Christian laughed. “Who is he?”
His dad turned to him, blinking his watery eyes.
“What sort of dumb question is that?” he said after a moment. “He’s Santa.”
His dad sucked in a breath through his oxygen mask. His eyes were dull and heavy again, his mouth downturned and serious.
“I trust Margot,” he said, wiping his lips on the back of his hand. “She’s ruthless, and she wants the top job, but I trust her.”
Christian still had his doubts, but he kept them locked behind his lips. He’d been away for so long that he really didn’t know Margot anymore — or his father, for that matter.
“You know, this store is all I have,” his dad said. “After your mum died, after you left. It’s all I have, and all I ever had.”
Groups of people passed by, most of them completely oblivious to the fact that they were looking at the last two members of the Carroll family.
“I’m not going to live for ever,” the old man went on. “And when I do go, this is what I leave the world. My father trusted me to run this place, and I have. It’s bigger now than ever. I thought I could trust you to run it too, after I go. You were so happy here when you were a kid. This place was your world. I thought you would trust it to your own children one day too, and they to theirs.”
“Dad . . .” Christian said.
“It needs a Carroll!” his dad shouted, coughing hard. “And unluckily for me, I’ve only got one. But one is all it takes. Is it really too much to ask? Is this life really so awful?”
“I said I’d stay,” Christian said, feeling the same spark of anger he always felt when he was talking to his dad. “Until the ship has righted itself. I said I’d stay until then.”
“And then what? Back to the Philippines? To mud huts and sewers?”
His dad broke into coughs again, putting a hand on a shelf to steady himself. People were starting to pay attention to him now, and he smiled at a group of older ladies, keeping his voice low.
Then, for a beat, Christian’s mind betrayed him. He saw Merry’s smile and felt the way his body had lit up when she smiled at him. He could still remember the soft scent of her, the way her breath had hitched when she leaned in. He imagined kissing her, imagined what it would be like to sink into her, to forget everything else for one stolen moment. And that was the problem. Because for a second he let himself wonder if there might actually be something here worth staying for.
The thought hit him like a punch to the chest.
No. Absolutely not.
He had to get out of here. Before he did something stupid and let a pretty girl and a pile of unresolved guilt convince him that he could make peace with this life. Because he couldn’t. He knew what this place did to people. What it had done to him.
He turned on his heel before his father could respond, needing space to breathe, needing to remember that just because something felt good didn’t mean it was right. Because the truth was, if he didn’t leave soon, he might not leave at all.
Chapter 11
MERRY
For a day that had started off just about as badly as it could have, things had gone further downhill surprisingly quickly.
For a start, once Merry had escaped the bathroom and returned to Jewellery, the lines for the checkout were so long that people were actually yelling at one another — and at her. Twice she had a complete stranger growl in her face that they were going to take their business elsewhere, and at least three people had put in complaints to the management about the slow service. Merry only discovered this when Mrs Cradley arrived, two hours or so after the incident in the restroom, pulling her away from her station and into the service corridor.
“Look,” Merry said, trying to get in front of the old lady. “I’m sorry. I know what you’re going to say.”
“Hush yourself!” Mrs Cradley barked, flapping her clipboard in Merry’s face as if she meant to use it as a weapon. “You seem to think that this job is your leisure time, that you are free to chat idly to friends and acquaintances instead of actually working. But let me tell you something, Miss Sinclair, you are on thin ice. Your job is to satisfy every demand the customer makes of you, and no more. When one task is finished, you move on to the next. And you do not, under any circumstances, physically threaten a visitor to this store.”
“I didn’t—” she said, but once again Mrs Cradley interrupted her.
“Luckily for you, Mr Carroll himself took care of the incident and found that nobody was at fault, but that was your last warning. Am I making myself clear?”
“As ice,” Merry said. “It won’t ever happen again.”
Mrs Cradley gave her a stern look, then marched away. She had only made it a few yards, however, when she turned back. “And do not use the facilities on this floor,” she said. “One of the toilets has exploded.”
Then she was gone. Merry took a deep, shuddering breath, then ran back to her position.
