‘Not by herself, she isn’t. She’s only four.’ His alarm at the thought of his precious daughter indulging in any activity in which she might come to grief was so great it even intruded on the pleasure he always felt at seeing his wife naked.

Vicky didn’t trouble to continue the conversation until she’d washed and brushed her hair, then, pinning it into a heavy golden coil, she said chidingly, ‘If Emily Elise had been a boy, you would have been encouraging her to do adventurous things.’

She began to dress. It was going to be a day of baking and putting up decorations and the skirt she stepped into was a honey-coloured tweed that had seen better days. ‘And if she does fall off the sledge,’ she continued, zipping it up over the generous curve of her hips, ‘she’ll land in snow and so there’ll be no harm done.’

‘Only if it’s snowing heavily enough for a soft landing,’ he said sheepishly, aware of how overprotective he was where Emily Elise was concerned. ‘And you haven’t drawn the curtains back. For all you know, it may not be snowing at all.’

Vicky pulled a cinnamon-coloured sweater over her head, added a matching cardigan and, in loving exasperation, crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. The world outside was white, with flakes falling steadily from a heavy, pearl-grey sky.

‘Why,’ she said, throwing a pair of socks towards him as he swung his feet to the floor, ‘do you never believe me?’

‘Why,’ he asked in mock annoyance, ‘are you always right?’

She walked across to where he was sitting on the edge of the bed and dropped a kiss onto his still thick and curly fox-red hair. ‘It’s because I’m a wife,’ she said, love and amusement in her voice. ‘And it goes with the territory. You should be used to it by now.’

He pulled her against him and for a contented moment they simply held each other close and then, aware of all the work there was to do if the house was to look suitably festive, he gave her a light pat on the bottom. ‘Into the kitchen with you. I much prefer your mince pies to Josephine’s and well you know it.’

Once in the kitchen she put some porridge on for Emily Elise’s breakfast and then, a mackintosh around her shoulders and Tinker close behind, she went out into the garden to put food out for the birds, enjoying the sensation of the snow settling on her hair.

Over the next two days all her children, as well as her much-loved daughter-in-law and one of her nieces, would be with her. That her family and extended family came to her for Christmas, staying several days, was the reason she liked Christmas so much. They came in ones and twos at other times of the year, but Christmas was an opportunity for them all to be there at the same time.

She put a handful of nuts and seed onto the tin tray Adam had hung from the low branch of a tree, reminding herself that this year the opportunity was not going to be fully taken, for neither Ilse nor Claus were going to be with them.