“Puppet animals!” said Carmen.

As a group, they tried to head through into the TV room to see, impeded by Phoebe, who, whimpering, grabbed their hands and refused to let them through. Jack eventually pushed open the door into the dark room, where Pippa had freeze-framed the screen on a huge hooded ghostly figure holding out a skeletal finger. In the dark room, on the ridiculously gigantic six-foot screen, it looked incredibly frightening. Phoebe immediately let out a piercing scream again, and Sofia shouted, “Switch it off, Jack!” but he gave her a horrified look and mutely shook his head. Pippa was trembling but said in a wobbly voice, “I’ll do it, Mummy.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Carmen, uncurling Phoebe’s fingers and entering the dark room to switch it off, furious at how embarrassed she was at the commotion. “It’s A Christmas Carol. It’s great literature.”

“That’s an adult book,” said Sofia disapprovingly.

“Not! When! There! Are! Muppets! In! It!”

She struggled to find the right button on the remote, mistakenly turning on a crashing movie channel, which had the Rock blowing something up that was absurdly loud through their super-expensive sound system and provoked another scream from Phoebe.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” she hissed to herself, stabbing at the remote.

“I could come back,” lied Blair, whose evening had taken a slightly more domestic turn than he’d planned.

At that moment, the door shot open, and looking lithe and blond and completely unfazed, Skylar entered, beaming.

“Skylar!” said Pippa. “Skylar! Phoebe got scared at a monster on the television.”

“Oh, dear me,” said Skylar.

And she entered the little sitting room, took the remote from Carmen, turned off the TV, and switched on the little lamps, making the room cozy and warm, then turned around and beamed at everyone. Carmen saw there were still snowflakes resting on her hair.

“Oh, don’t worry, everyone, I’ll fix it?”

And then she caught sight of Blair and was struck dumb. Carmen, standing to the side, felt dumpy and square and completely invisible next to the pink-cheeked fresh sheer youthfulness of Skylar.

“Hello!”

“Well, hello,” said Blair, going full teeth.

“I’m Skylar!”

“What a lovely name.”

“Sorry, are you Blair Pfenning? I’ve read all your books! I really, really loved Find Your Love Light and Let It Shine.”

Slightly irritated with herself, Carmen remembered she had meant to take a look at at least one of Blair’s books at the shop but had been utterly engrossed in A Christmas Murder instead and hadn’t gotten around to it, apart from looking at his jacket photograph of course.

“Did it help you?” said Blair in his special soothing voice. Meanwhile, Phoebe was still pointing at the now-off television in horror.

“I’m sorry,” said Carmen, crouching down, “there was a scary ghost thing.”