Page 9 of The Secret Christmas Library

With some clunking and kerfuffle, the train moved off, back the way they had come.

They were obviously the very end of the line.

To her surprise Mirren noticed that on the end of their special carriage was a small viewing platform – for nicer days, she supposed, or daytime trips where it could be attached to the end.

She sighed watching it go. What a lovely thing.

The fading noise of the train disappearing left them completely alone in the crisp white day, and Mirren finally drew back to take in her surroundings.

The halt was made of old, pale wood with steps up to the height of the train doors, one on the up line and one on the down, with a wooden crossing point on the lines that didn’t look remotely safe to Mirren.

She turned slowly in a full circle. The view was sensational.

Ahead, towards the mountains, were great patches of almost entirely faded winter colours: burgundy, almost blue.

The dark thatch of evergreens sat in their neatly curated rows on the hillsides.

A huge loch lay ahead, with birds circling idly above it, looking for their breakfast.

The side near to where they were standing was more cultivated.

A road, completely empty at the moment, wound its way uphill through walled fields of sheep and Highland coos, into rolling hills much gentler and lower than the great mountains to the west. Just in the distance a house – a rather large house by the looks of things – was nestled between them, and, beyond that, glinting gold in the early morning light, was the North Sea.

Mirren had been to Scotland in wintertime before and had thought she was prepared, but she wasn’t. She zipped up her pea coat and tucked in her scarf, and plonked on her beanie, but it wasn’t enough.

Apart from Theo, who looked like a man who wished he still smoked (this was exactly who he was, and he still carried a Zippo with him, in case the opportunity ever arose to be gallant to a model), there was not another soul to be seen, just the distant calls of birds and the rustling of the wind through the trees.

Mirren took a deep breath. Even though it was cold, the air was fresh and clear, sharp and lovely.

She took another, and gradually felt her shoulders unfurl just a little.

She didn’t have her phone to take a photo or talk to people or post anywhere – but, somehow, that felt alright.

As though she was in a world out of time.

Nobody, it occurred to her, knew she was here.

Well, her mum had her address in case of emergencies, and she’d told her friends she was going to the Highlands, and work knew, she supposed.

But really, nobody on earth knew exactly where she was right now.

What a strange night had just passed. She felt, she realised, alive. For the first time in a long while.

Ignoring Theo, she looked up towards the road, not even worrying for once about whether they were getting collected or whether they were stuck out here.

‘I wonder if we’re stuck out here,’ said Theo, staring at his phone, and shaking it, as if that would help him get a signal. ‘Because I would have some doubts about Uber.’

But at that very moment Mirren exclaimed and pointed. Along the narrow track road that led up the valley and into the rolling hills before the house was a tiny, moving dot, heading straight for them.