‘Did you have presents from Father Christmas when you were little?’ He pursed his lips and wondered how to change the subject from his unfortunate experiences of this festive season. They began to climb the bank, the shortcut to the lane. ‘Papa?’
‘Hmm?’
‘How does Father Christmas get into houses that don’t have chimneys?’
‘Have you ever been in a house that doesn’t have a chimney?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, there you are then.’
‘Billy doesn’t have a chimney in the lighthouse, but I think Father Christmas will think it’s just a big chimney anyway? Will he?’
‘Father Christmas doesn’t come for adults.’
‘But how do adults get presents then?’
‘People can buy presents too.’
‘Can I buy presents?’
‘Do you have any money?’
‘I don’t know. I have my shells.’
‘This is true.’
‘Can I buy some presents then?’
‘Who for?’
‘Jenna, Daddy, Sarah, Babushka, Miles, Emilia, Grandpa and Grandma, Uncle Squeezy and Uncle Tim, Miles’s granny, Miss Wilson, Raddybum, PB, Jemima…’
‘You’re struggling now.’
‘Uncle Martin, Hannibal, Psycho, Riff-Raff, Morwenna, Harry, Snodgrass, Genevieve…’
‘I’m struggling now.’
‘Daniel, Peyton and Billy. That’s it. That’s everybody in the world except for Kinney, but Daddy says we should pretend he doesn’t exist.’
He noticed he was missing from this list, but she was giggling softly to herself, so he decided to spice things up a bit by asking slyly, ‘What about your invisible friend?’
‘Papa! He wasn’t invisible.’
‘Can you see him now then?’ They’d arrived at the destination he’d planned. The building works still seemed oddly deserted for a project he was paying over the odds to have swiftly completed, but there were half a dozen men either doing some desultory work or standing around planning to do some—he hoped. He walked up to the group and was given a brief update on progress. They were knocking off soon for Christmas, and so work would not begin again until after the New Year. One of the men was trying to engage Molly’s attention, holding out a trowel for her to have a go with the mortar he was applying. Aleksey swung her down and she went tentatively closer, glancing back to him for support, or perhaps permission. He pictured her alone in the graveyard, the stranger who had spoken to her, and what could have been the outcome of that one moment of inattention. But if this Jack-in-the-box had been real, he had not taken that obvious opportunity. He apparently held a different agenda than hurting her—or him through her.
Molly, shown how by her new best friend, scratched her initials and the year into the outer wall of The Keep. Standing there on the frosty earth which lay alongside the building site, he was instantly taken back to an earlier Christmas in Russia. He’d been returning from a successful job in Finland, being driven through the frozen, snowy night to Moscow, and they’d run into car trouble outside of a city on a lake which had been forbiddingly solid with ice. The only garage open had been directly opposite a cathedral, a building of impossible beauty, of towering white spires topped by golden domes. Perhaps it had just been boredom, possibly merely the curiosity of an arrogant unbeliever, but he had crossed the cobbled square under thickly falling snow and had gone into this sacred building. Now, thinking back, he supposed it was even possible he’d been seeking absolution. After all, the success of a job very much depended upon which end of electrodes you stood. He’d wandered around the vast space unchallenged, as there had been a service on and many people present. The place was flooded with soft amber candlelight illuminating the faces of the faithful. And there, on a pillar beside a statue, were carved initials and a date—1052. Perhaps it had only been a later addition put there as a joke. Even as he’d thought this—yeah, I could do that now—he’d somehow known that it was not recent and that he was in fact living a moment of genuine human connection across time. Another man had once stood there almost a thousand years before and had wanted to leave something of himself behind.
He had once joked about his Keep lasting a thousand years. If it did, it would now carry proof of Molly-Rose Rider-Mikkelsen’s existence into that unknowable future.
‘Papa!’ She wanted to be picked up again. He did so thoughtlessly, mind still back in a snowy city somewhere on a frozen lake when he’d been permanently cold. He’d believed at the time that his body had been damaged by his years in the Siberian prison camps, but now he saw this endless chill for what it had been. He grinned at the annoying one perched on his hip. ‘So, what are you buyingmefor Christmas?’
She flung herself back in a theatrical faint at such audacity. He clicked for the dogs, and the four of them headed back over the frosty ground towards the welcoming illumination of their home.
* * *
Chapter Eight
