So, this is what they did every Christmas morning in this world; they didn’t watch The Wizard of Oz and gorge on Quality Street, they came to Hill House to sing carols.

Lou and her mum followed Stephen, Dean, and Rebecca up the drive and through the door into Hill House. The hall was full of people in coats and scarves, accepting mince pies from trays offered by other people dressed as maids and footmen. Aside from her neighbours and these people in ill-fitting costumes, everything was just as Lou had left it only hours earlier – the tulip mosaics on the floor, the marble statues, the fire roaring in the hearth, the Mandeville crest on the chimneybreast, a huge Christmas tree beside the fire. For a single heartbeat, Lou considered running up the stairs.

‘Would you care for one?’ A lady dressed in a long tweed skirt and white blouse held out her tray of mince pies. Stephen and Dean greedily accepted.

‘Doesn’t your costume look smashing,’ Mum said.

‘Thanks,’ the woman said. ‘We’re supposed to be the people who lived here one hundred years ago. I drew the long straw. I’m one of the ladies of the house. The sister of the baronet: Mrs Leonora Hart.’

‘Lou, Lou, are you all right, love?’ Mum’s face swam into Lou’s field of vision. ‘You’re shaking like a leaf.’

‘I’m fine.’ How could she say that Mrs Hart would never wear a crotcheted shawl? It would have been silk and jewel-coloured, never dowdy brown wool.

‘Oh, there’s Jo and the other girls from work.’ Mum stood on tiptoe and waved through the open ballroom door. ‘Let’s pop in and tell them Stephen and Rebecca’s news, they’ll be thrilled.’

‘I’ll wait out here,’ Lou said. In response to the uncertain look on her mum’s face, she added, ‘I’m ok. I just need a bit of space. Go on, you go and see your friends.’

‘OK. But if you need me, you will shout. Promise?’

‘Cross my heart.’

Lou watched as Mum took Rebecca’s hand and led her and the boys into the ballroom. Last night that room had been full of people dancing in their Edwardian finery, and now, it was packed with people from the town, gathering to sing carols. In the midst of them was her mum. Her mum. She was really there, smiling, pointing at Rebecca’s stomach, her cheeks flushed from the warmth and excitement. Tomorrow, Lou would spend Boxing Day with her dad. While she had slept, her whole world had changed. She was living a miracle. But it was only a miracle to her. To everyone else, this was all perfectly normal.

From somewhere inside the ballroom, a piano struck up the opening chords of “Away in a Manger.” The staff and final stragglers made their way inside to join the singing, leaving Lou alone before the Christmas tree. She stared into the branches. Amongst the modern, faux-antique plastic decorations, she saw the most beautiful baubles. The delicate glass, once crisply transparent, had grown cloudy, but the prized decorations had survived the last one hundred years. As had the bricks and mortar of this house. But the friends she had left yesterday, made as they were of fragile flesh, would by now all be long gone, all meeting their awful fates because she had failed them.