Dounston’s, where generations of local brides had made their gift lists and chosen material for their wedding dresses, where mothers-to-be had bought their prams, where families had bought their china and sofas, their material, their white goods; 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 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 charity shops and mobility scooter hire shops and money-sending places and the occasional doomed enterprise by the council to sell local paintings or craft.
People wanted the town centre 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’s.
People wanted the town centre 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 metres 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 their lives? And bridesmaids didn’t make their own dresses any more, from the big swathes of purple and pink satin (sateen if you were economising). 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 zip at the very last minute.
But only three days after the Christmas chat, it happened. They were summoned. Idra loudly protesting that she should have poisoned that bloody mug, as Mrs Marsh, who must have been past retirement age – Idra reckoned she was ninety – was taking a certain pleasure in telling them they were all getting their jotters 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 favourite: 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.
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, number 10 Walgrave Street looked as close to it as made no odds.
It sat in a terrace of varying heights, but was one of the smallest houses: four storeys in total if you included the basement. It was made of heavy grey 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 outside the upper-storey windows, a line of smart stone steps leading up to the front door and black wrought-iron railings, currently sporting entwined thick vines of holly, lit up with tasteful warm yellow lights and sporting 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 with the same warm lights and red bows on each floor.
Two Christmas trees! Sofia hugged herself with glee. They had come a long way from the little council flat on the other side of Scotland.
She’d booked her Christmas Ocado spot 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, and even more so 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 been three months living back at home 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 got 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 screwed-up red-faced screeching 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.