The final float circled round the furthest side of the green and Nick heard Freddie and Bella gasp in excitement. His jaw dropped open too. He’d never seen anything so magical in the Meadowbank Christmas parade. Adam Noble, the local carpenter, had created a sleigh and it was pulled along by an old shire horse with Mr MacMahon of Spring Farm holding the reins. The sleigh itself had carefully hidden wheels, but it didn’t lessen the magic and Freddie was jumping up and down on the spot.

‘Dad, look! Look, Dad! It’s a horse! Dad!’

‘I can see, son,’ he replied, laughing. ‘Isn’t it great?’

You’d have thought he lived in the city and had never seen a horse before, rather than them constantly galloping in the fields all around them.

‘Wow,’ Bella and Trish said, before staring at each other and laughing.

Amelia Williams, Adam’s fiancée, walked behind the sleigh with him, both dressed as elves along with his mum Lynne, who was handing out even more sweets to the little ones. In the sleigh itself, Mr Whittaker, dressed as Santa, waved at the children.

‘Wasn’t it brilliant?’ said Bella, turning back to him once it was finished. Her face had flushed from the excitement and her dark blonde hair framed her face as it poked out from under her hat. She was so radiantly happy, and he wanted to bask in that warmth. Trish, Len and Peter drifted away, leaving him and Freddie with Bella’s family. ‘And we can go and get our trees next weekend. At least, that’s what my family do. We don’t like to leave it too late.’

‘Can we, Dad?’ Freddie asked. ‘Can we get a real tree this year?’

‘We’ve always had a fake one,’ he explained to Bella. ‘Paige hated having to clean up falling needles and she didn’t like the smell.’

‘Really? I love the smell.’

‘The smell of what?’ asked her dad coming over.

‘We’re talking about real Christmas trees and how we always get ours next weekend.’

‘It’s a Moore family tradition. Would you two like to come along? Come and join the gang for the day?’

‘I don’t know if they even want a real tree, Dad.’ She mouthed the word sorry to Nick, but he couldn’t think of anything he’d like to do more and seeing Freddie’s pleading face had him agreeing in an instant.

‘We’d love to. Wouldn’t we, son?’

‘Yes, please!’

‘Brilliant. I’ll tell Cynthia there’s two more for breakfast on Saturday.’

Bella added, ‘We always have a big celebratory breakfast together before we go to Bluebell Park, but you don’t have to come to that if you don’t want to.’

‘Oh, can we, Dad, please?’

Mungo smiled. ‘We do always have an excellent breakfast on tree-buying day. There’s something for everyone.’