Page 76 of The Secret Christmas Library
‘What changed?’
‘I got sent away to school,’ said Jamie. ‘And then . . . it was different after that.’
‘Whydoesshe stay working here?’ said Mirren, still wondering if the answer to that question was standing right in front of her.
‘I genuinely don’t know,’ said Jamie, in a way that made Mirren’s heart pound. Either he was telling the truth – in which case, they had never dated – or he was the biggest cad of all time. And she didn’t think he was. Mind you, she had been wrong about Theo too. She wasn’t the best judge of character. ‘She nursed her gran all through her last illness. There’s nothing keeping her here now.’
‘You guys are close,’ ventured Mirren.
‘We were when we were children,’ said Jamie, then trailed off and seemed unwilling to say any more.
He glanced up as Mirren was wishing she had brought her sunglasses too; the sunlight on the ice was blinding. But, inside, hope was leaping in her heart.
‘You’re easy to talk to,’ said Jamie, shyly.
‘Enough with the crazed flattery,’ said Mirren, and he smiled. ‘Maybe she just loves the house that much,’ she suggested, looking back at the house, sparkling in the bright multifaceted frosted morning. ‘I could see why.’
‘Maybe she does,’ said Jamie. ‘And she doesn’t need to find a way to pay for the roof.’ And the frown was back.
They left the cottages behind and crunched down a path. The snow was nearly level with the old stone walls. London snow was thin and wet and never lasted – it never even turned up tillMarch, usually, and plenty of years it didn’t turn up at all. This was the real thing: huge slabs of icing, not made grey by lorries or murky by feet. It was pure white, spoiled by nothing but tiny bird footprints and occasional glancing hooves. Roger was plocking along behind them, his claws clacking on the icy surface.
‘What’s up here – the maze?’ said Mirren. She was enjoying being out of the gloomy castle, enjoying the sun on her face, swathed in every layer she could dig up, old wool made for the low temperatures. When you were warm enough, and you didn’t have a wind blowing straight in your face, it was genuinely glorious, the only sound the crunching on the icy surface; the giggling of Theo and Esme some way behind them; the skritch skritch skritch of Roger’s paws.
‘No,’ said Jamie, smiling and taking down his rucksack. ‘There’s a loch. You go round it to get to the maze.’
‘Okay,’ said Mirren.
He pulled something out of his rucksack. It looked like a weapon of some kind . . . old steel.
‘What’s that?’
He handed it to her. It was a pair of ice skates, with a metal blade underneath, but the tops were simple wooden frames, designed to be buckled on top of the shoes you were already wearing.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Mirren. ‘You are kidding. These aredeath traps.’
‘Neh, they’re fine,’ said Jamie. ‘They just take a bit of getting used to and they don’t go as fast as modern skates, but speed isn’t really of the essence.’
‘No, I mean, you are stark raving crazy,’ said Mirren. ‘You’re going out on . . . ’
They had reached the swimming hole now. As Jamie had said, it wasn’t very big, and it had frozen, end to end. It looked absolutely solid.
‘No,’ said Mirren. ‘I’ve readLittle Women. Don’t be an idiot.’
‘That was on a river,’ said Jamie. ‘This is a tiny loch. Completely different situation, believe me.’
As if to illustrate matters, Roger ran out on to the ice.
‘No!’ shouted Mirren. ‘Roger! Come back! Come back, sweetie!’
Roger wagged his tail furiously as if to say,thanks so much for mentioning my name, I’m fine. Then his back leg gave out from under him, Bambi-style, and his face took on a comical expression as he scrabbled back to the safety of the white-frosted fronds surrounding the water.
‘Okay, it’s still a definite no,’ she said.
But Jamie had perched on a rock and was tying on the skates. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘It’s perfectly safe.’ As if to illustrate this, he bent down, grabbed a rock and hurled it on to the middle of the water. It bounced off as if he’d thrown it at the wall. ‘I’ve done it all my life.’
‘I can barely skate on the Christmas rink at Somerset House,’ said Mirren. ‘And there they have people who push you around on a penguin.’
‘So, you’re trained,’ said Jamie.
