Page 12 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘Fine,’ she said finally. ‘I found the last book first; I’ll find this one too.’
‘Good for you,’ he said. Then he picked up his glass and wandered over to the nearest shelf, selecting an Edward Gibbon with a look of happy recognition and taking it to the armchair next to the fire. Obviously their conversation was over.
Mirren looked around to see if there was anywhere obvious to tidy up the plates – there wasn’t. Then she remembered that this was a stupid posh world for stupid posh people who never considered even for a second clearing their own bloody plates, so she simply left things where they were and headed off for bed without saying goodnight.
8
It was, it turned out, quite difficult not to sleep after a delicious meal, a glass of wine and a heavenly bed with its own rocking motion, and the comforting sound ofclickety clack, clickety clackfading the world away. Mirren sank into oblivion in the dark carriage, the mattress firm yet yielding, the pillows perfectly soft.
At first, when she woke up, she wasn’t sure where she was. Then the strangeness of the night and all her unanswered questions came back; the train was still moving, and she quickly nipped to the toilet and drank a glass of fresh cold water, before pulling up the blind. It was pitch dark outside, but she could feel from the glass that it was sharply cold. She squinted past her own reflection and caught glimpses of frosted white in the bushes beside the tracks and wondered where they were.
She sniffed – she could smell fresh coffee, and suddenly she wanted one more than anything, even if she did have to walk past stupid bloody Theo to get to it.
She was tempted by the bath, but coffee came first, so she threw on a jumper and jeans and headed into the main salon, as if she slept in private train carriages all the time.
Amazingly, the butler was back, looking immaculate; the room was cleared and the table was laid.
‘Breakfast, madam?’
The newspapers had been picked up at Inverness, andThe Scotsman,The Timesand theInverness Couriersat, immaculate, on the side of the table. Theo was already behind theRacing Post, as the butler set down a huge plate of bacon, sausage, tomatoes and mushrooms in front of him, and he grunted his thanks.
‘How do you stay so skinny?’ said Mirren, hoping that at least they could be on speaking terms this morning.
‘Someone found a priceless book and didn’t cut me in,’ grunted Theo, and so she decided just to ignore him again and enjoy her breakfast of yellow-yolked soft-boiled eggs and lashings of coffee and hot buttered toast, which she did, enormously. Gradually, the first streaks of pink appeared across the sky and the stars began to disappear in the east, through the windows to the right of the train. Mirren watched, fascinated. The empty world was frosted, bright pink; they cut through vast plains; passed mountains dimly outlined against the dawn; trundled over viaducts and across bridges on vast lochs, ice just about visible, shifting in the water. It was an extraordinary sunrise. Mirren was again regretting the loss of her phone.
As the sun laid its first late winter rays across the snow-capped peaks, Mirren felt the train finally slowing beneath her feet and felt sorry. She wouldn’t mind moving in permanently.
She glanced out of the window to take a look at the station name, but, as far as she could tell, they weren’t anywhere. It wasn’t a station, just a small platform, a halt, in the middle of nowhere, fields full of Highland coos with their twisted horns and bright orange hair; the harvest a distant memory, frost twinkling fields lying fallow, waiting for the old year to die and a new world to come, but not now; not for a long time.
The sun was almost up now, or as up as it got in December, which was hardly at all, and not for very long, but the icedanced like diamonds, making even the muddy ruts beautiful. Mirren watched as a pair of peregrines circled in the air. She had never felt further from London. There was the occasional stone farmhouse here and there but nothing you could reasonably call a town, or even a village; they truly were nowhere. Yet the train absolutely was stopping.
‘Madam,’ said the butler’s voice, and she saw to her horror that he was standing there with their bags, hers all packed up. She made a quick mental inventory of what he might have seen, but his face was impassive.
‘Okay, thanks,’ she said, nervously, going pink, to Theo’s evident amusement. He took a last bite of sausage, then stood up in a leisurely way.
‘Isn’t this our stop?’ said Mirren, already moving towards the door.
‘It’sourstop,’ said Theo, with some amusement. ‘They’ll wait for us. That’s the point.’
Mirren felt annoyed with him all over again for being so supercilious.
‘I can’t believe I’m such scum I was raised without my own train,’ she said, as she thanked the butler and wondered if she should tip him, then remembered she couldn’t because she didn’t have any cash, and then got even more annoyed with herself when Theo subtly did so.
Well, there was nothing to be done about that. She took a deep breath, pulled on her thin coat and a scarf in anticipation of the freezing air, and waited as the train powered down with a hiss. They unlocked the doors, and she found herself stepping down on to the halt, and into a whole new world.
9
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 houseby 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 knewexactlywhere she was right now. What a strange night had just passed. She felt, she realised, alive. For the first time in a long while.
