Things were going better at the shop, but relations between the sisters were still frosty, and their mother was refusing to be drawn in and had declared herself Switzerland. Sofia complained to Federico every night, which was before dawn in Hong Kong, so he was rarely at his best. Plus, he just liked to hear her voice, loved the rattle of the children in and out: Jack barking short answers to questions about how things were going; Pippa on the other hand elaborating on exactly who had misbehaved at school that day and why, and how the boys hadn’t listened to Mrs. Bakran and had gotten into trouble; and Phoebe, more often than not, simply breathing snottily down the phone. He liked it all, just let it wash over him, the sounds of home so distant. Which actually rather fired Sofia up, thinking he was agreeing with her, when he was just generally soothed by thoughts of home. He was a good man, Federico, but like many others was guilty of letting his wife handle the domestics, despite the fact that she’d been to law school and graduated higher than he had.

Carmen was using the bottom door to get in and out of the house. The most contact she had with her sister’s family was on the nights Skylar was out, when she would sit on the sofa and let the kids fight while looking at social media on her phone and sending rude messages to Idra she really couldn’t let the children see. She thought this was probably quite a nice break for the kids from being prodded to practice their instruments / do their homework / read an improving book every second of the day. Sofia didn’t agree. They communicated in stiff texts.

CARMEN WAS REFLECTING on this sad state of affairs when the man in the shop snorted.

“Now,” he said. “Has Mr. McCredie mentioned me?”

“Who are you?” said Carmen.

“Ha! Aha. Very good. Well. Just as well. I’m Justin Feeney.” He looked at her face. “Well. Um. Okay, right. Mr. McCredie told me to come in because I have the perfect book for your shop!”

He held up a packet of poorly stapled together pieces of foolscap. On the front of it was a rather badly sketched picture of a fish. Added in pen was a Santa hat. The title of the work was clearly The Fish, but the word “Christmas” had been inserted in between “The” and “Fish.”

“The Christmas Fish?” said Carmen slowly.

“Yes! It’s supporting independent publishing,” said Justin proudly. “I do them myself.”

“Okay,” said Carmen. “What’s it about?”

“It’s about a man’s struggle against a fish,” said Justin. “He has to fight and overcome the slippery fish in a titanic struggle between man and fish. The fish is a metaphor.”

“For Christmas?”

“No. For women.”

“Oh,” said Carmen. “Where does Christmas come into it?”