Carmen thought about it. They’d once used Dounston’s as a backdrop for a glitzy period piece, as the shop had a beautiful wooden staircase over a stained-glass window that looked wonderful as long as you didn’t film any of the patchy, torn carpet beneath and covered up the peeling “NO EXIT” signs. It had been exciting for about five minutes, then the reality of having about a thousand people in shorts traipsing about with miles of wire and cables and shouting into walkie-talkies and pushing past actual real shoppers and telling everyone to be quiet all the time, over and over again, had actually turned out to be a total and complete pain in the arse.

“I’m not sure . . .” began Mr. McCredie. She shushed him.

“Well,” she said, “you know this is an incredibly busy time of the year to disrupt the shop like this.”

“We understand,” said the voice.

Carmen blinked. This could be very, very good for them. “We’ll need him to do a signing.”

The voice on the other end paused. “Well, we’d have to see about that.”

“Our Christmas decorations are very beautiful,” said Carmen. “And of course we’d have a lovely display of the books to go on camera.”

“On camera,” Mr. McCredie moaned in agony. She gave him one of her looks, then quickly leafed through the catalog on her desk.

Feeling the Christmas Spirit of Love sprung out at her: it was one of his. There was a picture of Blair, white teeth gleaming, looking fit in a red jumper and a hat, sitting next to a huge Christmas tree surrounded by cheery multicultural children. Carmen wasn’t sure it was necessarily a good look. He looked a little bit like a sperm donor.

The woman sniffed. “He can give you half an hour.”

“How long do you want the shop for?”

“Oh, it won’t be long.”

“That means hours,” said Carmen. “I want forty-five minutes for signing.”

“He’s going to be tired, coming in transatlantic.”

“Maybe he can draw on some of that festive spirit and positive energy,” said Carmen.

The woman on the other end of the phone laughed. “Okay. He’s all yours. Get the turnout, though, won’t you? I don’t want it to be two crazy ladies and a dog.”

“Yes!” said Carmen, after she’d put down the phone. “Ching, ching, ching!”

“Oh Lord,” said Mr. McCredie. “And that was very rude about two crazy ladies and a dog.”

“We are going to turn a profit if it kills me,” said Carmen. “Although judging by the look of this book, it will be a zillion crazy ladies and absolutely no self-respecting dogs.”

IT WAS AMAZING, once she started putting it about on social media, how many huge Blair Pfenning fans there were.

“Seriously?” she said when Sofia mentioned she might just be able to swing by from the office.