Just ahead was their destination. Ogilvy’s. And the window. Even from half a block away Clara could see the glow, and the magic reflected on the faces of the children staring up at it. Now the cold vanished, the crowds, elbowing and nudging moments before, disappeared; even Myrna receded as Clara approached the window. There it was. The Mill in the Forest.

‘I’ll meet you in there,’ Myrna whispered, but her friend had gone. Into the window Clara had climbed. Past the enraptured children in front, over the pile of clothing on the snowy sidewalk and right into the idyllic Christmas scene. She was walking over the wooden bridge now, toward the grandma bear in the wooden mill house.

‘Spare some change? L’argent, s’il vous plaît?’

A spewing sound cut into Clara’s world.

‘Oh, gross. Mommy,’ a child cried as Clara tore her eyes from the window and looked down. The pile of clothing had thrown up, the vomit gently steaming on the crusted blanket wrapped round him. Or her. Clara didn’t know, and didn’t care. She was annoyed that she’d waited all year, all week, all day for this moment and some bum on the street had vomited all over it. And now the kids were all crying and the magic had gone.

Clara backed away from the window, and looked around for Myrna. She must have gone inside, Clara realized, and already be at the big event. It wasn’t just the window that had brought them to Ogilvy’s this day. A fellow villager and good friend, Ruth Zardo, was launching her latest book in the basement bookstore.

Normally Ruth’s slim volumes of poetry were slipped to an oblivious public following a launch at the bistro in Three Pines. But something astounding had happened. This elderly, wizened, bitter poet from Three Pines had won the Governor-General’s Award. Surprised the hell out of everyone. Not because she didn’t deserve it. Clara knew her poems were stunning.

Who hurt you once so far beyond repair

that you would greet each overture with curling lip?

It was not always so.

No, Ruth Zardo deserved the prize. It was just shocking that anyone else knew it.

Will that happen with my art? Clara wondered as she swooshed through the revolving doors into the perfumed and muted atmosphere of Ogilvy’s. Am I about to be plucked out of obscurity? She’d finally found the courage to give her work to their new neighbor, CC de Poitiers, after she’d overheard her talking in the bistro about her close personal friend, Denis Fortin.

To have a show at the Galerie Fortin in the Outremont quartier of Montreal was to have arrived. He chose only the very best, the most cutting edge, the most profound and daring of artists. And he was connected worldwide. Even…dare she think it? The Museum of Modern Art in New York. The MOMA. MOMA mia.