Cover

Dedication

To vaccine scientists, because, man, you saved us, you brilliant, brilliant people. And the vaccinators too. Thank you.

Epigraph

And oh, how sweet and pleasant it is to the truly spiritual eye to see several sorts of believers . . .

—Isaac Penington, Quaker author

Prologue

“But it’s August!” said Carmen into the phone, putting down her book. “August! It’s almost sunny outside! I have sandals on! Ice-cream vans patrol the land! I put sunblock on last week and almost needed it! How can I possibly get my head round what you’re asking me?”

“I’m just saying,” her mother’s soft voice came again, and Carmen sighed. They had the same tussle every year. “It’s just useful to know early, that’s all. And of course Sofia . . .”

Carmen screwed up her face. “Yes, she’s popping out yet another sprog and overpopulating the world, blah blah blah, I know.”

“Carmen June Hogan. Be nice.”

“Come on, Mum. She’s already got three. She’s just being greedy. Anyway, I don’t know what I might be doing at Christmas. I might be going away.”

“Who with?” Her mother sounded skeptical.

“I could meet someone between now and Christmas! And he could whisk me off to Barbados! Or LA!”

Her mother smiled. “So you’re not coming home for Christmas because you’ll be in LA.”

“I could be in LA.”

Carmen couldn’t, she thought, be the only person in the world who was both nearly thirty and who still turned into a stroppy teenager when confronted by her mother.

But it was only August. She just didn’t want to think about the summer being over or about another Christmas, sleeping in her old bedroom, which was full of ridiculous junk now that didn’t belong to her—sewing machines and whatnot. Reading all her old paperbacks on the shelf: C. S. Lewis and the Follyfoot and the Dark Is Rising series, seeing as it was Christmas.

Then it would be everyone making the hugest fuss over Sofia’s noisy, bratty children and giving them so much stuff (which always had to be wooden and expensive) that they could barely tear the wrapping from one gift before they dived to the next.

With every passing year too, Sofia’s gifts to the rest of the family got more and more lavish and expensive, making it more and more apparent who in the family was doing well—and who was still sleeping under her Spice Girls duvet and handing out discounted gifts from the shop she worked in.

Her mother plowed on regardless. “I mean, Sofia wants to show off the new house and won’t want to travel . . . I thought we’d all go to hers and I’d cook . . . ?”

Sofia worked as a lawyer in Edinburgh, a hundred miles away from their dying industrial west-coast Scottish town, and was doing very nicely, thank you, with her handsome international lawyer husband and babies and Range Rovers, blah blah blah. Carmen still worked in the department store she’d had a Saturday job in when she’d been at school. The store was shabby and getting worse all the time. Literally nobody in the family ever brought this up, which made it worse.

As if sensing her thoughts, her mother’s voice lowered. “And how is Dounston’s doing?”

Carmen understood, although she hated the tone. “Well . . . we’ll be doing better by Christmas,” she said, and both of them desperately tried to believe it.

CARMEN HUNG UP without satisfactorily settling the question of Christmas—or rather, by refusing to commit, knowing full well her mother would go ahead and count her in anyway. And of course nothing else would come up and she would indeed be back there again, either at Sofia’s new place—whatever it was like, for sure she would have the worst bed in the place—or under her old Spice Girls duvet on the twenty-fourth, which made her feel lower than ever. She looked around the staff room.

Her best mate at the shop, Idra, had just come in and was eyeing up the floral mug that belonged to their supervisor, Mrs. Marsh, and was never to be used on pain of death.

“Don’t even think about it,” said Carmen.

“I am going to pee in it,” said Idra, incandescent. “She’s putting me back on fricking hats.”

Carmen groaned sympathetically. Hats were next to the door, the idea being that when you tumbled in out of the freezing cold from the rapidly emptying high street, the very first thing you would need was a hat.

Unfortunately for whoever was manning the till there, it meant gushing blasts of freezing air alternating with the blistering ferocity of the air heater above making you sweat through whatever you wore. Although these days, that door was opening less and less.

Carmen measured her days in books. She kept a paperback under the desk for quiet periods, when she had remade as many window displays as one could usefully do in one day and dusted, polished, straightened, and checked the samples. When she had first started working at Dounston’s, they had always been so busy, and she’d kept her reading for the bus and lunchtime. Now, she could get through a novel every three days, and it kept getting faster. It was very, very worrying.

“She hates me the most,” said Carmen on the topic of Mrs. Marsh, as she looked at the next week’s schedule. She had the most inconvenient possible combination of shifts—an early followed by a late followed by an early and a late on the same day—that somehow still left her short of full-time hours and therefore not enough money to get through the month without squeezing everything and everyone and having absolutely no fun at all and taking home all her mum’s leftovers on a Sunday night.

“She told me I looked like a tramp,” said Idra.

“What were you wearing?”

“I literally took off my cardigan. For, like, ten seconds.”

Carmen laughed, then fell silent as the person they were talking about glided noiselessly into the room. Decades of working on shop floors had taught Mrs. Marsh to glide, despite being a heavy woman; she was constantly on the lookout for miscreants, pilferers, time-wasters, malingerers, and basically anyone who looked like she might actually be enjoying herself shopping in a department store.

She was silent on her tiny feet—always clad in smart black pumps, however much they must pinch and contribute to the varicose veins spreading up her legs year on year like slow-growing ivy, just visible through the American Tan tights. Her midriff was solid, and her large bosom was trussed into something from the Larger Madam section of the lingerie department that rather made her look like she had only one very wide breast that could also function as a shelf in a shop emergency.

Carmen and Idra agreed that Mrs. Marsh’s idea of perfection was a completely empty, perfectly clean, and tidy store with absolutely no customers in it messing things up, letting their kids knock over glassware, dirtying the polished floors with their muddy shoes, or disrespecting lift etiquette (Mrs. Marsh remembered when the lifts had an attendant and mentioned it often). Having nobody in the shop was just about the way Mrs. Marsh liked it.

The awful thing was, as they had seen for the last few years, it looked like Mrs. Marsh was finally getting her wish.

One by one, the other shops had moved away from their unimportant regional satellite town; BHS, Next, Marks and Spencer, and WHSmith had all fallen like ninepins.

Dounston’s, where generations of local brides had made their gift lists and chosen the material for their wedding dresses, where mothers-to-be had bought their strollers, where families had bought their china and sofas, their fabric, their appliances; Dounston’s, which stocked school uniforms in August and fancy perfume at Christmas, and toys in the wonderful toy department that made children gasp every year as they came to queue for a photo and a small present from Santa in the grotto: Dounston’s was widely predicted to be next on the high-street casualty list.

It didn’t seem possible to Carmen that something so solid, so intertwined with the life of the town and its citizens—with its stained-glass window depicting the ships the men built up the road on the River Clyde, and its coffee shop selling French cakes and scones and disdaining the very concept of something as fancy as a latte—would ever shut its doors. It was the heart of the town.

But the town seemed finished. Dead. The high street was nothing but thrift shops and mobility-scooter rental shops and money-sending places and the occasional doomed enterprise by the council to sell local paintings or craft.

People wanted the town center to work, but not quite enough to pay for parking when the out-of-town retail park didn’t charge you and was all shiny and had a Wagamama.

People wanted the town center to work, but not really enough to pay £17.99 for a bone china mug with a shepherdess on it when they could get something perfectly serviceable for under a fiver on Amazon. Or to traipse all the way into town for three meters of pink ribbon only to find there wasn’t any pink ribbon in stock and they’d have to have burgundy, even though they wanted pink and actually it would have taken two minutes to click on the precise shade of pink they wanted on that online store and get it delivered the following day.

Carmen got it. She was as guilty as anyone else at convenience shopping, even when she was in town every day. Plus, who used napkin rings these days? How many scatter cushions could any sane human even buy in her life? And bridesmaids didn’t make their own dresses anymore from the big swathes of purple and pink satin (sateen if you were economizing). They ordered them from overseas, from where they arrived late and ill fitting, and they would have to come in, red-faced, asking for advice on adjustments and hemming and buying the odd spare zipper at the very last minute.

But only three days after the Christmas chat, it happened. They were summoned. Idra loudly protested that she should have poisoned that bloody mug, as Mrs. Marsh, who must have been past retirement age—Idra reckoned she was ninety—took a certain pleasure in telling them they were all getting their pink slips, or, in her smart, poshed-up elocution voice, “sadly being made redundant.”

She looked around through her wide glasses with the pastel rims and patted her short, sprayed-down hair.

“Some of you, I’m sure, will get excellent references and find another job without any trouble at all,” she said, looking pointedly at her favorite, bloody suck-up Lavinia McGraw.

At this, Carmen and Idra glanced at each other, and Carmen got that awful feeling when you know you’re going to laugh at something incredibly inappropriate.

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.

When Sofia had been small, she had liked to line up her dollies and give them all small lectures about how to behave at tea. Everything in her world was ordered and neat. Then, when she was four, her mother had become pregnant. This period had involved a lot of people telling Sofia what a wonderful big sister she was going to make, which had pleased the small Sofia very much, particularly since she’d received a haul of excellent presents and the baby had gotten lots of boring old clothes. It had been a magnificent time. Being—even for one very small—a clever sort of person, she had immediately prepared to welcome Carmen as her friend, ally, and camp follower in all things.

Unfortunately, the screeching screwed-up red-faced monster who appeared did not look remotely like the little sisters in Sofia’s baby books. As she grew older, she didn’t like dollies or playing tea or wearing new dresses. She didn’t like dresses at all, in fact, and she hated school, which Sofia loved. From the moment she arrived, Carmen was a ball of fussiness. She fussed at going out or coming in or going upstairs or having a bath or getting her hair washed or going to swimming lessons or visiting people’s houses, at getting in her buggy or getting out of her buggy.

Sofia could never make Carmen see why it was a lot easier just to be nice to people, whether you felt like it or not, and let them smile and pat your head and give you a biscuit. It seemed very straightforward to Sofia. Carmen, on the other hand . . . She was a small pin poking into Sofia’s momentary self-satisfaction. She frowned. Apparently, things were . . . looking tricky again, their mother had said. Which explained why Carmen had been a no-show at her daughter’s birthday party and hadn’t even bothered to send a card, or call, or let her know remotely what was going on with her life.

Well, there was no point in getting upset about it now. Sofia smoothed her brow—no Botox till after the baby. She’d worry about Carmen when she absolutely had to.

She took a last happy look at her darling house and clip-clopped past the icy puddles on her way to work.

Chapter Two

“Sofia doesn’t want me.”

“Nonsense,” lied her mother. “You’re just at different life stages, that’s all. And you hurt her feelings about Pippa’s party.”

“I hurt her feelings?” Carmen said. “I’m sitting here with nothing going on, living back in my bedroom having lost my job, but somehow precious Sofia’s feelings are all that matter.”

“Darling. Please. Not even a birthday card?”

“She doesn’t want me there. I’m just her weird little sister that everyone has to feel sorry for, still working in a shop, which I’m not even doing anymore, and still not married and not all smug and pregnant like all her other snooty city friends.” Carmen couldn’t help coloring.

“It’s all right to be jealous,” said her mother, who then took on a haunted look as she realized she’d said exactly the wrong thing.

“I’m not jealous! Who wants to be neck-deep in kids, stuck?” said Carmen. “I just figured she’d not be that fussed. I figured she’d have better things to worry about than whether I came to a stupid birthday party.”

“Than her only sister being there for her own family?”

“But it’s not my family!” said Carmen. “And it’s something every ten minutes. A wedding. A christening. A birthday party. A baby shower. Please give up all your precious free time, Carmen, and come and tell me how brilliant I am and how brilliant my life is and how brilliant my children are, and by the way, I want you to bring me really expensive gifts that you can’t really afford, and we’ll go to restaurants you can’t really afford and I’ll make a massive deal out of paying for my poor sister. Ooh! Look at my gigantic house!”

Carmen folded her arms crossly. She really missed her little rented flat, but she was so skint. She had had some shifts here and there in coffee shops and bars, but the entire town was looking for work. Her parents being so lovely about everything wasn’t helping. She knew what they were itching to say—that she had been a clever girl, she could easily have gone to college, got a trade or an occupation. But she had been headstrong, hadn’t listened.

So she directed her frustration elsewhere.

“Plus you guys are up there worshipping at the grandchildren altar every five minutes, dropping everything. It’s like this entire family is just the Sofia fan club. And the moment I didn’t want to be in it, it was, like, bad Carmen.”

Her mother didn’t say anything. There was some truth in what Carmen was saying: three children were a lot of parties and gifts and fuss. She wasn’t even sure Carmen knew what age they all were. But plenty of women were doting aunts. She so wanted her girls to be close. She wanted everyone to be close—that’s what family was.

“I think she really needs you now,” she said, not really thinking that at all.

“She doesn’t,” said Carmen. “She’s got her ‘amazing nanny.’” Sofia spoke about the amazing nanny in glowing terms Carmen was sure Sofia had never used about her. “And Federico.”

“He’s away working all the time,” said her mum. “She’s about to have another baby. She’s still working. Three kids are a lot even with a nanny. And she has space. And she’s said she can help you.”

“YOU ARE KIDDING, Mum!” was what Sofia had actually said when her mother had tried again. “You are not going to dump the brat on me. I have three kids, another on the way, plus Federico, and a huge case I can’t leave, and you want me to sort out Carmen as well?”

“Want something done, ask a busy person?” tried her mother hopefully. “There’s nothing left round here, Sofia, nothing. The town is finished.”

“I know,” said Sofia. “It’s buzzing here.”

“And your sister . . . I just hate to see her so sad.”

Sofia felt a twinge of guilt. “She won’t want to come. She thinks Edinburgh’s just full of smug old boring posh prats in red trousers.”

“She . . .”

That was exactly what Carmen thought, and she had said so aloud on several occasions.

“I just thought . . .” her mum said. “She pretends everything’s fine, but it isn’t really and it’s killing us. She’s not seeing anyone; she’s not got a job . . . I’m so worried.”

“Why is Carmen my problem?”

“She isn’t,” said her mother. “She’s everyone’s problem. No, I don’t mean that. But I just thought . . . I thought she could get to know your kids.”

Sofia snorted. “She doesn’t even know their names!”

“She does!”

“She didn’t even bother with Pippa’s First Communion. There was an empty space at the table at the reception.”

“I know,” said her mother. That had been a bad one.

“She texted me twenty-four hours later to say ‘Soz.’ Soz.”

“She doesn’t know what it’s like,” said her mother. “Having children. When you think about them all the time. When they are so central to you. She doesn’t get that at all.”

“I know,” said Sofia.

“When you worry and worry about them, and if one of them is unhappy, you would do literally anything to make it better . . .”

“You’re laying it on with a trowel, Mum!”

Sofia’s busy mind, though, was already turning. “I mean, was she any good at her job? Really? Or just hanging about taking the piss like she did at school?”

“No, she was,” said her mum. “Everyone got their bridal from her, back when you still did that and didn’t order it off the internet.”

“Is she still dragging those scary men home?”

Her mother winced. “It’s been tough on her.”

“Remember the poet?”

“I do,” said her mother. “The Sunday lunch where he declaimed a full sex sonnet in front of your father was quite something.”

They both laughed, then stopped because it was mean to laugh about Carmen. But sometimes she brought it on herself.

“Ugh,” said Sofia.

The Story Continues on BooksBarbecue!

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