Page 67 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘They can stay up as late as they like!’
‘Ha, yeah. They can eat sweetswhenever they want!’
‘Drive cars!’
‘Exactly. I cannot believe what we ever complain about.’
They both smiled.
‘I love going to bed early,’ confessed Jamie. ‘It’s one of my favourite things.’
‘Mine too,’ said Mirren. ‘And if I eat a whole bar of chocolate I want to throw up.’
‘Me too,’ said Jamie. ‘Mind you, I used to do that when I was little as well. Plus, the cost of car insurance, oh, my God.’
‘It feels . . . ’ said Mirren, then hesitated. ‘It feels like he really wants you to know. What it was like for him. It feels like he’s seeking forgiveness maybe? For messing up your inheritance.’
‘I know,’ said Jamie. ‘I wondered that too. I think . . . I think that I never really knew him.’
‘Nobody knows their grandparents,’ said Mirren. ‘Maybe nobody understood him his whole life.’
‘I think the person who wrote the Sunset Letters to him did,’ said Jamie. ‘And for whatever reason . . . ’
‘Do you think it was a man?’ said Mirren. ‘That seems the likeliest. Sorry and all that.’
‘That’s what Mum thinks: that he was gay,’ said Jamie, rolling his eyes. ‘She’d love that: it would make her feel hip and down with things.’
‘So your mum just never visited your grandfather at all?’
He shook his head. ‘Once the money was finished, she was gone. I think . . . I think my grandmother and she were in fair cahoots about it. You get that in divorce, don’t you? Sides get taken . . . ’ His voice trailed off. ‘My mum said some right awful things about my dad as well.’
‘There’s a lot of broken marriages in your family.’
‘There are.’
‘So, who was your grandmother? Is she definitely not the letter-writer?’
‘Definitely not,’ said Jamie. ‘I’d recognise her handwriting, from the disappointed letters she used to send me about my school report.’
Mirren smiled. ‘Ah, a family trait.’
‘Yeah,’ said Jamie. ‘Anyway. She was a laird’s daughter, from Lewis. It was kind of an arranged match between clans. I know some arranged marriages work fine, but this one . . . not somuch. She went back to Lewis in the end, couldn’t bear the house or the east coast. I don’t remember them ever exchanging a kind word.’
He lay down on his back, his head near hers on the old rug. It was strangely intimate, but not uncomfortably so. He stared at the ceiling, and Roger sat on his chest in front of the fire. He appeared to have adjusted remarkably speedily to being an indoor dog.
‘My mother grew up very like her. He was very short with her – though she gave as good as she got, mind you: she was vile back to him. And then she announced that her therapist had recommended family estrangement, and therefore she didn’t have to contact him ever again. She announced it at Christmas, as well, right in front of us.’
‘Wow. You’re not estranged from her, though?’
‘Oh, no, she still likes to get in touch to tell me what to do,’ said Jamie. ‘And how I’m going to make a mess of this place just like he did; and if she catches me reading it’s because I’m too fond of books and sometimes, when she’s drunk, she needs to slag off my dad again, or either of her subsequent two husbands, I can’t quite keep them straight . . . sorry, I’m going on and on and on . . . Tell me about your family.’
Mirren stared up at the ceiling. It was incredibly high, with plaster moulding, and a huge hanging crystal chandelier. There was a vast, soaring painted roof above a room full of beauty and treasure beyond imagining; or there had been, once upon a time.
‘Um . . . pretty normal actually,’ she said, awkwardly, suddenly realising she was lying down in a castle next to an actual lord, and trying her best not to make him feel bad. ‘My parents broke up when I was small – but I still see my dad a lot, he’s just round the corner, and my mum is busy working; she’s a fusspot. I’vegot two brothers, both married, one to a boy, one to a girl, and they’re fantastic; they all gang up so my mum doesn’t gettoofusspotty, even though obviously she does. We tend to meet up on a Sunday, round someone’s house – we try not to let Mum cook too much. I spent a lot of my childhood with my great-aunt; she was so kind to me. She’s the one who made me go to university. And the one who loved books and got me to find one that was missing, so that’s kind of how I ended up here.’
‘Because you loved your family,’ said Jamie. ‘And look howIended up here. Because mine all hate each other.’
Mirren found herself stretching out and reaching for his hand and squeezing it.
