She focused back on the nativity play.

“The Wise Men arrived from afar,” said the narrator, stolid Jimmy Donaghy. Good for him. They were going to get this thing done and dusted, then there were carols to sing and people to gouge for some very weak mulled wine, then everyone could go out . . . She peeped out the windows. It was nearing three, thus practically dark, and yes, there it was. Lit up again, you could make out the top of the angel’s head over the crest of the hill. It was still surrounded by people—it had been all day. Frowning, mostly. But she loved it. She thought it was beautiful, even more so now as the snow settled all around.

AGOT WAS REFUSING to take off her costume because people kept saying, “Hello, Angel Gabriel,” when she went up to them and this suited her very well, especially as Effie-Jane had had to take her Mary costume off so ha ha to her, an emotion that lasted right up until Effie-Jane smugly emerged from the girls’ toilets in the stiffest, pinkest party dress Agot had ever seen. It had sequins that changed color when you pushed them over and an underskirt and a unicorn on the front, and Agot was instantly furious again at having to wait till she got home to change into her own party dress, which was not pink and did not have a unicorn on it. It was silver and had a bear on it, and she had absolutely begged for it the last time her mother had taken her to the mainland. She bitterly regretted that now.

But everything was forgotten as the children finished their final songs—as ever, they were “Paiste Am Bethlehem,” the Gaelic carol that could and did make the entire hall weep, and, of course, “Caledonia.” And then the children, bolting down their juice and biscuits, burst out of the school, screaming and yelling and delighting at the nearness of the Christmas holidays, at another exciting event ticked off toward the countdown to the most exciting day of all, their senses getting near hysterical as they met the snowflakes swirling in the playground as well as—most exciting of all—the incredible new angel that had appeared from nowhere to light their path.

As if of one mind, they all dashed toward it. After Malcy’s failure to get the thing taken down that morning—the concrete had come as quite the surprise—he was convening an emergency meeting, so by the time the children got there, some loud grown-ups were already standing in front of it muttering things like “planning” and “you just can’t barge in like this” and “completely illegal,” and somebody was noting things down on a clipboard, and someone else was muttering crossly into a telephone, but of course, as far as the children were concerned, anything and everything grown-ups talked about at any time was irredeemably boring and to be completely ignored at every conceivable opportunity, so this didn’t worry them in the slightest, and as the snow came down they danced ever closer, stunned by its size and beauty.