The idea of spending the day with Nick Cowley in a small room where she’d probably bump into him was too much. ‘Me? No, no that’s fine.’

‘Please, Miss?’ Freddie asked. ‘I like wrapping presents. It’s my favourite bit of Christmas.’

‘It is? It’s mine too,’ she replied in a whisper.

‘Dad said I was really good at wrapping Mum’s presents last year.’ A shadow of sadness passed over his face and Nick squeezed his shoulder. How could she say no after that?

‘If you’re going to help me, Freddie, then I think you better call me Bella while we’re here. I can just be Miss Moore at school, okay?’

Freddie nodded, though he didn’t look convinced.

‘Shall we get started with some more wrapping then?’

‘Sure,’ Nick replied as Freddie bounced up and down.

‘So, here’s what I think we do.’ Bella led them inside. It was a tight, cramped space and she was shoulder to shoulder with Nick. His bodily warmth seemed to seep through his jacket into her arm, hitting like a bolt of electricity. ‘If you guys wrap the present and hand it to me, I’ll finish it off with a tag and a bow. I need to make sure I get the number on the tag, so I know who to deliver it to. You guys can’t know that. It’s confidential.’

‘What does confidential mean?’ asked Freddie.

‘It means no one else is allowed to know.’

‘Oh. Cool.’

They began working together as a small assembly line and the care with which Freddie and Nick chose the paper based on the present and who they thought it was for was touching. A silence fell on them as the dynamic between them all changed. She wasn’t Miss Moore anymore, she was Bella, friend and neighbour. Did they feel the strangeness of it as much as she did? They didn’t seem to but unable to work in silence she found some Christmas music on her phone. Freddie’s face lit up as the cheerful songs rang out from the tiny speaker.

‘How’s work at the moment?’ she asked Nick, needing to fill the silence but unsure what else to say. It was the most unimaginative conversation opener ever used, but she had to start somewhere. ‘You seem really busy.’

‘Yeah, it doesn’t stop just because it’s winter. It slows down a bit, especially at this time of year, in terms of big jobs anyway, but a lot of my regulars still want their garden maintenance. That’s what pays the bills.’

‘Do you like it? Being a landscaper, I mean.’