Max laid the stained-glass pane on the floor of the porch and stuck his hand sideways through the hole not much wider than the letterbox. He pulled back the bulk of his sleeve and wormed his hand further in. As soon as it was halfway up to the elbow, he felt around until his fingers skimmed the latch, but he couldn’t quite reach.

‘Good thing we weren’t any later, Sarah was about to go to bed,’ Maddy said, coming through the open gate.

‘Did she mind having the girls?’ Max pushed against the door to pull his arm back out of the hole.

‘Not at all. I said I hoped we wouldn’t be long anyway.’

Max stuck his hand in the hole again.

‘Emily is worried that Father Christmas won’t visit if we don’t hurry up.’ She pushed the sleeves of her coat together into a hand muff.

‘I’m trying my best. Perhaps if we’re still here at midnight, Santa will give us a hand.’

‘Very funny.’ After a silence, she said, ‘I remember the night I found out he wasn’t real. I was only eight. I couldn’t sleep because I was so excited and I was half hoping I might catch sight of him if I stayed awake, but when he came in with the sack of presents, it was my dad.’

‘Did you tell him you knew?’

‘I remember asking him lots of awkward questions the next morning, like how did Father Christmas go into every house in every street in all the different countries of the world and what did he do if a house didn’t have a chimney, and what really happened if a child had been naughty. He answered every question, but all I wanted was for him to tell me the truth, that he was Santa.’

‘Do you remember the first year we left presents for Emily?’ He pushed his arm further into the hole.

‘We sat up till midnight in case she woke up.’

‘Then I fell asleep, so you had to take the presents in.’

‘We were stressing about nothing. She was far too young to even know what it all meant. Maybe that’s why we do it, because really it’s more for us than them.’

‘So we can relive a fantasy?’ At last he could feel the latch with his fingertips. ‘Not sure I ever believed in him in the first place. I was lucky if I got a chocolate Freddo and a satsuma.’

‘Why do we keep doing it, even if we suspect they’ve found out?’ She pulled her collar up higher round her neck.

‘What age do they stop believing?’ he asked.

‘When they realise the world isn’t the magical place we pretend it is.’ She tugged his sleeve, an urgency in her voice. ‘I don’t want their childhoods to end, Max. I want them to go on forever.’