Carmen is Martin Ellacott’s new girlfriend.

When Robin is up in Yorkshire for Christmas, her sister-in-law Jenny tells her the history of Martin and Carmen’s relationship, which already includes three break-ups and reconciliations. Robin knows that Carmen fell pregnant only three months after she started dating Martin. Jenny tells Robin the baby is due in February.

On Christmas Eve, the four Ellacott siblings and Ryan Murphy decide to go to The Bay Horse in Masham for a drink. As they leave the house, Carmen pulls up in an old Nissan Micra. Martin goes to greet her, whilst Jonathan (Robin’s youngest brother) urges Robin to keep walking in case they are about to go “off on one”. Jonathan tells Robin that Carmen is ‘rough as hell’, covered in tattoos, ‘drinks like a fish and every other word’s “fucking”’ (Chapter 39).

Martin and Carmen later join them in The Bay Horse pub. Carmen is described as skinny and taller than Robin, with ‘the sides of her head shaved and the rest of her hair dyed a vibrant tomato red and tied back in a pony tail’. She is wearing a leather jacket and vest dress, and has a tattoo of ‘the wreck of a galleon at sunset, with mermaids on rocks’ on her chest (Chapter 39).

Carmen requests a double vodka on the rocks (Chapter 39).

After meeting with Valentine Longcaster in January, Robin answers a call from her mother. Linda tells Robin that Carmen has had the baby. He has arrived a month early and has a possible birth injury to his arm (Chapter 63).

Later in the book, Martin visits Robin in London and tells her more about his relationship with Carmen.