Page 48 of The Secret Christmas Library

‘I understand about duty to a house like this,’ said Mirren. ‘I mean, lots of people do think it’s your duty. Maybe he thought you thought it was too. That everyone else was right; that it was just him who had failed.’

‘Until the very end,’ said Jamie, and Mirren suddenly felt so sorry for him. ‘Until the end, when he thought, I’ve wasted my life. That’s it. It’s done. And walked out into a field.’

There was a silence then.

‘I think this is actual filth,’ said Theo loudly, banging down the cup of Bovril. ‘I’m going to find Esme. I think she absolutely would prescribe some whisky. Es!’ And he left the kitchen.

Jamie and Mirren both looked again at the papers.

‘Is there another clue?’ said Jamie, and they both sifted through. ‘Was there nothing else there?’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mirren. ‘Theo brought it all up in one, the wax paper bundle. He fished down again afterwards for snake eggs or something but that was definitely it.’

They leafed through the letters, but they all seemed normal.

‘Shit,’ said Jamie.

‘What?’

‘You don’t think it was on the envelopes?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The envelopes we burned.’

‘What do you mean? How?’

‘Well, people write tiny clues under stamps and things. This is just . . . these are just letters.’

Mirren screwed up her face. ‘Oh, God,’ she said. ‘Oh, no.’

‘If we’ve literally burned the last clue. After all this.’

‘Everyone nearly dying of exposure,’ said Mirren.

‘God,’ said Jamie, staring at them. ‘No. Surely not. Come on.’

‘What’s that spooky thing people use? Like lemons or invisible ink?’

Jamie held the paper up to the Aga and shone a torch behind it. ‘Anything?’

‘Nope.’

‘Oh, lord,’ said Jamie, scratching his head. ‘Maybe that’s it. Maybe we’ve torn it.’

Oddly, Mirren didn’t feel as bad as she thought she might, not finding it. She wouldn’t have changed what they’d done for anything.

‘Does it matter?’ she said. ‘You’ve got the point.’

‘I’ve got the point,’ said Jamie. ‘I haven’t got the book.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ she said.

She set all the sheets out on the kitchen table, and they moved them around, rearranged them.

Jamie put on a pair of reading glasses that were so incredibly old-fashioned they could only have come with the house; small rimmed round frames that made him look like he was appearing in a film about Bletchley code breakers.

He saw her looking and took them off again.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I like them.’

And he didn’t make a joke or brush off her remark; he put them back on, and stood over her shoulder, so close she could feel him breathe.

It was odd. It was while she was thinking about him – about the proximity of him, his soft, tweedy scent that she liked very much, the brush of his jumper against her hair that made her want to lean back, very much, into him, made her feel almost faint with desire for him simply to put his arms around her from behind, wrap her up in his coat, keep her warm, keep her safe, let the rest of the world fall even further away for them .

. . it was then, when her mind wasn’t focusing at all on the task at hand, that she saw it.

It was almost as if it was something you could only spot when you weren’t paying attention; where you had to rely on looking out of the corner of your eye.

‘Look!’ she said. ‘Why does your great-grandfather sometimes put dashes at the start of his new paragraphs and sometimes not?’

It was true. He had a black, thick hand, slanting forward, the fountain pen occasionally blotting as he constantly made heavily underlined points to James about not neglecting the estate, not getting caught up with unsuitable people, not complaining about school, not choosing a life of his own.

But sometimes these paragraphs started with a dash, as if he were saying, ‘—and another thing,’ like a drunk unable to give up an argument. Others, simply, did not.

‘Probably no reason,’ said Jamie, but she already knew him well enough to tell when there was mild excitement in his voice.

Mirren pointed out one.

‘Here you are: —Really this is unacceptable has got one, but This is quite appalling hasn’t.’

Jamie picked up the paper carefully, squishing his glasses up his nose and studying it.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I think . . . what do you think?’

Mirren had picked up another sheet, where the paragraph—Wait until you have managed the estate successfully, then you’ll find you know everything you need to know and won’t waste your time with those ridiculous books had a dash, but You need to live in the real world did not.

‘I think . . . ’ said Jamie slowly. ‘I don’t think those dashes are from my great-grandfather. I think they’re written in a different hand. Look. It’s not even a fountain pen.’

‘Hopes will not be dashed,’ whispered Mirren.

‘Like in the poem!’ She felt a twinge of excitement.

She was so out of practice reading handwriting at all, but now that he mentioned it she thought he was right.

The ink wasn’t thick and fresh-looking; it wasn’t a ballpoint, but it did look more like a marker.

‘Jamie,’ she whispered, fingering the poem and repeating, ‘Hopes will not be dashed.’

‘Hopes will not be dashed!’ he repeated joyfully. ‘Dashes! It is! You’re right!’

‘Really?’ she said. ‘Or are we imagining it? Is this letter graffitied ?’

‘This is all a feat of imagination,’ said Jamie, sounding excited. ‘But it’s taken us this far.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Mirren. ‘So, what should we do?’

‘Well, the dashes point at capital letters. Let’s write them down.’

They worked through the pages in companionable silence. The wind still howled outside, but inside in the kitchen by the stove it was quiet and cosy.

‘Okay,’ said Mirren finally. ‘I have OOUTDS. Outside? Outdoors?’

‘RNWARJY,’ read Jamie. ‘Oh, that’s nothing, it’s just rubbish.’

‘Well, it’s rubbish now,’ said Mirren. ‘Maybe it’s an anagram of some kind.’

‘Warts?’ said Jamie. ‘War doubts?’

‘No B,’ said Mirren. ‘We’ll need to do it on paper.’ She drew a circle of all the letters. ‘This is why I’ve never been on Countdown,’ she said.

‘What’s Countdown?’ said Jamie.

‘You’re too posh for Countdown?’

‘Oh, no, hang on, I know what it is. We just can’t pick up Channel 4 here.’

Mirren rolled her eyes. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Solve the anagram. Let’s try with the J first; not many words begin with J.’

‘Joust?’

‘If we have to joust, I’m out of here.’

‘Jar?’ he suggested. ‘Something could be in a jar.’

‘True. Can it make Jamie? Nope, sorry, no M, I or E . . . You can get . . . joy.’

‘Hmm . . . ’

‘That’s encouraging,’ said Mirren. ‘It being Christmas and everything.’ She crossed off J, O and Y, and they stared and doodled some more.

‘And run,’ pointed out Jamie.

‘Oh, yes!’ said Mirren. ‘Run owt joy . . . ’

Jamie almost leapt up in excitement. ‘It does spell something! Look!’

And he wrote, carefully:

RUN TOWARDS JOY.

They stared at it.

‘We were right,’ said Mirren. ‘It’s life advice. He’s telling you that you can get away. All those messages about things he shouldn’t do and couldn’t do and didn’t want to do. He’s telling you to do something different.’

‘Seize the day?’

‘More or less.’

‘Why couldn’t he just write that? Instead of a stupid poem?’

Mirren thought of the bed, the beautiful view, the cosy space.

‘I think he had a lot of time on his hands,’ said Mirren. ‘I think he enjoyed doing it. And he means it. And also . . . ’ She paused, thinking. ‘He might have wanted you to explore properly, explore the whole house, and see that you couldn’t save it, maybe.’

‘Huh,’ said Jamie. He leafed through the papers. ‘There’s nothing else,’ he said. ‘This is it. No more clues.’

She looked up at him. ‘It’s really not bad advice.’

‘I know. I totally get that,’ he said. ‘But . . . ’

They looked at the original poem again. ‘Understand, my friend . . . ’ He frowned. ‘Do you think this is it? This is the end? He just wanted to be understood?’

‘Run towards joy,’ said Mirren. ‘I think that’s not a bad outcome.’

Jamie’s face was a mixture of bewilderment and hope.

‘I could just . . . walk away?’ he said. He looked at Mirren. ‘Do you think I could?’

Mirren shrugged. ‘I bet there’s a botanical garden somewhere that needs its spiders saving.’

‘But where would I live? What would I do?’

‘Those are questions,’ said Mirren, ‘that, believe it or not, most of us deal with every day.’

He blinked, and Mirren thought she could see new possibilities dancing in his eyes. ‘God,’ he said. ‘Esme is going to spit.’

‘Did she think you were going to find a pot of treasure and buy her a yacht?’

‘It’s not outside the realms of possibility.’

‘But there wasn’t really a book,’ said Mirren. ‘Or rather, it was a book of his letters. And valuable advice.’

‘Goodness . . . ’

Jamie looked around, stricken. Do it now, Mirren told herself. Take him by the hand. Kiss him if you have to, before you get interrupted again. And just as she had this thought, Bonnie walked into the kitchen, holding a live duck by the neck. The duck was loudly unimpressed.