Page 57 of The Secret Christmas Library

It is spring, and Mirren is back at the cottage.

She has let the unfortunate London flat out for an incredible amount of money.

She felt so guilty about it that she told them about the bad soundproofing and the bad water pressure and they said it was still a lot nicer than anything else they’d seen, thanks.

She bought, rather reluctantly, a new phone, but fortunately the internet in the cottage was completely non-existent so she didn’t feel as if it was dragging her back too far.

And in January her nice boss had called her into the little office, saying that she was really, really sorry, the office was going to close, but they should be able to offer some redundancy money, and Mirren had done her best to put a very sad face on.

There are all sorts of interesting things sprouting in the kitchen garden on the grounds of the estate.

Builder’s merchants and salvage yards had swarmed the site, disappointed by how little treasure was left – but the vast piles of rubble have gone, regardless.

Jamie is working hard on re-establishing the garden’s original footprint.

The children who arrive to inspect the ruins very carefully on the permitted school trips up the bumpy track are generally more interested in the secret cave, for obvious reasons, or Bonnie’s scones, for equally obvious reasons.

But there are often one or two, who sidle up quietly and watch as Jamie explains how he is trying a new humane slug-removal system, or admire the pathway full of daffodils he has planted along the outlines of the old house, still visible.

The maze is still recovering, but recover it will.

But today there are no visits scheduled, and they have something to do.

Mirren comes down from the cottage, where she has been trying to file even more paperwork and carry on with the leftover books.

It has been quite the job, but Jamie is going to build little shelves into the old stable block and that should work.

As well as the redundancy and the rent from her flat and the money from the sale of the book, Jamie had also tracked down, astoundingly, an extant insurance policy from 1896, which was honoured by a two-hundred-year-old insurance company in Edinburgh.

Unfortunately, it covered the entire property for ￡18,000, but it has still come in extremely handy.

Esme has arrived back too, fresh from the Australian sun. She is having fun with her share of the windfall, and Mirren sees no harm in that.

The three of them, plus Roger, who is now officially an indoor dog and in some danger of getting rather fat, walk round the back of the building, towards the ancient chapel.

Today, the sun is shining gently on the sea, and the light is dancing on the waves.

Everything grows so quickly up here, and, once the snow had gone, snowdrops and early daffodils had appeared everywhere; the place is a riot.

Soon, moss will reclaim the last of the stones still visible; nature will take over and it will be as if the great house never existed.

Ian joins them, along with Bonnie’s mum – she is so like her daughter but also, so like them all, Mirren thinks.

She is a lovely woman, still rather taken aback by their change in fortunes.

She tells Mirren she has ‘never seen young Jamie so content’, which in turn makes Mirren so happy she thinks she’s going to bubble over.

Nora and her brothers are arriving for Easter, and she cannot wait to show them everything. But this is for Jamie’s family.

Behind the chapel is the graveyard, and Joy Airdrie is buried there, as are generations of staff, and there is a war memorial to the young men who worked at the big house and never came home from fighting.

There is a fancy mausoleum for family members, which rather made Mirren shiver, but Jamie has sorted things, and has (rather bravely, Mirren thought) gone in and retrieved the silver casket that held his grandfather’s ashes and scattered them – not all of them, just a few – by, but not on, Mrs Airdrie’s grave.

They want to be respectful to both of them.

The wind blowing off the sea is cold, as it often is in April, and suddenly Mirren gets that sense she has now and again: of being out of time.

She feels she can see the house behind her again, and almost as if there were snow on the ground – and an old man, who remembers it buzzing with light and life, and now sees it empty and hollow and hopes he can do better for future generations; who hopes something better will come, and dies knowing he has done his best, in his own way, to save his heir, if he wants to be saved.

‘The saddest tale of woe is told,’ read Jamie, off the sheet Mirren had copied out by hand; he carried it everywhere with him in his wallet, ‘when all the songs are past. Then you must find a crown of gold, and hopes will not be dashed.’

Then they turn from the chapel and wander back in the sunshine, looking at the ruin, still marvelling at how very, very strange it is that the house simply is not there, and more than that – that in the end it barely matters.

They are holding each other, and looking forward to scones – the cast-iron range had survived, and been moved with great difficulty and the help of Ian’s biker gang – who, as it turned out, Esme did like, very much – and laughing when Bonnie’s mum says actually her mum might have been furious that there was dust around her grave now, having spent a lifetime waging war on the stuff, while the sea continues to crash against the cliff walls, while the grass grows, while their footprints on the ground press on the dew, which then dries, and their footprints disappear.