She glanced at her watch as Mr. McCredie walked out ahead of her.

Oke was surrounded by students jostling for his attention and was dealing calmly and patiently with each one, listening and taking them seriously. He wasn’t grinning with big white teeth, flattering people with empty promises to get them to do what he wanted. She flashed back again to his hand between hers, the feel of him in the narrow staircase. Oh goodness.

Just as she stepped out, he suddenly looked up and caught her eye over the heads of the students clustering around him. He stopped talking, startled, and just stared at her.

In the next second, Bronagh had grabbed his arm.

“You’re coming to the party later?” she said to him, loud enough for Carmen to hear. “In the bookshop?”

He looked puzzled, then nodded. Bronagh gave Carmen a big thumbs-up, and Carmen had the sudden unsettling feeling that the whole of Victoria Street was somehow in on some conspiracy.

Then, as another student approached him, she glanced at her watch and fled.

CARMEN SPENT THE rest of the day completely flustered. She had brought her one and only party dress with her, and she carefully lined her eyes and put on lipstick in the pink floral bathroom on Mr. McCredie’s first floor. There was a glass jar full of ancient cotton balls. It made her sad to wonder how old they were. Anyway. It didn’t matter, she told herself fiercely. Oke was with Dahlia. He’d probably bring her. She couldn’t think about it.

Ramsay had the boys with him again and a very pretty woman called Zoe, who was shorter than him by about a foot and a half. They looked biologically unlikely, but she was carrying a very long baby in a sling. The baby’s legs in cozy dungarees came down to her knees.

“Hi, I’m Zoe,” she introduced herself. “I run a bookshop up in the Highlands. Well, I say ‘shop’ . . . It’s more of a van. Wow, isn’t this place just lovely? And so warm! I love it!” She smiled. “Keeping a van warm in the Highlands in the wintertime is quite the challenge.”

“It’s lovely to meet you,” said Carmen. “I like your boys.”

“Yes, we brought the teenagers here too, but they’re too excited to be off to the Christmas fair.”

“I heard—hope you gave them each about a hundred quid.”

“Don’t start me,” said Zoe, tickling the baby’s gigantic feet.

“I like your huge baby,” said Carmen.

“Thank you.” Zoe grinned. “Except we call him Hugh. And he is huge. So that was patently a terrible mistake; I should have thought it through. Maybe we’ll have a really tiny girl next.”

“You can call her Tina,” said Carmen encouragingly.

Patrick was crouched down, studying the train set in consternation.