Page 31 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘What?’ said Mirren, picking her way down the stairs towards the great high casement windows. The lights flickered again, and she could see it now: it had begun to snow. ‘It’s snowing!’ she said.
‘It’s winter in Scotland,’ said Jamie. ‘There are literally ski lifts one mountain over.’
‘Are we going to get stuck?’ said Theo.
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Jamie, waving a hand. ‘Snow isn’t what it was. I’m amazed we’re even getting any in December. It used to show up in November, and you could be stuck for weeks after Christmas. It was great. If I didn’t have to get back to school.’
‘Did you get to hang out with your grandad?’
‘No! With Bonnie, of course.’
They watched the flakes fall. It was cold and bleak out there; Mirren was happy she wasn’t outside, even though the metal of the casement windows was freezing to the touch.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘It never snows in London. Like, five flakes, then it’s all slushy and disgusting. This is . . . this is proper.’
‘It is,’ said Jamie. ‘We’re going to have to get you kitted out.’
The lights wobbled again.
‘Is the power going to go off?’
Jamie shrugged. ‘Probably. Not yet.’
‘Notyet?’
‘The electrics are . . . a little aged.’
‘I feel a Tripadvisor review coming on,’ said Mirren.
‘So,’ said Theo, turning back to the matter at hand, ‘over here for some reason, mildly lumped together for once . . . ’
He held up a front cover. They squinted to see it.Bacteria of the Arctic.
‘I didn’t think there were any bacteria in the Arctic,’ said Mirren. ‘I thought it was too cold.’
‘It’s just an example,’ said Theo. ‘There are lots of books about the Arctic and Arctic animals over here.’
Jamie glanced back. ‘You think they might have something to do with the tracings?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Theo. ‘But they were traced from somewhere.’
‘Fair point,’ said Jamie, and they started looking through the dusty old guides, Theo still using his phone as a torch. Jamie meanwhile had grabbed a stud of candle in a holder and was now reading by candlelight.
Mirren stared out a moment longer, letting her eyes adjust to looking at the swooping, dancing snowflakes blasting across the landscape. It was so lovely, the way they whisked and twirled in the air. As the boys leafed through the pages, occasionally making remarks like ‘well,someonehad never seen an otter before’ and, ‘okay, I’ve gone bird-blind’, she gazed into the lonely wilderness. She had travelled a little, she supposed – well, Ibiza with the girls, and France with her mum. But here, even though she was supposedly on the same island as London, it was hard to believe it. Not a speck of humanity or civilisation anywhere; nothing to be seen or heard, nobody else around. It was liberating, too, she supposed, to have this much space with which todo what you wanted. Although it hadn’t seemed to make the old man very happy. Or the young one, she found herself thinking. Perhaps there was just too much solitude.
Just as she thought this, she saw a light, blinking, outside in the freezing dark.
18
‘What’s that?’ Mirren asked, shielding her eyes against the black glass. There was a beam of light shining, flickering back and forth.
Jamie looked up from the scattered tomes and frowned.
‘Probably lost tourists. They don’t usually make it this far up the track, though. Plus once some kids thought it was deserted and came to do some kind of YouTube exploring thing and my grandfather threatened them with an actual blunderbuss.’
‘He blunderbussed YouTube kids?’
‘Some of them are very annoying,’ murmured Theo.
