“WHAT?!” CARMEN WAS still shouting when she got back to Sofia’s. Well, she wasn’t quite shouting, but it was close. “What were you thinking? It’s closing down! You dumped me in some absolute piece of filthy crap—it’s filthy, Sofia. It’s awful. It’s completely useless, and this guy is going to be homeless unless I—what?—perform miracles?! He won’t let me into the stockroom! Says it’s his own system!”

“I thought you’d take it as a compliment,” said Sofia, who had hoped dearly that this might be the case without in any sense actually expecting it. “Only you can turn it around.”

“I can’t turn it around! It’s an absolute . . . It’s a disgrace! You can’t find anything and there’s nothing recent and no money for stock, and now it’s going to get shut down and he’ll end up on the street and I’ll have failed again. Thanks a bunch.”

“I think there are better ways for us to manage our outdoor voices?” said Pippa in an officious tone, and Carmen managed to stop herself from snapping at a child, but very much only just.

“I mean, what were you thinking? Fob off my useless sister in a pigsty for a month and get some free babysitting?”

“No! That’s not what I meant at all!”

“I’ll just head down to my cell, shall I? So you and Skylar can go to yoga?”

Sofia reflected that it would have been slightly more useful indeed if she hadn’t been in full yoga kit, which cost way more than Carmen’s normal day clothes.

“I thought you could save it,” said Sofia. “I have faith in you.”

Carmen raised her hands in annoyance. “You saw me as useful to a client for five seconds. You didn’t think about me at all. Not once. And now I am going to destroy an old man’s life while mine stays as sucky as ever. Thanks, sis.”

Chapter Eight

“Oh God, what am I going to do?” she WhatsApped Idra. “I don’t even know where to start.”

She had left the house without speaking to anyone the next morning. She worried she’d be too early to get in, but it appeared Mr. McCredie didn’t even bother to lock the door at night. Now, with weak late-autumn sunlight streaming through the filthy windows, she was looking at the piles of books with their mad filing system in despair. There was no sign of Mr. McCredie at all. This job as a stopgap would have been, well, boring and pointless, but okay. The customer yesterday had turned out to be one of about five, most of whom walked around and left hastily, two of whom bought a single postcard each.

“I shouldn’t care, but he’s a really old bloke and he’s going to lose the lot.”