My little brother—well, I knew what he’d say, so I’d kept the details vague. All he knew was I might be out of his hair for a bit.

But…I had a problem.

Was there anyone I could swap with? The nearest I’d gotten was the day I posted when this came through from some girl called @HappyHol_idays.

Heyyyy. No jokes. That pic is frm where I live! I’m right by the duck pond! Are you serious about coming to the UK?? How about Little Marsh?? DM if you want any help. Have a lonely Christmas! xxzz PS did your mum used to live here?

I think she meant lovely. But who knew? People were weird—and so was British humor. I’d seen Gavin & Stacey—I had a grip on it.

But @HappyHol_idays had followed up.

Sorry didn’t mean to sound like a creepy internet stalker.

Which it hadn’t. But that one kinda did. I hadn’t replied just in case.

But then hours later there had been another:

Not sure if you saw my other messages, but I am ALL ABOUT spontaneous plans. so if you want to swap then I’m 100% serious about being 100% serious #letsdothis #iamspontaneous

So I had a volunteer.

I’d spent all week investigating her, wondering if she could be an option. But despite telling my followers that I was “in all kinds of with all my amazing followers who had offered to swap,” truth was, no one else had come forward. It was @HappyHol_idays or no one.

So this morning I’d clicked follow. @HappyHol_idays, my DMs were officially open.

Holly Judd. Could you be the one to help me? Cute profile name, although I wasn’t sure it really worked year-round. She looked about sixteen, brown hair, nice bangs, geek-chic-ish vibe. I scrolled some more. It could just be full-out geek, in fact. Very into her dog. He looked like a tiny Chewbacca. No major warning signs she was really a sixty-year-old man, but maybe that was the warning sign? I clicked on her tagged photos. This supercool girl called @Ruby_Roo had posted one of Holly and her dog in bed. Maybe she was too into her dog actually. But she looked friendly. And Little Marsh—if she wasn’t lying about that—still looked cute. That was the main thing.

I had to keep focused. Remember it wasn’t really about her life, it was about how I could make living her life look. It was about bringing in new followers with the best-ever British Christmas.

And what screamed “true spirit of Christmas” more than flying thousands of miles away from my family, nailing a tight schedule of iconic UK Christmas moments on my own, all to try and beat a ton of strangers on the internet? And Clara. Ha.