‘I can’t turn it around! It’s an absolute … It’s a disgrace! You can’t find anything and there’s nothing recent and no money for stock and now it’s going to get shut down and he’ll end up on the street and I’ll havefailed again. Thanks a bunch.’
‘I think there are better ways for us to manage our outdoor voices?’ said Pippa in an officious tone, and Carmen managed to stop herself snapping at a child, but very much only just.
‘I mean, what were you thinking? Fob off my useless sister in a pigsty for a month and get some free babysitting?’
‘No! That’s not what I meant at all!’
‘I’ll just head down to my cell, shall I? So you and Skylar can go to yoga?’
Sofia reflected that it would have been slightly more useful indeed if she hadn’t been in full yoga kit, which cost way more than Carmen’s normal day clothes.
‘I thought you could save it,’ said Sofia. ‘I have faith in you.’
Carmen raised her hands in annoyance.
‘You saw me asusefulto aclientfor five seconds. You didn’t think about me at all. Not once. And now I am going to destroy an old man’s life while mine stays assucky as ever. Thanks, sis.’
‘Oh God, what am I going to do?’ she WhatsApped Idra. ‘I don’t even know where to start.’
She had left the house without speaking to anyone the next morning. She worried she’d be too early to get in, but it appeared Mr McCredie didn’t even bother to lock the door at night. Now, with a weak winter sunlight streaming through the filthy windows, she was looking at the piles of books with their mad filing system in despair. There was no sign of Mr McCredie at all. This job as a stopgap would have been, well, boring and pointless, but okay. The customer yesterday had turned out to be one of about five, most of whom walked around and left hastily; two of whom bought a single postcard each.
‘I shouldn’t care but he’s a really old bloke and he’s going to lose the lot.’
She was acutely jealous of Idra who had got a job in a restaurant and was absolutely loving being busy and pocketing tips for doing essentially the same job as she had before, only this time with ice cream. As Christmas grew closer, she was doing better and better, and could not believe she’d wasted so many years attempting to tell people that fascinators suited them. ‘Fascinators don’t suitanyone,’ she’d pointed out more than once. ‘They would make Gigi Hadid look ridiculous. It’s a stick with nets! It costs £59.99. It’s fuchsia! It doesn’t keep your head warm or cold! It doesn’t stay on very well! And, let me just remind you, it doesn’t suit you.’
‘Oh God. Can’t you come home?’
‘Back to Mum and Dad’s house while they pretend that I’m not a total failure? Walk out on my pregnant sister?’
‘Sucks to be you.’
‘Thanks!’
She stared outside the window. There were hordes of people walking up and down the beautiful, curved street, rich-looking tourists with money and time to spend. She sighed and looked around. The whole thing would need … I mean, God, what would she even do? She didn’t know how to run a bookshop; she knew how to display ribbon nicely and how to cut velvet without losing an inch and how to convert metric to imperial and back again in her head in a heartbeat.
She picked up the nearest book. It was one of a set of Charles Dickens, a very old edition in properly bound leather. She sighed and leafed through all of them, wondering where she could find a cloth to wipe the dust off. She foundA Christmas Carol, and put it, facing outwards, in the window. Then she WhatsApped Idra again.
‘Got any restaurant jobs going? I havenoidea what I’m doing.’
There was no reply. Then, half an hour later, her phone rang.
‘Hey!’
‘Hey yourself! I’m on my break.’
‘I think this might be all break,’ said Carmen, looking around. ‘Hang on – does the restaurant need someone?’
‘Sorry,’ said Idra. ‘They’ve got me.’
‘Oh, yes.’
Carmen sighed.
‘But I had an idea and it’s hilarious.’
‘You mean terrible.’
Idra giggled in a way that insinuated that was exactly what she meant.
