Christmas in London by Monique Martin

Author:Monique Martin [Martin, Monique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monique Martin

“Elizabeth?” Simon asked as he moved closer to the window of the lab, thinking they had a bad connection. “I can barely hear you.”

“Sorry,” she said, “it’s a bit loud here.”

“Where are you?”

“Regent Street.”

“Where?”

“Regent Street! There’s a whole light show thingy.”

“Oh,” he said. He was familiar with the tradition. “Are you enjoying it?”

“Charlotte certainly is. It’ll be hard to pull her away from it, but we’ll be at the hotel in half an hour.”

He leaned against the low bookcase near the window. “About that …”

“You can’t make it.”

“Adil has scheduled a call at eight with a researcher he knows in Srednekolymsk.”

“Where?!”

“Srednekolymsk.”

“You’re breaking up!”

“Russia. We have a call with Russia at eight tonight. I could try to get away for a quick bite, but …”

“No, no, you call Snuffeleupaguss.”

“Srednekolymsk.”

“That’s what I said.”

Simon snorted and leaned back. He hated begging off. Again. Not just because he missed them, which he did terribly, but because the research was not going well.

“It’s all right. You talk to Minsk or Pinsk or wherever it is. We’ll grab dinner with Nathaniel and see you after.”

“You’re still with him? Nathaniel?”

“He wanted to show Charlotte the angel.”

“The what?”

“Do you want to talk to her?”

“He wanted to show her an angel?” he asked.

“Just a minute.”

Before he could ask his question again, he could hear her cover the mouthpiece with her hand and call out to their daughter.

A moment later, Charlotte’s clear voice came through the line. “Hi, Dad! It’s amazing. The angel is huge, and there are so many people and fireworks. Can you hear the fireworks?”

He could see her in his mind’s eye holding out the phone. “Charlotte?”

“Did you hear them?”

“I did. What’s this about an angel?” He wasn’t a believer, but where Elizabeth was concerned, and now Charlotte, truth was usually stranger than fiction.

“It’s beautiful!” she said.

A strange tightening pulled high in his stomach. “The angel?” he asked, unable to keep himself from glancing toward the manuscript laid open on the table.

“Yes!”

He felt foolish and started to turn away to look out of the window when something caught his eye. It was as if a light had appeared on a page of the book. It glowed briefly and went out.

Distracted now, he walked over to it, but it all seemed perfectly normal. It must have been a trick of the light or perhaps that he’d skipped lunch. Despite his assurances to himself that there was nothing to it, he kept his gaze on the book.

“What angel?” he asked, a small part of him hoping to see that glimmer of light again.

“It’s all lit up! There are lights all over the street!”

“Ah,” he said with a strange mixture of relief and a hint of disappointment as he turned away from the book. That would have been too easy, and nothing about this was easy. “It’s made of lights.”

“It’s not a real one,” Charlotte said in that condescending tone children sometimes have.

“Of course not,” he said, feeling foolish now.

“Nathaniel says real ones don’t look like that at all.”

That gave him pause.

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