Page 55 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘Yeah, well . . . ’
‘It’s ten o’clock in the morning!’
‘Best get going, then.’
Mirren’s head was still reeling as they forced back open the boot room door.
The sun was low on the horizon, on this midwinter day, but you could see it, which was something in itself. It had formed a rime of frost on top of the endless acres of all-encompassing snow. Everything was still; there was not a breath of air through the trees, and even the birds had fallen silent.
The snowshoes were hard to adapt to. They sat on top of the snow – Theo experimented with taking a couple of steps without them and found himself stuck in snow up to his thighs, laughing heartily at his own predicament–and they would have had quite the job without them.
Mirren advanced very tentatively. The shoes, worn and cracked as they were, did indeed hold her weight on top ofthe snow. It was the oddest feeling, as if she were a bird or a tiny creature, rather than a ridiculous sight in someone else’s jacket, a pair of green waders, a pair of Wellingtons rather too big for her, and two great tennis racquets strapped to her toes. She tried another step tentatively, but it still worked: the snow scrunched satisfyingly beneath her. She carried on further, as Jamie and Esme lent a laughing Theo an arm to dig himself out. Even their noises faded, as if folded into this big white world, and she found herself eager to move on, even if she didn’t know if she was going in the right direction. She was now front left of the house, as they had moved around again, and the boot room was at the bottom of the south wing. In normal times, or once upon a time, this must have been part of fine lawns to the front of the property, for ladies to stroll in fine weather, giving the best vista as the carriages clipped up the long driveway. The old Queen Mother had been a frequent visitor, if the photos in the drawing room were anything to go by. She stomped on – Esme was right, it was quite hard work – then turned round to look back.
From this angle, covered in snow, the castle was so beautiful it could break your heart. How could something so very lovely be filled with such patent unhappiness? Mirren thought of the house where she grew up, a terrace in south London, with her, her mum and her two brothers, with her aunties nearby and her beloved great-aunt always swooping down to take her to visit a museum or gallery. People in and out all day – it wasn’t even that unusual where she lived, to grow up without a dad; she had gone to school two streets away, everyone lived in a house just like hers, and she’d had friends of every race and type – although, she realised now, probably all of the same class. And it wouldn’t even be like that now; those same houses, with theirhandkerchief gardens and three tiny upstairs bedrooms, were expensive these days, all side returns and loft extensions.
But it had been fun; she had known she was loved; she had always had someone to play with, to watch YouTube videos with, to go up west to go stare at the big shops and visit the big Primark; she’d had a room full of furbees and Christmas and a week in south Wales in the summer. It was a completely normal childhood, one replicated millions and millions of times over, and she had felt slightly bad at not having both parents living at home, but it was hardly unusual. It was hard to look at this gravely beautiful frontage, the perfect crenellated walls and of course those towers with their fluttering banners, and not think, why weren’t you happy, any of you? Who couldn’t be happy here, deep in the world of snow? What led your grandfather to die, alone, in miserable circumstances?
She took a deep breath of the frosted air into her lungs, watching the others approach with the funny shuffling gait you used as you managed the snowshoes for the first time. She had only met them the day before but somehow she couldn’t help it . . . there was something unifying about all being trapped in together. She felt as if they were part of a gang: Jamie with his worried frown; Theo, full of cheek; Esme, tired of all of them. She looked at the boys for a moment, their arms swinging, Theo slipping and laughing. He took life so lightly, she thought, however annoying he was – even Jamie was smiling for a moment, his face brightening in the low winter sun. Her heart tugged suddenly. It made him look so different; she could almost see what Bonnie saw in him.
‘Just a minute, I want to check my Insta first,’ said Esme, taking her phone out.
‘No!’ said Jamie. ‘Sis, you’re being ridiculous. I thought you had nearly no battery left.’
‘I’m going to burrow into the car and charge it that way,’ said Esme.
‘But we need thisnow,’ said Jamie. ‘Come on, sis.’
‘Why the great rush?’ she said.
Jamie looked uncomfortable.He doesn’t want to tell her about the council rates being due, thought Mirren suddenly. Goodness. The crossing of wires and secrets in this family could fill every book in it.
‘Because these guys have homes to go to,’ he said.
‘Not right now, they don’t,’ pointed out Esme, not unreasonably.
Mirren was warmer after their tramp across the snowy fields, her gaze still turned up to the sky. A few moments ago, Jamie had quietly come up to her and touched her shoulder and pointed – she had followed his arm upwards and seen, to her amazement, what he told her were a pair of golden eagles, rising from the forest and making a circle in the blue sky.
‘Oh, wow,’ she said now, as the sun glinted off their feathers. Their wingspan was vast and magnificent; they looked like creatures from another age, their profiles strong and cruel. All of a sudden, one of them vanished from view, diving somewhere out of their field of vision.
‘That’s one little mouse who won’t be making it home tonight,’ said Jamie, soberly.
‘I thought you country folks loved killing things,’ said Mirren, surprised.
‘He’s a sentimental one,’ said Esme. ‘That’s why we live in the largest spider colony in the western world.’
‘Yeah, alright,’ said Jamie, and then tramped on, but Mirren still felt touched by her small glimpse of these other creaturesand their very different world. It applied to the McKinnons too, she found herself thinking. A very different world.
Right at the very edge of the field, to the left of the woods, Esme stood up in the corner, one foot on each of two wires supported between two posts, and held her head up high.
‘Are we ready?’ she said. ‘Theo, you have the numbers?’
Theo waved his notebook in his hand. He was wearing enormous mittens that looked like oven gloves, which slightly distracted from the dashing, saturnine air of the cape.
‘Don’t check your Instagram,’ said Jamie in a warning voice.
‘I’m just going to upload a few TikTok videos,’ said Esme. ‘It’s a relatable guide to being snowed in at your family castle.’
‘That does sound relatable,’ said Theo.
