Dangling the forest school carrot might have been a tactic father and son had previously dreamt up, but thanks to my persistent insistence that I was leaving, they hadn’t considered it worth deploying the bait. The fact that I’d found the brochure in the bin confirmed they were both now resigned to my decision. A decision, I realised, I was beginning to regret.

I desperately needed to talk to Ned because the thought of setting up a forest school at Wynter’s Trees had taken hold and was growing at breakneck speed. It was a thrilling, challenging and enticing prospect and I didn’t dare entertain the thought that I had embraced it too late. He might have tossed his hope out with the brochure, but it was down to me to restore it. I needed to tell him that I’d changed my mind.

‘Liza!’ called Noah, the second I’d hopped down from the veranda and was pulling on my coat. ‘Just the person I need.’

‘Can you hang on a sec, Noah? I just need to try and catch Ned.’

‘Not really,’ he said, looking about him. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll grab someone else.’

I looked about the place, but there was no one else. Everyone was engrossed in their own business.

‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll keep. What do you need?’

And that was how the morning panned out. I went from one hut to the next, then to the barn and back again, helping out wherever I was needed and it felt like I was needed everywhere. After lunch, I made it a priority to check on Wren, who was looking a million times better and then, reassured that she and Theo could cope, had donned an elf hat (thankfully the rest of the outfit was too big) and helped out in Santa’s grotto while Liam returned to his beloved netting machine.

I had assumed we wouldn’t sell any more trees, but I was wrong and there looked to be a steady flow of carts going backwards and forwards to the car park all day. I caught glimpses of Ned, but there was no chance to talk to him and I resigned myself to trying to grab a moment with him at the party instead.

As I moved from one task to another, I couldn’t shake off a floaty, out of body sort of feeling. My physical self was present and just about functioning, but my mind was away, imagining a future I hadn’t realised might even exist, until I had opened that envelope. I couldn’t recall a time when my head had ever felt so full and there was an endlessly spinning carousel of thoughts running through my mind.