Children knelt down in awe in front of it, mouths open, ignoring the puddles soaking through their trousers. Carmen had actually gotten slightly obsessed with it and started moving the mice about, making them do different things. When she found herself up at 10:00 P.M., making a tinfoil lake with paper-clip ice skates, she did start to wonder if she was going too far, but the next day the little skating mice drew a crowd to rival the train set, and they sold endless copies of both The Night Before Christmas and a book Carmen had never read before that was more or less the same, except instead of nothing stirring around the house, there was something stirring, and that something stirring was a mouse, who then proceeded to attempt to get the better of Father Christmas, although they ended up friends.

To distract herself further, she took a picture of her latest mouse creation—today she had covered one mouse in cotton wool to make a snow mouse—and was just putting it on Instagram when Oke walked in.

“A regular customer,” said Carmen, smiling at him.

“I live upstairs,” he said.

“Oh! I didn’t know that.”

“That big building up the steps? It’s a student residence. The one you walk up and over every day.”

“Is it?! I had no idea. Is it full of people with lots of spare time in the day?”

“You were never a student.”

“I wasn’t.”

Even all these years on, it was still a sore point. She had failed her exams, staying out all night, laughing her head off, pretending like she didn’t care. There didn’t seem much point, when Sofia got nothing but As and was studying law, for goodness’ sake. What was she going to do? Her parents had begged and pleaded, but she already had a Saturday job in the department store and loads of friends there. It didn’t make any sense, she’d argued, to get into loads of debt when she could just start earning. Her parents had put a brave face on it, but she’d known that yet again she’d broken their hearts, whereas Sofia was off conquering the world—her year abroad in America had probably been the worst. Their mother had kept badgering Carmen to go visit, hoping it would kindle something in Carmen—and then Carmen had gone and couldn’t have felt more out of place with the cool, multicultural, international, incredibly smart crowd Sofia hung out with, making friends all over the world, visiting luxury homes and at home anywhere.

“That could still be you,” said her mother when she’d gotten back, jet-lagged and dreading the next day’s long shift of standing in the shop, being shouted at by Mrs. Marsh, who would be dusting and talking about netting, waiting to retire.