Why, she found herself thinking, did she always have to settle for the last-minute invitations? Why couldn’t anyone ask her out on a proper date, give her time to get dressed up, get excited about things? Why wasn’t she anyone’s first choice? She thought of Idra, choosing ski clothes, and tried not to look petulant.

“Don’t be sad!” said Oke as they entered. “Look. They have those flashing lights that you like.”

She stuck her tongue out at him and decided to at least try to enjoy herself.

Camera Obscura was in a beautiful, ancient narrow building at the top of the Lawnmarket, right next to the castle’s huge courtyard. You entered through a narrow door and filed up narrow ancient steps, diving in and out of different rooms.

Despite herself, it was fun. The sideshow exhibits were funny: forced perspective rooms that made them look big or tiny, a rather pretty light tunnel, a hall of mirrors.

This was just . . . going to see some lights. In her lunch hour.

She laughed in the mirror maze, where lights shimmered and changed and it was impossible to tell how big it was: an infinity of mirrors, perhaps, in the ancient house, reflecting back and back. Once they got separated, she could see glimpses of Oke but not precisely tell where he was.

The last people in front of them had carried on up the steps, and there was nobody behind them—it was very quiet—and suddenly Carmen realized in the dark sputtering maze she didn’t know where Oke was at all. She pressed herself against the side of a mirror. When she let out an involuntary giggle, it echoed throughout the space eerily. She glanced around, her heart beating faster. She could just see a flicker of his old coat, reflected over and over, but she couldn’t see where he was.

“Where are you?” she said, her voice bouncing off a thousand panes of glass.

“You will have to find me . . . me . . . me.”

She spun around, sure that he was right there behind her, but there was nothing, just a flicker of a coat in the mirror, replicated into infinity in two glasses facing each other.

She stepped to the side, concentrating very hard on listening over the sounds of her breathing and her rapid heart. There was something just on the left . . . She leaped there and gasped as she saw a satsuma bouncing off a side mirror and onto the floor.

“You (you you you) . . . Did you just throw a satsuma at me (me me)?”