‘We have a book you ordered.’
Blair was on a plane, she told herself. It was a really long flight to LA, with a change in Amsterdam so you had to go the wrong way before you went the right way. Not that she’d checked (she’d checked).
Anyway, what was he going to say? ‘Oh, I made a terrible mistake sleeping with someone elseafteryou turned me down when it was my total right to do so?’
He’s a bad man, Carmen told herself for the millionth time.
Her phone rang and she grabbed it. It was Idra.
‘Hey!’ said Idra. ‘What’s up?’
‘Um,’ said Carmen, reluctant to explain. But actually it turned out that Idra calling and saying ‘what’s up’ was a way to tell herhernews, which was all amazing, as it happened. Someone had come in to eat lunch there every day and she hadn’t thought anything of it, then on about the fifth day he’d begged her to go out with him as otherwise he was going to get unbelievably fat and then he really wouldn’t have a chance with her and she had laughed and agreed – nobody ever asked you out in the hats and accessories department – and he turned out to be super-lovely and some kind of software engineer who made a fortune and was taking her away skiing after Christmas!
‘You’ve never been skiing,’ said Carmen.
‘I know,’ said Idra. ‘I am going to lie and say I have an injury from other skiing and have to sit on the sun deck and drink mulled wine all day.’
‘They have a sun deck?’ said Carmen. ‘This doesn’t sound like Glenshee.’
‘Italy!’ said Idra smugly.
Carmen went quiet. Oh goodness.
‘Wow,’ she said.
‘Tell me you are really, really super-jealous,’ said Idra.
‘I will do that.’
‘See! Now we’ve left stupid old Dounston’s, all sorts of amazing things are going to happen. You’re in Edinburgh, full of rich blokes and Harvey Nicks and fun! It’s all there, Carmen. Go grab it!’
The morning was busy in the shop and every second person who looked local appeared to be going to Bronagh’s party, many of them buying her books as gifts, the more abstruse the better.
‘Do you have … ?’ said one rather vampiric skinny young man. He leaned over the counter. ‘Asecretsection? For forbidden books?’
‘Sure,’ said Carmen. ‘Seeing as this is a fourteenth-century monastery built on a hellmouth.’
‘Ahem,’ said Mr McCredie, who was signing for a delivery.
‘Sorry,’ said Carmen, ashamed of her bad mood. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry. No. I mean … Sorry.’
The skinny young man picked up his book on poisons and left silently.
‘I am really sorry about that,’ said Carmen. ‘My stupid mouth.’
‘Oh no,’ said Mr McCredie. ‘I just didn’t want you to tell him about the forbidden section.’
‘What?’
But he had already disappeared into the back.
Carmen’s mood was no better, even as she handed over the delivery Mr McCredie had been signing for to a customer.
‘You’re absolutely sure it’s nine copies?’ She had never sold nine copies of anything.
‘Yes, it’s for my Christmas book group! We’re going to meet and discuss the Christmas book for five minutes, then drink mulled wine and eat mince pies until we are sick!’
The woman, who was dressed almost entirely in plum, looked delighted at the prospect.
