Page 37 of The Secret Christmas Library

They must be getting close, Mirren thought. They must be. What had seemed at first an impossible task – well, they had solved two clues today. They were doing it. There was going to be something there, out of the terrible jumble and mess of the house. She felt excited and rather proud.

Tonight she chose a plain black twenties-style dress, which cascaded straight down, with silver threaded through the fabric, and beautiful black-fringed shoulder caps that trembled when she moved.

It made her stand differently, walk differently, to show it off.

She put her curly hair in a low bun; pulled some ringleted strands free and added smudgy eyeliner to her grey eyes, and descended by the front staircase this time, feeling unusually elegant.

There was nobody in the drawing room. The fire blazed high and she approached it gratefully. It was very strange being there by herself; where had the boys gone? She had thought she’d heard Theo zipping down their shared corridor to the bathroom.

She poured herself a very small whisky, topped it up with water and pulled an Elizabeth Gaskell from the bookshelf; a fine edition, old but barely read. She settled into one of the brittle, stylised chairs; she’d rather have been stretched out on the rug, but the dress was too lovely.

Then she thought, who cared? Esme did whatever she wanted. The dress could be cleaned; its owner didn’t seem to care about it. She stretched out full length on the heavy rug in front of the fire, and lost herself in Cranford again.

Without her realising it, the whisky warmed her up, the flames popped and burned and she felt her eyes start to close again, just as they had in the old man’s bed.

It couldn’t all be what they’d done that day, she thought, that was making her so sleepy.

It was modern life that had made her tired.

So, so tired. Here, the rules of modern life did not apply.

And there was no doubt her body simply wanted to catch up.

No phone. No internet dating. No being angry about Theo, or anyone else. No job stress. No pickpockets.

Her head nodded, and she found herself in that delicious halfway house between sleep and waking, where for some reason Mrs Gaskell herself had turned up, to help them with the clues, and they had all been very welcoming, except for Esme, who hadn’t liked her shoes . . .

The next thing she knew, someone was licking her face.

She blinked, blearily. ‘What . . .? Oh, hello.’ It was Roger, Jamie’s dog. ‘I thought you weren’t allowed indoors.’

The dog’s tail was waving joyously.

‘Once it hits minus four, he can,’ said Jamie’s voice.

Mirren sat up and looked around, cuddling the dog, who, for a rough, tough working dog who had no time for any of that namby-pamby lifestyle, sure did suddenly seem to love being in front of the fire having a fuss made of him.

Mirren scratched him behind the ears, and he practically whinnied in delight, showing her his belly and pushing his ear closer towards her.

‘Roger, stop being ridiculous. You’re being such a Pick Me,’ said Jamie’s voice, and Mirren suddenly realised why she couldn’t see him. He and Theo were carting in huge armfuls of mistletoe and holly, still festooned with snow.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said, jumping up. Roger jumped up with her, to make sure she didn’t break any hand-to-ear contact. ‘You dragged in all that stuff!’

‘It’s nearly Christmas,’ said Jamie, going over to decorate the mantelpiece. ‘And I wanted to check if the ice was going to hold.’

‘I got dragged along against my will,’ said Theo, from the other side. ‘Bloody hell, it’s freezing outside. And I thought it was cold to start with.’

‘Keeps witches away,’ said Esme coming down behind them in a chic black mini-dress.

‘Witches,’ said Theo. ‘I’ll add it to my list of things to be terrified of around here.’

‘There’s a big freeze tonight,’ said Jamie. ‘Better fill up the baths in case the pipes go. Might keep the kitchen one running; I’ll tell Bonnie.’

‘How can this possibly still be the UK?’ said Mirren, shaking her head.

‘Excellent question,’ said Esme. ‘Come on, Theo, come to the cellar with me.’

Mirren looked to see what he would do. To see whether his behaviour towards her last night had just been time wasting for him, again. Or whether he would keep pressing her with as much ardour as he had then. He glanced over at her, and Mirren sat, pink cheeked and very still.

Esme blew her cheeks out impatiently. ‘Are you coming or what?’

And it seemed that she was asking for rather more than just some company in the cellar.

It felt to Mirren that Theo was having to choose.

There was a space next to her by the fire.

She looked at him. For a second Theo said nothing.

Then Esme made to move, and Theo got up and followed her, in her tiny dress, straight out of the door.

The strangest thing of all was how Mirren felt about it: uplifted.

Not at all what she would have expected.

Relieved. All that time spent wondering what she had done wrong, whether or not it was a good idea; all that worry and fretting and headspace and thinking about it.

All completely wasted. She had not, in fact, been in danger of passing up the love of her life with one wrong move.

She was not trying to land a good thing.

She had been expending energy in the wrong direction, completely: a handsome, charming, fundamentally weak man who could never fully be there for her – or, she suspected, for anyone else.

She prodded her heart, but even then all she could feel was clarity, and relief that she hadn’t fallen deeper in, lost her pride even more. It was okay. It was done.

‘What are you smiling about?’ Jamie asked, as Theo and Esme clattered out.

She shook her head. ‘Oh, things that used to matter but don’t any more,’ she said, cuddling Roger.

‘Oh, good,’ said Jamie. ‘I would love to have things that didn’t matter any more.’

Roger pushed his muzzle under her chin so she would pet him more.

‘It’s because you’re stretched out on the rug. Roger thinks you’re another dog.’

‘Or maybe,’ said Mirren, ‘Roger knows a sympathetic person when he sees one.’

Roger looked at Jamie as if to say, Why am I not in here every night? and Jamie nodded briefly.

‘Hungry?’ he said.

‘Incredibly,’ said Mirren, with some surprise, only just realising it. ‘We had a good day, don’t you think?’

‘I think so,’ said Jamie, cautiously. ‘But who knows where it’s all leading? It might just be on and on and round and round.’

‘Well, the poem comes to an end, doesn’t it?’

‘It does,’ he said. ‘Yeah.’ He looked around. ‘I think he did like us here at Christmas. My grandfather. Even if we moaned about his stupid treasure hunts.’

‘It’s a shame he’s missing this one when you’re doing so well.’

‘Mmm,’ said Jamie.

Mirren leaned closer. ‘Do you think he really was just so unhappy?’

‘It seems so, doesn’t it? Sad at school. An unhappy love affair . . . it feels like he wants to explain his life to us. Well, to me. Why it all ended so badly.’

‘In a field, all alone,’ said Mirren, sadly. Now she was here, it felt even sadder, his lonely death.

‘Yeah,’ said Jamie. ‘In a field all alone.’

They were quiet for a while.

‘You never think grown-ups are unhappy, do you?’ said Jamie. ‘When you’re a kid. It never crosses your mind. You think they’re having the best time.’

‘They can stay up as late as they like!’

‘Ha, yeah. They can eat sweets whenever they want!’

‘Drive cars!’

‘Exactly. I cannot believe what we ever complain about.’

They both smiled.

‘I love going to bed early,’ confessed Jamie. ‘It’s one of my favourite things.’

‘Mine too,’ said Mirren. ‘And if I eat a whole bar of chocolate I want to throw up.’

‘Me too,’ said Jamie. ‘Mind you, I used to do that when I was little as well. Plus, the cost of car insurance, oh, my God.’

‘It feels . . . ’ said Mirren, then hesitated. ‘It feels like he really wants you to know. What it was like for him. It feels like he’s seeking forgiveness maybe? For messing up your inheritance.’

‘I know,’ said Jamie. ‘I wondered that too. I think . . . I think that I never really knew him.’

‘Nobody knows their grandparents,’ said Mirren. ‘Maybe nobody understood him his whole life.’

‘I think the person who wrote the Sunset Letters to him did,’ said Jamie. ‘And for whatever reason . . . ’

‘Do you think it was a man?’ said Mirren. ‘That seems the likeliest. Sorry and all that.’

‘That’s what Mum thinks: that he was gay,’ said Jamie, rolling his eyes. ‘She’d love that: it would make her feel hip and down with things.’

‘So your mum just never visited your grandfather at all?’

He shook his head. ‘Once the money was finished, she was gone. I think . . . I think my grandmother and she were in fair cahoots about it. You get that in divorce, don’t you? Sides get taken . . . ’ His voice trailed off. ‘My mum said some right awful things about my dad as well.’

‘There’s a lot of broken marriages in your family.’

‘There are.’

‘So, who was your grandmother? Is she definitely not the letter-writer?’

‘Definitely not,’ said Jamie. ‘I’d recognise her handwriting, from the disappointed letters she used to send me about my school report.’

Mirren smiled. ‘Ah, a family trait.’

‘Yeah,’ said Jamie. ‘Anyway. She was a laird’s daughter, from Lewis.

It was kind of an arranged match between clans.

I know some arranged marriages work fine, but this one .

. . not so much. She went back to Lewis in the end, couldn’t bear the house or the east coast. I don’t remember them ever exchanging a kind word. ’

He lay down on his back, his head near hers on the old rug. It was strangely intimate, but not uncomfortably so. He stared at the ceiling, and Roger sat on his chest in front of the fire. He appeared to have adjusted remarkably speedily to being an indoor dog.