Page 5 of The Secret Christmas Library

There are many beautiful railway stations in Britain. Euston Station, London, is emphatically not one of them.

It is a squat, grey, low-ceilinged box that smells of anxiety.

Attempts to brighten it up – colourful pictures of happy blended families in the countryside; pianos everywhere – seem to do absolutely nothing except highlight the dinginess, the greyness of it all, as if the trains themselves still gave off thick black soot.

There are numerous fast-food concessions, and lots and lots of people staring at their phones and then peering upwards again at the departure boards, and if one person twitches as if they’ve seen the platform being announced, everyone else twitches too, like a flock of startled birds.

When the platforms finally appear, people run as if their lives depend on it, knowing that the crush will leave behind the burdened, the old and the weak.

This makes everyone feel slightly unhappy and ashamed, and these feelings run into the very concrete of the building, giving it a patina of greasy worry that you can sense the second you walk through the low, smeared doors, buses belching in your face as you do so.

On this cold, wet December night, it is freezing and filthy and not a very happy or Christmassy place to be, particularly if, like Mirren, you are standing outside it, currently collapsed in heaving fits of sobs; sobs which can be heard even above the optimistic Salvation Army carol singers trying to raise some money from sentimental commuters on their way back from their office parties, bestrewn with defeated tinsel.

‘But I’m street-smart,’ Mirren is currently sobbing. ‘I’m a Londoner! I live here! I thought those guys were meant to target green tourists who’d just arrived.’

It had taken milliseconds. She had exited the tube, been crossing the road, pulling the ticket up on her phone and – whoosh: a darting figure on an electric bike had zoomed straight past her and snatched the phone right out of her hand, disappearing into the mass of wet headlights and tail-lights bullying their way up the Euston Road.

The friendly Scottish British Transport Policeman who was trying to help the crying lady at the end of a very long shift didn’t think this wishing of bad luck on to tourists was a particularly charitable response, but he did his best.

‘Yes, well,’ he said, pointing at a poster nearby informing everyone that Thieves Operate in the Area. ‘We do tell everyone to keep their phones out of sight.’

‘But I’m at a train station, and my train ticket is on my phone!’ snivelled Mirren. ‘It didn’t feel like a very controversial thing to be doing.’

She sniffed loudly and other people looked at her. She tugged hard on one of the chestnut curls that was poking out from her beanie, an old habit.

‘Would you like to come into the office, and we’ll file a report?’ said the policeman.

‘I need my phone! Can you get it back?’ implored Mirren desperately. ‘There’s loads of CCTV around here.’

‘No,’ said the policeman. ‘You haven’t had your phone stolen very often, have you?’

The room they take you to at Euston if you have had something bad happen to you is, almost unbelievably, even worse than the rest of the station. There is a cheap box of tissues on a scuffed low table, and two chairs which have had the stuffing pulled out of them.

‘So do you want to hear the whole story?’ said Mirren, sitting down, as the officer took out a notepad.

‘Not really,’ said the policeman. ‘I was just going to give you this for your insurance.’

‘But I really need my phone!’ said Mirren. ‘It’s like . . . having your daemon guillotined from your body – do you know what I mean?’

‘Aye. No’ really,’ said the man, as if he didn’t have to listen to this exact same thing a hundred times a day.

‘Why won’t somebody stop it?’

‘It’s the wee lads on bikes,’ said the officer, sagely. ‘They’re pretty fast.’

‘You sound like you think they’re cool!’

‘I did not say cool,’ said the man. ‘I said fast.’

‘They should set up electrical tripwires,’ said Mirren, with unusual verve. Like most people she was not, day-to-day, a cruel person. ‘And pull them up at the station exit.’

‘And catapult the wee laddies out into the traffic,’ said the man thoughtfully.

‘Yes!’

‘So. Capital punishment.’

‘It would stop the thefts,’ said Mirren, sullenly.

‘Well, there is that.’

They sat in silence for a little longer and she cried on filling out the form for her insurance.

‘Oh, God,’ said Mirren. ‘This can’t be happening. I have a train to catch. And the ticket’s on my phone!’

‘I anticipated that,’ said the policeman, holding up a fresh pad of dockets. ‘Where are you headed?’

‘Scotland,’ said Mirren.

‘Och, lovely,’ he said. ‘On the sleeper?’

‘Will you stop trying to pretend everything’s fine?’ said Mirren. ‘I’ve been robbed, I’m on my way to a new job, and it’s all terrible.’

‘Nobody died . . . ’ said the policeman.

‘That’s because nobody will listen to my tripwire idea!’

‘ . . . and you’re off to Scotland at Christmastime,’ said the officer, with a friendly smile. ‘Could be worse.’

The nice policeman waited while she cancelled everything with her bank on a landline phone they kept for this exact purpose, with all the bank telephone numbers sellotaped on it and everything.

Now, stuck in this filthy, miserable room in Euston, Mirren just wanted to go home. Her studio might be tiny and have no sound insulation and be lying about its mezzanine pretensions, but it was hers. She could lock the door and be alone.

Then she remembered. Her Oyster card and all her contacts and her details and her life and her Uber and everything – everything – was on her stupid bloody, bloody phone.

She’d outsourced her entire brain in about 2009, and now she didn’t even know her brothers’ mobile number, or anyone who could help her out.

But she had a job to do. They were expecting her. She’d better carry on.

‘Okay?’ said the policeman. ‘Your train is going soon.’

‘And I’ll be alright without a ticket?’ She held up the thin paper docket again.

He nodded his head. ‘You’ve got ID, haven’t you?’

‘They didn’t get my wallet, just my phone. As you’d know because, if you wanted, you could just go and find it on Find My Phone.’

The policeman cleared his throat. He’d had a very long day and had saved an errant buggy from rolling on to the tracks and arrested a flasher, so he didn’t feel entirely useless, but there sure were a lot more disgruntled victims of cycle-by muggings these days.

‘Well, let’s go down to check in on Platform 1, miss; they’ll sort you out. Then you can get picked up the other side, get a new phone, Bob’s your uncle. Get a cup of tea on there too. Or maybe a wee dram?’

‘Okay,’ she said, feeling cold and depressed and wretched. ‘I’ll try that.’

The sleeper was tucked away in the far corner of the station. She looked with envy at the promotional posters of people tucking themselves up in clean white duvets.

The train was petrol blue and stood in its own corner as passengers made their way down the wide concrete gangway.

The very first carriage, she saw, was half for seating and half for bikes and luggage.

It looked reasonably comfortable as these things went, but she’d still be sitting upright all night, next to a total stranger – the train was always sold out.

There were people already in there, mostly men, a pair of women knitting, men with large kit bags next to them, already fast asleep.

A family were trying to wrestle a two-year-old and a baby into their seats and Mirren felt sorry for them and then, also, for herself.

Whatever was up in Scotland, she was absolutely not going to be in the best state to get into it in the morning.

She realised she hadn’t checked to see if there was any information about when she was getting picked up.

She was getting picked up, yes? She couldn’t even remember the name of the stop .

. . no, it would be okay. It would come to her, would be a new day.

Someone would have a laptop, wouldn’t mind her logging in.

Perhaps even an adventure, she told herself, rubbing her arms to keep warm.

But nothing felt like an adventure right then. A group of clearly quite inebriated men clambered into the seated carriage and started to unpack cans and clinking bottles from thin plastic bags. Oh, God. They were obviously planning a party.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the policeman.

‘Good luck,’ he said, and gave her a wink. ‘You’ll like Scotland, I promise.’

‘Ma’am?’

The train attendant was in a smart green-blue uniform, with a tartan waistcoat and a box hat.

‘Do you have a berth?’

‘No,’ said Mirren, sadly, watching the men marching up and down the aisle. She could already hear the baby screaming through the glass. ‘Just seated, I think.’

The attendant took her docket, looked at her driver’s licence and looked down their clipboard for a long time while Mirren shivered.

It was utterly freezing on the platform, and she was five hundred miles south of her eventual destination.

She wondered if she should have brought a thicker coat than the green pea coat she liked so much.

‘Ah, yes,’ they said eventually. ‘Here you are. Follow me.’

And they nodded to the other attendant and set off up the end of the train at quite a clip, Mirren moving quickly to keep up, the air getting colder and colder as they moved towards the outdoors, the train releasing gouts of steam, like a dragon warming up.

The train was extraordinarily long, carriage after carriage.

Once past the start, and the seated areas, it grew quieter.

Mirren looked sadly through the windows at people opening little doors into cosily appointed cabins, with tartan-carpeted rooms, and beds with crisp clean duvets on them; tiny sinks and a shower; bottles of water and toiletries neatly arrayed.

Her heart sank. It looked so warm and cosy, when she was so freezing and sad.

She was obviously being taken to another seated carriage, presumably at the other end of the train.

They were almost fully back out in the dark sooty air of the London night by the time they reached the very end of the train and the very last carriage.

The final carriage, right before the engine, was not blue at all.

It was a dark, rich red. Instead of large, rounded-edged windows, it had an old-fashioned slammable door and windows that could open.

It had obviously been attached from a completely different train; it was a different make and model altogether from the sleek new Caledonian Sleeper.

Oh, great. Maybe she had to sit all the way on an Underground seat.

‘Ma’am,’ said the attendant, tipping their hat, as the door swung open.

Mirren mounted the steps, carrying her wheelie bag, and turned right into the carriage. She expected an electric door, but there was a handle. Then, when she got inside, she stopped dead.