***Author's note: I debated over this, but I've decided to put a little trigger warning here as I do briefly address bereavement later in this chapter***

"So, this can only lead to one conclusion." Holly Sprigg - with that special brand of confidence that only a seven year old can possess - pulled the world map she'd been using as one of her props off the wall, brandishing it triumphantly towards her fellow pupils. "There's absolutely no way Santa can deliver presents all over the world in one night. He's not real!"

Someone began to wail in the background, and Holly looked disgusted. "You don't even have a fireplace, Kayleigh," she told the crying child. "How did you think Santa was even going to get into your house?"

"Mum said she'd given him the spare key to the front door!" Kayleigh sobbed, tears dripping down her little red face. A few other kids started to cry along, while a very small minority seemed unmoved and unsurprised.

"Um, Holly?" Miss Bradford said, reaching out for her hand. "I think we need to have a little chat."

As the teacher towed her towards the classroom door, Corrine Hartley - the most popular girl in the class - leaned forward over her own desk.

"That wasn't cool, Holly," she informed her solemnly in a whisper. "If you find out the truth about Santa, you're not meant to tell." She shook her head, looking thoroughly disappointed, and Holly wilted, the wind truly taken out of her sails . . .

"I can't believe you made me re-live that," Holly sighed now as Noel hit pause on the scene. "I'd blocked that one out for years." No wonder she was always so worried she'd slip up and tell her nephew the truth about Santa - she already had a permanent mark on her 'naughty or nice' record for that one!

She remembered being so proud of how she'd worked it all out . . . So determined to show everyone else her superior knowledge and expose Santa for the myth he was. Instead, she'd been met with a lecture from her teacher, a reprimand from her parents . . . and a lot of crying children.

"It's pretty mortifying, actually," she said quietly. "I'd prefer not to have remembered that."

"It sounds like perhaps it was a core memory you needed to unlock?" Noel suggested carefully. Holly considered this, then shrugged.

"I'm not sure why. It's just making me feel bad." She laughed ruefully. "And I feel bad most of the time as it is." She took what she hoped to be a fortifying gulp of wine, but it had cooled significantly now . . . and everyone knows that mulled wine is nowhere near as comforting when it's not hot.

"What happened the year before, Holly?" Noel prompted, his face serious.

"Um . . . I can't remember." Holly lied, shaking her head frantically even though the memories were starting to trickle back.

Noel nodded towards the TV screen, which he'd now changed to Family. "Why is there no image on the thumbnail for 2003? It's just a black square."

"I don't want to do this anymore." She could feel her eyes welling up, panic dancing through her veins. Her breath was coming faster than usual, and dizziness swirled around her.

"You didn't want to do it in the first place," Noel pointed out. "What difference will another film make?"

Because I now suspect I know what's behind door 2003 in the Holly Sprigg advent calendar, and I don't think I'm ready to go there, she thought to herself.

"C'mon," Noel coaxed, slipping an arm around her and pulling her close. "I'm here for you, and we can do this together." She opened her mouth to make a flippant comment, and he cut her off. "And don't say you'd 'rather do me' - we've already established that's not happening again!"

"Busted." Holly couldn't help but let out a nervous giggle. "Okay, fine! Let's get this over with."

He handed the remote control to her. "In your own time," he said gently. Taking a deep breath, she selected 2003.

And there she was.

Holly's beloved grandmother, lying in the hospital, while her family surrounded her. Young Holly hovered in the doorway, face pale. "Mum?" She asked tentatively. "Can I have a postage stamp?"

"Another one?" Her mum rummaged in her purse. "You've been asking for stamps every day for weeks now." She seemed distracted as she handed Holly a pack of stamps, more focused on her own mother in the hospital bed, so Holly went back out into the corridor without further comment. She sat down on the floor and pulled a piece of paper, envelope, and red felt tip pen out of her pocket.

Holly watched her younger self address the envelope to Santa before she started to re-read the letter she had written. That mysterious, omniscient cameraman conveniently zoomed in, so Holly could read the letter onscreen.

Dear Santa

I wrote to you every day, but Granny is still ill.

Can you please make her well? It is the only gift I want this year.

Love

Holly

Small Holly took the letter to the postbox in reception. "Please, Santa," she whispered to the envelope before she pushed it through the slot. "Please help me?"

In the present, tears were running down Holly's cheeks. "That was your gran?" Noel asked softly.

She nodded. "She was really sick . . . But she was getting better. Stupidly, I thought my letters to Santa were doing it. I wrote pretty much every day without fail; I figured if he could give us any present we wanted, he'd be able to sort this for me." She shook her head, unable to stifle a sob. "But then she unexpectedly caught pneumonia and died just before Christmas."

"I'm so sorry." Noel pulled her in tighter, allowed her to bury her face into his chest. For a former snowman, he was surprisingly warm.

"She was . . . My best friend," Holly mumbled into his sweater. "Sometimes I felt like she was the only one in the world who really understood me. Christmas was never really the same after that. My birthday too. I've just never really made that connection before.

"My mum slipped up that year, understandably, of course, and I caught her on Christmas Eve putting the presents under the tree which were meant to have come from the North Pole. And, I guess after feeling like Santa hadn't helped keep my gran alive, I just . . . Lost all faith."

"Hence your little presentation the following year," Noel summed up.

Holly laughed bitterly. "I was meant to be doing a report on my favourite Christmas book . . . They didn't see my Santa 'expose' coming until I was already knee-deep in the middle of the presentation. I was so convinced that everyone needed to know the truth, though!"

"Did it make you feel any better?"

She shook her head. "You can clearly see it didn't."

Noel stroked her hair and planted a kiss on the top of her head. "It's okay," he murmured softly. "It will all be okay." But she felt him tense up all of a sudden. "That's . . . weird," he said under-his-breath.

Holly lifted her head, aware she was probably a blotchy wreck right now. "What's wrong?"

Noel nodded towards the tv. "A new entry has just appeared under Family for this year," he said slowly. "It seems to be streaming live as we speak."

"That's my family," Holly realised. "They're meeting without me? Click on it!" Morbid curiosity won out over the fear of possibly hearing something terrible about herself.

They watched as the rest of her family - her parents, brother, sister, and granda - settled down around the kitchen table in her childhood home. They all looked very serious. "You know why we're all here," her mum said, looking around the others.

"We need to talk about Holly."