So tonight’s pictures had just been for me. Me and Fred laughing as we messed around in the props cupboard (side point—that boy could rock a bald head), him giving me two thumbs-up as he got a kiss from the dame, and the video of me trying my first festive sausage roll. I already knew Dove wouldn’t approve. In fact, her exact reply to my earlier picture of Ruby’s awesome poster was, “Isn’t that kinda dorky? Not being a downer, just want you to be having the best time and getting those followers in! Kisses.”

BOOM.

A drum banged. The panto was starting.

Fred leaped so hard out of his seat that our popcorn flew up into the air and onto the stage. The curtain paused dramatically in midair, kernels stuck to it. There was no option but to stand up and brush it all off as a hundred people tutted behind us, and we tried not to crack up. And as soon as the main cast took to the stage, with the worst innuendos and age-old jokes (that, ngl, made me howl) I was loving it. Sure, it was weird as hell. Including how Ruby made a reflective surface so funny, so swaggy and badass, but she did. My hands actually hurt from clapping. And by the time it ended, all the kids in the audience getting up and dancing in the aisles, I was on a high.

We managed to grab Ruby after to tell her she was amazing, but she had stuff to do backstage, so Fred and I stopped in a cozy pizza place where I ordered the Christmas pizza with sprouts and pigs in blankets on. It was delicious. I was very much getting on board with Holly’s idea to eat all Christmas everything.

Just the two of us, Fred and I chatted more than we ever had before. About Ruby, about life, about the suggestions that were coming in for my London trip. We talked about how Fred’s brother kept waking him up at three a.m. to ask if it was Christmas, how I’d managed to change Holly’s flights, so she wasn’t going to be back till the twenty-sixth (which he called Boxing Day?!), and somehow, without knowing why, I told him the thing that I hadn’t told anyone else.

The reason I was so bothered about #FestiveFifteen. It wasn’t just that making my way into @thingsthepeakgirlsdo meant I’d finally have something in Alpine Peaks. It was how I was done making friends that let me down. That I was done with goodbyes. How online, I could finally be the one in control. And this challenge was finally my chance to prove to everyone that I could be okay on my own. Especially to Clara.