unfit she was, reached the top opposite a pitch-black version of Dracula’s castle. There were yet more steps ahead.

You are kidding, said Carmen, almost out loud, and frowning at Google Maps.

Sure enough, the map directed her to a narrow set of steps that spiralled up and vanished into the gloom. She looked back and surveyed the city now spread out at her feet, the gardens neat, the streets heading back to the water in perfect rows, an occasional honk from the trains below, the endless drone of the bagpipes played all day for the tourists and the faint dinging of the trams, going nowhere. What a strange place this was.