‘Do you remember how to work the new card machine?’
‘You wave it,’ said Mr McCredie. ‘And magic beams come out of people’s magic devices.’
‘Their telephones.’
He snorted.
‘That’s not a telephone,’ he said. ‘It’s a magic wand hellbent on destroying the world. But you call it what you want. Magic waves, blah blah blah.’
‘Good,’ said Carmen. ‘Ooh, and upsell.’
‘Upwhat?’
‘Upsell. So we’ll wrap things for a quid. Ask them if they want it wrapped, then wrap it with the paper under the desk and charge them an extra pound.’
Mr McCredie blinked in sheer misery.
‘That is the single most vulgar thing I’ve ever heard of!’
‘Is it?’ said Carmen. ‘Good for you, but every little helps. Anyway, who wraps your gifts?’
Mr McCredie looked down.
‘I … I don’t … I don’t really … ’
Carmen swept in to save him.
‘You don’t have to give gifts,’ she said quickly. ‘You’re too busy giving books away all the time.’
He smiled hollowly, grateful.
Carmen still looked pensive as she joined Oke on the pavement outside the shop, her breath showing in front of her. The lights strung up between the lamp-post and the great silver snowflakes dancing in the twinkling light all the way down Victoria Street never failed to make her smile.
‘You’d think,’ she said, without even realising what she was saying, ‘people couldn’t possibly be unhappy somewhere so beautiful.’
Oke gave her a look.
‘I thought you were unhappy,’ he said.
‘I never said that,’ said Carmen.
Oke stopped and looked puzzled.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I apologise. You did not say it.’
‘But you thought I was?’
He held up the half-price voucher and pretended to study it.
‘No.’
‘You don’t have anyone else to share that with?’ said Carmen, wondering.
He blinked.
‘Yes. But most of them are busy.’
His accent was so faint, just a slight ‘th’ sound on the ‘s’ of busy. She liked it.
