Page 31 of The Secret Christmas Library

Jamie led them to the boot room, a large space with a stone floor, lined with Wellingtons in all sizes, and jackets on the wall – hunting, tweed and old Barbours. There were boxes of gloves and riding boots too.

‘Just pile everything on, I should say,’ said Jamie. ‘There are some waterproof trousers too.’

Esme, it turned out, had about six per cent left on her phone. There was a corner of the grounds nearest the village where there was occasional signal. Naturally it was absolutely miles away, at the very edge. It might not be possible to get there, depending on how thick the snow was . . .

Jamie disappeared suddenly while Mirren shrugged herself into even more layers of very old clothes.

They smelled of the house itself; not a bad smell, not really.

Just old. She added another jumper and a padded jacket and a huge overcoat, and Theo gave her something which appeared to be waders. She shook her head.

‘Oh, my God, I’m going to look like Coco the Clown,’ she said, laughing.

‘Even more than you do already?’ said Theo. ‘Anyway, I like it.’

‘You do not!’

‘I do’ he said. ‘It’s very cute, plus it’s completely impossible to tell what you actually look like underneath it all. Thrilling.’

‘Stop it,’ she said. He had found an enormous waterproof cape and swathed it around himself, and a huge soft hat. ‘You look like Doctor Who,’ she said.

‘Which one?’

‘All of them put together.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I shall stride out for adventure.’

Eventually, Jamie returned. He was covered in dust and had a spider’s web in his hair.

‘SPIDER!’ hollered Mirren.

He frowned at her. ‘What?’

‘You have a . . . ’

He went to the old, spotted mirror above the butler sink, then smiled and shook his head upside down, gently, letting the spider land in his hand. Then he popped it out of the door.

‘See,’ he said. ‘Spider-free. For now.’ He turned back. ‘This is not really a house you want to be in if you’re frightened of spiders.’

Mirren winced.

‘Spiders are great,’ he went on, suddenly enthused. ‘They eat bugs and keep flies away. What have you got against spiders?’

‘Their terrifyingness?’ said Mirren.

‘Oh,’ he said, looking a little saddened.

This is a man who wouldn’t kill a spider, thought Mirren. Interesting.

‘I wouldn’t kill them, though,’ she said, quickly, not adding that this was only because she would be running too fast in the other direction. But he wasn’t listening, instead bringing out, from a large wicker basket he had hauled down, something that Mirren at first took for tennis racquets.

‘What the hell?’ said Esme. ‘Oh, no way.’

‘Come on, Ess,’ said Jamie. ‘They’re fun, remember?’

And he pulled out old, slightly busted snowshoes – wooden frames, with large leather buckles, designed to go over their shoes.

‘They’re not fun, they’re ridiculous,’ said Esme.

‘Can you think of a better plan?’

‘Yes,’ said Esme. ‘Live in a city and go back in time and stop our stupid family squandering all our money.’

Jamie smiled. There was no light in the boot room at all; the window was completely filled up with snow. It looked as if he was right: there was no better option.

‘I’ll have a shot,’ said Mirren, surprisingly anxious to get back in his good books after revealing herself to be a spider-hater.

Jamie smiled. ‘Come on, then. You won’t need both jackets, I promise.’

Esme smirked. ‘Oh, it’s quite the workout.’

‘This is basically a north of Scotland striptease,’ commented Theo, as Mirren unbuttoned the cagoule.

‘Shut up, Theo!’ said Mirren, smiling, but as ever he looked totally undaunted, and swished his cape behind him as he bent down to pick up his pair of snowshoes as if he’d been doing it all his life.

Bonnie was at the door as they left, carrying a scuffed silver tray. ‘Thought you’d . . . ’

‘Oh, Bonnie!’ said Jamie. ‘I think I love being snowed in with you.’

And Mirren wondered, once again, what exactly was going on between those two.

Because she couldn’t for the life of her understand why else Bonnie would stay in this tumbledown place, looking after it as best she could.

There must be a million better jobs out there for a young woman, with lots of life and fun, and instead she had sequestered herself here like a nun.

There must be a reason for it. Mirren found herself very curious as to whether that reason had sandy hair and a worried expression and an aversion to killing insects unusual in a gardener.

There were four mismatched small glasses on Bonnie’s salver, filled with a reddish-brown liquid and steaming gently. Jamie, Theo and Esme took one immediately and knocked it back. Not wanting to feel left out, Mirren did exactly the same thing.

It was like getting punched in the gut; the strange, hot drink went straight to her veins, making her shake and tingle.

‘Bloody hell,’ she said.

‘Well, quite,’ said Jamie, grinning at her.

‘What is in that?’

‘Venison stock, vodka, Worcestershire sauce, chilli . . . ’

‘I feel like I’ve just been punched in the face by a hot Bloody Mary.’

‘Yeah, well . . . ’

‘It’s ten o’clock in the morning!’

‘Best get going, then.’

Mirren’s head was still reeling as they forced back open the boot room door.

The sun was low on the horizon, on this midwinter day, but you could see it, which was something in itself.

It had formed a rime of frost on top of the endless acres of all-encompassing snow.

Everything was still; there was not a breath of air through the trees, and even the birds had fallen silent.

The snowshoes were hard to adapt to. They sat on top of the snow – Theo experimented with taking a couple of steps without them and found himself stuck in snow up to his thighs, laughing heartily at his own predicament – and they would have had quite the job without them.

Mirren advanced very tentatively. The shoes, worn and cracked as they were, did indeed hold her weight on top of the snow.

It was the oddest feeling, as if she were a bird or a tiny creature, rather than a ridiculous sight in someone else’s jacket, a pair of green waders, a pair of Wellingtons rather too big for her, and two great tennis racquets strapped to her toes.

She tried another step tentatively, but it still worked: the snow scrunched satisfyingly beneath her.

She carried on further, as Jamie and Esme lent a laughing Theo an arm to dig himself out.

Even their noises faded, as if folded into this big white world, and she found herself eager to move on, even if she didn’t know if she was going in the right direction.

She was now front left of the house, as they had moved around again, and the boot room was at the bottom of the south wing.

In normal times, or once upon a time, this must have been part of fine lawns to the front of the property, for ladies to stroll in fine weather, giving the best vista as the carriages clipped up the long driveway.

The old Queen Mother had been a frequent visitor, if the photos in the drawing room were anything to go by.

She stomped on – Esme was right, it was quite hard work – then turned round to look back.

From this angle, covered in snow, the castle was so beautiful it could break your heart.

How could something so very lovely be filled with such patent unhappiness?

Mirren thought of the house where she grew up, a terrace in south London, with her, her mum and her two brothers, with her aunties nearby and her beloved great-aunt always swooping down to take her to visit a museum or gallery.

People in and out all day – it wasn’t even that unusual where she lived, to grow up without a dad; she had gone to school two streets away, everyone lived in a house just like hers, and she’d had friends of every race and type – although, she realised now, probably all of the same class.

And it wouldn’t even be like that now; those same houses, with their handkerchief gardens and three tiny upstairs bedrooms, were expensive these days, all side returns and loft extensions.

But it had been fun; she had known she was loved; she had always had someone to play with, to watch YouTube videos with, to go up west to go stare at the big shops and visit the big Primark; she’d had a room full of furbees and Christmas and a week in south Wales in the summer.

It was a completely normal childhood, one replicated millions and millions of times over, and she had felt slightly bad at not having both parents living at home, but it was hardly unusual.

It was hard to look at this gravely beautiful frontage, the perfect crenellated walls and of course those towers with their fluttering banners, and not think, why weren’t you happy, any of you?

Who couldn’t be happy here, deep in the world of snow?

What led your grandfather to die, alone, in miserable circumstances?

She took a deep breath of the frosted air into her lungs, watching the others approach with the funny shuffling gait you used as you managed the snowshoes for the first time.

She had only met them the day before but somehow she couldn’t help it .

. . there was something unifying about all being trapped in together.

She felt as if they were part of a gang: Jamie with his worried frown; Theo, full of cheek; Esme, tired of all of them.

She looked at the boys for a moment, their arms swinging, Theo slipping and laughing.

He took life so lightly, she thought, however annoying he was – even Jamie was smiling for a moment, his face brightening in the low winter sun.

Her heart tugged suddenly. It made him look so different; she could almost see what Bonnie saw in him.

‘Just a minute, I want to check my Insta first,’ said Esme, taking her phone out.

‘No!’ said Jamie. ‘Sis, you’re being ridiculous. I thought you had nearly no battery left.’

‘I’m going to burrow into the car and charge it that way,’ said Esme.