Page 63 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘Es,’ said Jamie, in a softer tone than he normally used.
‘It’s okay for you!’ said Esme. ‘You’ve got a roof over your head. You’ve got it all! I’m the one bouncing about between friends I went to school with, spending half the year yacht-hopping!’
‘I thought you loved yacht-hopping,’ said Jamie. ‘You’re always going on about how great it is.’
Esme rolled her eyes. ‘What, hanging on, being beautiful and elegant and delightful and entertaining and hoping for crumbs off their table? As every year the other girls get younger. Not particularly, no.’
‘Could you not just go and get a job?’ said Mirren, timidly. ‘You must have friends who work in film and fashion and cool stuff like that?’
Esme heaved a sigh. ‘Yes, I do. Those jobs don’t pay actual money, you do know that? You can’t live off them.’
‘Um,’ said Mirren, who did not know that.
‘You don’t search for books for a living, do you?’
‘I’m a quantity surveyor.’
Esme snorted. ‘Exactly. I don’t even know what the hell that is.’
‘It means she can tell you if your house is about to fall down,’ said Theo.
‘Is this house about to fall down?’
Mirren made a wobbling ‘maybe’ sign with her hand flat.
‘Oh, that looks like an easy job,’ said Esme. ‘Better than wasting your time here with this nonsense. What do you think, Theo? You’re meant to be the book guy.’
Theo looked serious. ‘There’s a lot of house clearance stuff here,’ he said. ‘I think when your grandfather . . . we see this quite a lot. When he bought a lot of stuff at auction, when people get really accumulative with book-collecting or anything else . . . they can get a bit less discriminating. Which means they’ll buy anything. And collections that come to auction . . . well, usually those families have been through them first to see if there’s anything truly valuable.’
Esme folded her arms. ‘So it’s just a heap of fucking junk,’ she said. ‘Just like I always thought.’ She kicked the wooden kitchen table leg in frustration. ‘And he just let these bloody books pile all their way up over here like a fricking . . . maze. The house is already a maze; he just made another maze. Out of garbage.’
‘Oh, Esme . . . ’ began Mirren, feeling sorry for the beautiful posh girl, which felt like a completely absurd position to be in.
‘Ssssshhh!’ said Jamie suddenly.
They all turned to stare at him, Esme looking truculent: how dare her little brother consider giving her a telling off? But Jamie was screwing up his eyes as if trying to ignore everyone else in the room.
‘A maze,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Esme. ‘That’s what I said.’
He grabbed the tweezers from Theo and stared intently at the picture.
‘What’s that monkey thing?’ he asked finally, screwing his eyes up even tighter and holding it right up to his face. ‘I don’t think it is a monkey. It’s got stripes. Monkeys don’t have stripes.’
‘It’s a bush baby?’ said Theo. ‘Something like that?’
Jamie snapped his fingers. ‘It’s a lemur.’
They stared at him, uncomprehending.
‘Hang on,’ said Mirren. ‘What about the boy with a ruff? Is he a fairy-tale boy? He’s wearing a fairy-tale outfit. Like in “The Elves and the Shoemaker”.’
‘I think something like that . . . ’ said Jamie. ‘Oh, lord, it’s on the tip of my tongue who he reminds me of.’
They stared at it.
‘Poem!’ said Mirren, flapping her hand, then remembered it was still in her pocket. ‘The saddest tale of woe is told,’ she said.
