‘For the last time, you are a shepherd, a shepherd. Shepherds don’t wear baseball caps! Take five, go away. Go away and find your inner flipping shepherd!’ Sue felt like drowning herself in a vat of myrrh, but she always felt like that at this time of year, she told herself. Somehow, despite wayward shepherds, drunken kings, and a feuding Joseph and Mary, it always came together in the end, and every year was better than the last. That’s what everyone said. They all moaned and complained during the build-up, but when the event actually happened, every single one of them wanted to take the credit for it. Because the Poldore Christmas pageant had never been an unbridled disaster. There was always a first time, though.

‘Anything I can do to help?’ Alex asked. ‘I mean aren’t you supposed to be ringing me and asking me to take over directing the nativity so that you can—’

‘Wallow in misery?’ Sue asked her. Cordelia had been as good as her word when it came to telling Tamsyn and Alex about her predicament.

‘Focus on you, and the children,’ Alex said.

‘Yes, and I meant to, it’s just that the cast are all such idiots.’ Sue sighed. ‘Do you know any mind control techniques? Mass hypnotism, maybe. Anything to whip this rabble into shape and stop them from thinking it is all such a laugh.’

‘To be fair,’ Alex said, ‘it is quite a laugh.’

‘I wish you and Ruan would have been Mary and Joseph again this year, you were so good at it.’

‘No, we weren’t, we argued the entire time,’ Alex reminded her. ‘And besides, this year’s recruits look the part. And Tamsyn’s costume revamps have gone down a treat. She really is a very good vicar’s wife slash fashion designer, which reminds me, I wanted to talk to you about how I break my news—’

Sue’s phone went off, ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ thundering throughout the hall.

‘Christmassy.’ Alex smiled.

It wasn’t a number that Sue recognised. ‘Hello?’

‘Sue, how are you?’

‘I’m … fine,’ Sue said. The voice had a familiar quality, it was American, but she couldn’t place it.

‘It’s me, Blake, Blake Fletcher.’

‘Oh, Blake, oh!’ Sue froze for a moment, panicking. ‘Why, hello.’

Why, hello? Alex mouthed at her silently.

Cringing, Sue turned her back on her. ‘How may I help you?’

‘Sue, I’m just calling to apologise. I know I said I’d drop into your Santa thing, and I didn’t make it, I’m so sorry.’

‘Oh please, don’t apologise,’ Sue, who never said ‘don’t apologise’ to anyone ever, said. ‘Of course you have far more important film star things to do.’ She hadn’t meant to sound as snappy and sarcastic as she did.