The Christmas Sisters. Sarah Morgan

developed a serious reading habit.

      When the officials looked at the statistics, they probably marveled at how well-read the people who lived in Glensay were.

      Posy knew for a fact that Ted Morton used the complete works of Shakespeare to stop his kitchen door blowing shut on windy days.

      Still smiling, she popped into the small store next to the library. Glensay had one general store that sold all the essentials.

      “Hi, Posy.” The girl behind the counter smiled at her. “Your lodger was in here yesterday. He bought a packet of razors and deodorant.”

      “Right.” Posy grabbed toothpaste and soap and dumped them on the counter. She’d often wondered if Amy and her mother kept a list of what people bought, and used it for profiling. “Maybe he’s going to help me shear the sheep.”

      “Really?”

      “No, not really. I was joking.” She’d been at school with Amy and the other girl hadn’t got her jokes then, either. Obviously she didn’t have a future in comedy. “Ignore me.”

      “Personally, I like a man with stubble.” Amy rang up Posy’s purchases. “He’s sexy. You’re lucky having him living with you.”

      “He’s not living with me, Amy. He’s in a different part of the building. Separate properties. There’s a floor and a door between us.” It seemed important to clarify that, given Amy’s tendency to draw interesting conclusions and then broadcast them widely.

      “Still—it could be romantic.”

      It could be, but if it was, then Amy wasn’t going to find out about it.

      Trying to work out a way of keeping her private life private, Posy stuffed the toothpaste and soap into her pockets. “Thanks, Amy. Have a good one.”

      She paused outside the door to read the noticeboards. They provided a fascinating snapshot into the life of the village. Pets lost and found, a tractor for sale, minutes of two local meetings and a plea for new members of the village choir. Posy loved to sing. She might have joined the choir had people not told her that her voice sounded like a cat being tortured. Her family encouraged her to find other ways to express her happiness, so these days she sang in the bath and sang to her dog, who often howled in perfect harmony.

      Seeing a minibus approaching from the distance, Posy hurried back to her car.

      The older members of the community who couldn’t get to the village store by other means used the minibus service. Posy tried to avoid its arrival whenever possible because greeting everyone took half a day.

      Five minutes later she hurtled through the door into the welcoming warmth of Café Craft. She ripped off her coat as she half ran to the counter where her mother was deep in conversation with two women from the village. Christmas music played softly from the speakers and the fairy lights that she and her father had secured around the windows shone like tiny stars. The exposed brickwork of the walls was partially covered in paintings by local artists. Posy rotated them regularly. This month she had selected those with winter themes.

      As well as art, they sold pottery made locally, knitwear produced exclusively for them, locally made heather honey and a variety of crafts hand selected by her mother, who had a keen eye for what would sell.

      “Sorry I’m late.”

      “Not a problem.” Her mother’s cheeks were flushed from the heat of the kitchen and she looked at least a decade younger than her fifty-eight years. “How did it go?”

      “Brilliant. Bonnie was a champ.”

      Posy was about to provide details but stopped herself. She knew her mother wouldn’t want details. There was an unspoken agreement in their family that anything to do with snow and avalanches weren’t to be mentioned.

      She knew from her father that her mother had experienced another one of her nightmares a few nights before.

      She wished she could help wipe out those nightmares, but she had no idea how. She didn’t really understand how someone could still have bad dreams twenty-five years after an event, no matter how terrible it had been.

      She darted into the small office, wincing as she saw the growing stack of paper on the small desk. Paperwork, Posy thought, was the waste of a life. Someone needed to sort through it, or they’d miss something important, but it wasn’t going to be her.

      She ripped off her outer layers until she exposed the blue T-shirt emblazoned with the Café Craft logo. Then she swapped weatherproof trousers for jeans and her trainers.

      If she was going to be on her feet all day, there was no way she was wearing heels.

      She slipped a clean apron over her head, tied it around her waist and emerged into the cinnamon-scented warmth of the café.

      Her mother had an almost-magical ability to create a welcoming, cozy atmosphere wherever she went. In Café Craft you felt as if you were cocooned and protected, not only from the icy Highland winds, but from the icy winds of life. Reality was forced to wait outside the door until you were ready to let it in.

      “Let me just finish this order and you can tell me all about Bonnie. Two cappuccinos and a chocolate brownie to share—” Suzanne turned to the machine, a look of determination on her face, and Posy nudged her aside.

      “I’ve got this.”

      “Could you deal with the paperwork later if it’s quiet?”

      Posy hunted desperately for excuses. “You’re better at it than I am.”

      “Which is why I think you should do it,” Suzanne said. “This place will be yours one day and you need to know everything there is to know about running it.”

      Oh joy and bliss.

      A lifetime of paperwork stretched ahead of her.

      “Plenty of time for that. You won’t be retiring for ages.” Please don’t retire. “I took a slab of your fruitcake to the team this morning. They almost bit off my hand to get to it. You’d think those guys never eat.”

      Pushing the thought of running the café to the back of her head, she ground the beans, tamped the coffee and timed the pour. The aroma of fresh coffee wafted upward and she had to fight the impulse to drink the first cup herself. There was nothing, she decided, nothing in the world better than good coffee when you’d been out in the cold and the snow.

      She heated the milk and created a leaf pattern on the surface of the coffee that satisfied her artistic instincts.

      “Take a seat, Jean,” she called out. “I’ll bring these to your table.”

      The café was already filling up. There was a comforting hum of conversation, a feeling of camaraderie and inclusiveness. In the summer the place was always packed with tourists eager to soak up the whole “Scottish experience,” which they generally assumed to be tartan and shortbread. If they’d returned in the winter months, they would have experienced the true Scottish experience. This was a community that supported all its members through the harsh winter months. Everyone knew each other and looked out for each other.

      As the last village in the valley, Glensay was sometimes cut off in the winter. For decades the Glensay Inn had been the only place to eat out, and it had been Stewart’s parents who had come up with the idea for a café. Suzanne had eventually taken over the business, and she was the one who had expanded the space and added crafts. As well as a place to sell the pieces she and her friends knitted, it was somewhere for the locals to meet on cold winter days.

      Suzanne had created a place that people wrote about when they arrived home. As a result they had visitors from all over the globe. But the beating heart of Café Craft were the locals.

      Three evenings a week Suzanne opened up for different groups, as a way to combat the dark nights. Monday was Book Group, Wednesday was Art Club and Friday was Knitting Club.

      Posy wondered how