Because it was awful. It was devastating. A disaster. And she had seen it coming. Everyone had seen it coming. And she had done absolutely nothing about it. No point blaming Mrs. Marsh now.

Chapter One

Sofia d’Angelo, née Hogan, eyed up the wreath on the shiny black front door, narrowed her eyes, and adjusted it again, then stood back to admire the perfectly symmetrical effect.

She couldn’t help it. As soon as she’d seen the house, she’d just known. She’d fallen in love with it right away. Okay, so the basement was a little damp. It was an old house. Love was love. Nobody was perfect. Although today, 10 Walker Street looked close to it all the same.

Perfectly symmetrical, it sat in a terrace of varying heights, but was one of the smallest houses: three stories in total if you included the basement. It was made of heavy gray sandstone, built in Georgian times at the very far end of the “new” town of Edinburgh (which wasn’t new at all), and it had five perfect twelve-paned windows, like a child’s drawing; a filigree balcony over the upper-story windows; a line of smart stone steps leading up to the front door; and black wrought-iron railings, currently sporting thick vines of entwined holly, lit up with tasteful warm yellow lights, and jaunty red tartan bows. It was like a house on a Christmas card, warm light seeping out from inside onto the freezing pavement and a huge Christmas tree in the same warm lights and red bows on each floor.

Two Christmas trees! Sofia hugged herself with glee. She had come a long way from the little council flat on the other side of Scotland.

She’d booked her Christmas food delivery from Ocado in September, and the children’s thoughtful wooden gifts had been already wrapped in different paper, obviously, because Santa understood things like that; she had her party dress, although she generally swung by parties very quickly, even more so now being so pregnant. The nativity plays and carol concerts were locked into the calendar, as well as the overpriced trip to the Christmas fair and the special Lyceum Christmas show. And it was still only early November. They had only just taken down the tasteful Halloween wreath, the pumpkins, and the orange-and-black decorations around the doorway and put away the large basket of sugar-free sweets.

Everything was going well in Sofia’s world.

Except for Carmen, of course.

Their mother had been on the phone. Her sister had been living back at home for three months without a hint of a job, and every week her mother called and begged Sofia to find her something. These calls were getting increasingly desperate. There was no work where they lived, particularly not in retail. And Carmen was not helping herself.