To David, who has kept me sane – and not just while I was writing this book. My Zoom Diet Coke Break man, and the only lockdown, and life partner I ever want.

To Mum, Dad and Lee, for just being the best. Always.

Now more than ever, books are providing a much-needed escape, and I say that as a writer and a reader. If I didn’t have readers, then my stories – the places I create and escape to in my head – wouldn’t ever be brought to life, and I am so happy, and so lucky, that they are. Thank you for picking up this book. I hope it is the sparkling, romantic and Christmassy read you were hoping for.

Cressy’s Christmas away from home …

I have only had one Christmas away from home, but it was in Australia so I did it properly. Kate, my best friend since secondary school, had the opportunity to do the second year of her degree out there, and when she asked if I wanted to come and see her for a month over Christmas I jumped at the chance. The two of us had spent six weeks between A-levels and university backpacking up the East Coast from Brisbane to Cairns, and it was one of the best things I’d ever done, so going back was an easy decision.

Australia celebrates Christmas during their summer, so it is as far from icy paths and bitter winds, mulled wine and hearty, warming food as you can get. Sometimes when we stepped out of Kate’s air-conditioned Sydney apartment it felt like we’d opened the oven door rather than the front door. The week before Christmas the temperature reached 40 degrees.

One of Kate’s Aussie friends, John, invited us to stay with his family for a few days, and so we made the six-hour drive from Sydney to the rural town of Wagga Wagga, and on Christmas Day itself had cold cuts of meat and potato salad, champagne and strawberries. We went for drives through beautiful forested landscape where kangaroos and emus roamed like sheep, and on walks where you had to tread carefully because venomous snakes lived in the long grass.

When we drove back from Wagga Wagga to Sydney, it was through land recently scorched by bush fires, blackened husks of trees and pockets of still-burning ground, the air thick with smoke. Back in Sydney, we took tram rides into the city, drank iced coffee, went to Irish bars and pizza restaurants, and had two days watching Australia vs South Africa at the Sydney Cricket Ground – where I got more sunburnt than I have ever been in my life. I shook out my duvet every night to check for funnel web spiders.

The best part of the whole trip was New Year’s Eve. Kate, John and I, along with a couple of other friends, went to Sydney Harbour to watch the firework display; magnificent plumes of light and colour filling the sky over the water and the distinctive shape of the opera house. Then we bar-crawled our way around the city, talking, laughing and playing pool until four in the morning, when we got a taxi to the beach. We sat on the sand and watched the sunrise, the sea glowing pink as the New Year dawned.