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Image Missinghat are you doing here?’ Tilly said in surprise, as Gretchen caught her breath.

‘Tilly, hello!’ Gretchen said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world for her to turn up on their doorstep on Christmas Eve. ‘The door was open so I just came in.’

‘Do Grandma and Grandad know you’re coming?’ Tilly said.

‘Not exactly,’ Gretchen admitted. ‘Are they through there? Could you let them know?’

Tilly wasn’t sure what else to do but turn round and go back into the kitchen. She walked through and stood looking at Grandma, Grandad, Bea and Mary, who were chatting away as they cooked.

‘Are you okay, sweetheart?’ Grandma said, noticing her standing there.

‘Yes,’ Tilly said. ‘But … Well, Gretchen is here.’

‘Gretchen?’ Grandad said as his face went a little paler underneath his whiskers. Grandma stood up so quickly her chair fell backwards loudly, and Tilly and Oskar followed her out into the bookshop to see the two women staring at each other as though they were looking at ghosts. Gretchen took a half-step towards Grandma, who held her hand out as if to shake hands and then changed her mind and withdrew it just as Gretchen reached hers out.

‘Just hug already,’ Oskar said. And so they did.

‘Do you want a cup of tea?’ Grandma asked, because sometimes in these situations, the best and indeed only thing to do is offer a cup of tea.

‘A coffee would be lovely,’ Gretchen said. ‘It’s been a bit of an arduous journey.’

‘Well, it is Christmas Eve,’ Grandma said. ‘Which is a funny time to visit anyone, let alone your estranged best friend who you haven’t seen in, what, thirty years? More?’

‘Well, it’s important,’ Gretchen said. ‘Meeting Tilly made me realise that.’

‘You’re very welcome here,’ Grandma said. ‘Sincerely, Gretchen, even after all these years, it is good to see you.’ And Tilly could see Gretchen’s shoulders relax a little at Grandma’s words. ‘Come in and get comfortable and we can talk.’

‘Thank you,’ Gretchen said. ‘I know it’s a lot to find an extra bed on Christmas Eve.’

‘An extra bed?’ Grandma repeated.

‘Well, it’s an awkward time of year to find somewhere to stay,’ Gretchen said. ‘And you know what it’s like running a bookshop in this day and age. Funds are tight and all. So I had hoped there might be a spare sofa or corner I could tuck myself into.’

‘Right, of course,’ Grandma said, masking her surprise. ‘I’m sure we can sort something out.’

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After an awkward dinner of small talk, and Mary being told that Gretchen was an old work friend of Grandma’s, which was true after all, Bea went upstairs with Mary and Oskar to help sort out the sleeping arrangements.

‘Will you go and help, Tilly?’ Grandma asked.

‘I want to stay and talk,’ she said.

‘We just need a minute to ourselves first,’ Grandad said, but Gretchen immediately raised an eyebrow.

‘I don’t see why Tilly can’t stay,’ she said. ‘After all, she’s involved, isn’t she? And what her and Oskar saw in the fairy tales is useful information.’

‘See, Gretchen thinks I can be helpful,’ Tilly said.

‘It’s not that we don’t think you’re helpful, sweetheart,’ Grandad said. ‘We just need a bit of time to catch up.’

‘I haven’t got anything I can’t say in front of Tilly,’ Gretchen pushed, earning a hard stare from Grandma.

‘Tilly, go and help with the beds,’ Grandma said firmly. ‘Now, please.’

Tilly shoved back her chair and stomped out of the kitchen, but she couldn’t resist lingering behind the door, listening to what was going on inside.

‘We can start by asking why you allowed Tilly and Oskar to bookwander inside fairy tales in the first place,’ Grandad said, as soon as he thought Tilly was gone.

‘Because they are young bookwanderers with their own hearts and minds, and clearly with their wits about them,’ Gretchen said. ‘It isn’t for me to tell them where they can or can’t go.’

‘But fairy tales, Gretchen,’ Grandma said.

‘Elsie, we do not share the same opinion on fairy tales. Yes, they’re wilder than some stories, but if you don’t mess with them, then they won’t mess with you.’

‘That’s naive, and you know it,’ Grandad said.

‘And yet here they both are, safe and sound,’ Gretchen said. ‘And the fact remains that they were able to provide us with valuable insight as to the structural discord inside the fairy tales. Which is why I’m here. I’m not merely after a slice of Christmas pudding, I assure you. I want to help you work out what is going on. You may not like to admit it, but, Elsie, between us there’s not many people who know more about fairy tales.’

‘But why the sudden change in allegiance?’ Grandma asked. ‘We’ve been on opposite sides of this debate for decades.’

‘Ah, you make it sound so dramatic,’ Gretchen said. ‘It’s not like there’s a war happening, or if there is, then it is us versus whatever is going on at your precious Underlibrary.’

‘There’s no need to be snide,’ Grandad said, clearly finding it harder to forgive and forget than Grandma did.

‘Archie, if anyone is swapping sides, it’s you,’ Gretchen said. ‘I’ve always said the Underlibraries have too much power, and now you’re on the outside as well.’

‘Regardless,’ Grandad said, realising she had a point and not wanting to dwell on that for too long, ‘I’m still not sure our motives or goals are aligned enough. Elsie and I don’t want to topple the Underlibrary – we just think that Melville Underwood is not the best person to be running it.’

‘To be honest, I couldn’t care less about what happens to the Underlibrary,’ Gretchen said. ‘As long as they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them. I’ve lived outside their rules and regulations for years now, and I’m very content to carry on like that. My concern is making sure that whatever is happening in fairy tales is stopped.’

‘Well, that we can agree on,’ Grandma said. ‘But why now, Gretchen? What couldn’t have waited until after Christmas?’

‘I have reason to believe that something worse is about to happen,’ Gretchen said. ‘Something I think you might be able to shed more light on.’

‘This better be good,’ Grandad said.

‘I went bookwandering in a few of my collections of fairy tales yesterday, after what Tilly told us,’ Gretchen explained. ‘And things are even more extreme than last time I visited. I wandered into several books and witnessed a number of characters in the wrong stories.

There were twelve disgruntled princesses in dancing shoes who had teamed up and gone rogue – they were hunting down princes and imprisoning them. There were two wicked stepmothers fighting over who was the most beautiful in the land. But there were also wastelands of stories with no characters left, not to mention all the gaps and holes everywhere I already knew about. And worst of all, there was book magic leaking out everywhere.

So, I started asking around to see if any of the characters had an idea of what was going on. Many of them said they had seen a tall stranger with a cane, wandering around and watching them, or asking unusual questions. And that reminded me of what Tilly told me about the shenanigans at the Underlibrary, and the man who had gone missing …’

‘Tilly told you about Enoch Chalk?’

‘Yes, that was his name!’ Gretchen said.

‘And you came all the way to London to tell us that?’ Grandad said. ‘You couldn’t have sent us an email? Picked up the phone?’

‘I thought I might be able to help,’ Gretchen said. ‘You know, like the old days. What do you say, Elsie?’

Tilly left them discussing Chalk, and Underwood, and the messy tangle of things going wrong, and headed upstairs, where she was presented with an armful of blankets and pillows by Bea.

‘How do you feel about a bookshop sleepover with Oskar?’ she said. ‘We’re a bit cramped up here.’

The new sleeping arrangements left Mary and Bea sharing a room while Gretchen was going to take Tilly’s. It used to be a treat for Tilly to be allowed to sleep in the bookshop, and she’d choose somewhere snug and make a duvet nest to hide away in, reading long into the night with her torch. But it felt a bit different doing it because she’d had to give her bed up on Christmas Eve.

‘Come on, I’ll help,’ Bea said, and led the way down the stairs.

‘Do you like Gretchen?’ Tilly asked suddenly, as they headed to the children’s section.

‘I’m not sure I’ve said more than ten words to her since she arrived,’ Bea said. ‘So I haven’t had much of a chance to form an impression yet.’

‘Grandma and Grandad don’t like her,’ Tilly pushed.

‘I’m not sure that’s fair,’ Bea said. ‘I don’t think it’s a case of liking or not liking. I think that they’ve taken very different approaches to a lot of things in the past, and also shared a lot of big life experiences, and that they’re not sure if they trust her yet. What do you make of her?’

‘I … I like that she treats me and Oskar like real people,’ Tilly said eventually. ‘She let us decide for ourselves whether we wanted to go bookwandering in her shop, and she didn’t give us a load of rules.’

‘And you feel like your grandparents do?’

‘Yes,’ Tilly said vehemently, as she piled up blankets in one corner for her, and Bea did the same for Oskar nearby.

‘But Gretchen and your grandparents have very different jobs in your life,’ Bea said. ‘I don’t doubt that Gretchen thinks very highly of you – who wouldn’t? And she wouldn’t put you in danger on purpose. But Grandma and Grandad know you better than anyone, Tilly, and they would put you first over every single other thing in this world. I think you know this deep down.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Tilly said. ‘I do. But don’t you think that maybe Gretchen is right about some things?’

‘Like what?’

‘Like, that there are too many rules, and that the Underlibrary is doing too much meddling, and people should be left to decide on their own about how they want to be a bookwanderer?’

‘I think that a lot of what Gretchen says is interesting,’ Bea said.

‘She believes in the Archivists, you know,’ Tilly said. ‘And Grandad and Grandma don’t. They said they were just a story. But I don’t understand why we can believe in some stories and magic, but not the Archivists? Why are they less real than Alice or Anne or Sara or … my dad!’

‘Well,’ Bea said slowly, as if it was hurting her to say it. ‘You know that those people aren’t real in the same way we are? They exist in many ways, but not outside their own stories.’

‘So why can’t the Archivists be like that?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘People talk about them as if they have to be people like us, or not exist, but why can’t they be something in between? We spend so much time in the in-between; I’m an in-between person! Maybe people are just looking in the wrong places.’

Bea nodded. ‘And maybe people should be listening to you a bit more,’ she said. ‘Tilly, I think you might be on to something.’