They had only been inside the shopping centre for an hour, but the snow was already an inch or so deep, and showed no signs of letting up. It was practically blizzard conditions.

"Santa said it would snow, and he was right!" Simon announced from his booster seat as Holly tried to concentrate on the road ahead. "I'm going to be able to make the very best snowman with his magic potion."

Ah, the innocence of youth. Holly rolled her eyes and let Simon ramble on. "I tell you what," she said when he eventually ran out of steam. "We'll make a snowman as soon as we get back to your house, okay?" Might as well get it over with, she thought.

"Yay," he said happily, looking out at the snow in delight. It was, he decided, the best snow he'd ever seen.

Holly's brother and sister-in-law weren't home yet when they pulled into the drive, so Holly bundled Simon into some extra layers for warmth and tugged a woolly hat over his silky brown hair.

The snow felt too soft to make any significant sort of structure, Holly realised immediately. She watched Simon sympathetically as he tried to start rolling a ball to form part of the snowman, but it kept disintegrating back into powder. His little face screwed up in frustration.

"What about the glit - potion - Santa gave you?" She was surprised to even find herself suggesting it but she could tell he was on the verge of tears and maybe that would at least distract him momentarily. His eyes lit up and he took the packet out of his pocket.

She examined it. "There's no instructions." And why would there be? It was just glitter after all. Was it even environmentally friendly? Probably not. She shrugged. "Shall we just sprinkle some on the snow and see if it makes a difference?"

Simon nodded eagerly so she tore the packet open and distributed some of the "magic potion" on the ground. "I feel like we should chant a spell or something," she scoffed, slipping the rest of the packet into her pocket. "Do you have a magic wand?" She asked Simon jokingly.

He nodded. "Yeah, I have three. Should I get one?"

Of course he did. Smiling wryly, Holly shook her head. "That's okay, let's just do without."

"Aunt Holly, look!" Simon was pointing at the ground and Holly followed his gaze. The snow seemed to be glowing slightly, as if a spotlight had hit it. Almost as quickly as it had lit up though, it returned to normal. She rubbed her eyes, confused. Maybe she needed to get her vision checked.

But then Simon had obviously witnessed it too.

Her nephew jumped forward and started bunching snow up again. This time, it formed a ball easily. "It worked," he cried out in delight. "Santa's magic potion worked!"

Yeah, whatever, Holly thought, but she started to help Simon roll the ball in the rest of the snow until it became bigger and bigger. The snow definitely was better now - harder than it had been previously but also somehow malleable. Holly was able to help Simon make the perfect snowman he'd been so desperate for.

"He's amazing!" Simon clapped delightedly. They were just adding the finishing touches of a scarf and hat when Holly's brother Alan pulled up at the house.

"Wow, you guys made this?" He asked when he got out of the car and joined them. "It's really good."

Simon started to tell his dad about the magic potion, and Holly decided it was time to take her leave. Babysitting, she thought as she drove away, was exhausting.

When she got back to her house, it was quiet and in darkness. Her housemate had left for the holidays this morning, going to stay with her family in Aberdeen for the duration, so she was alone for a few days. Flicking on the lights, she took a bottle of mulled wine from the cupboard and poured it into a pot to heat up. Thankfully, her hangover had finally abated, probably because of being outside in the crisp cold air for so long. She shoved a ready meal in the microwave and turned on the TV.

"Christmas film, Christmas film, Christmas special, Christmas concert," she muttered disparagingly as she flipped through the channels. Finally, in amongst all the feel-good crap, she found a documentary about a serial killer and settled in with her dinner and mulled wine to watch it.

She felt really unsettled, though, and couldn't really relax. And she blamed Santa for it all. Weird man. She couldn't stop thinking of the snow glowing after she'd sprinkled the magic po - glitter - on it. She had to have imagined it . . . right?

When she was in the kitchen to ladle more mulled wine into her mug, her gaze snagged on her coat, remembering the rest of the glittery packet was still in her pocket.

Hmm.

She rummaged in her pocket and produced the packet. "I'm sure we used more than that," she murmured, noting that it was nearly full. As if it had . . . Replenished itself somehow?

She shook her head at her own stupidity. There was no way this was anything more than regular, run-of-the-mill glitter. But as she looked at it, she was sure that it suddenly . . . twinkled extra hard for a couple of seconds?

"Maybe I need to lay off the mulled wine," she scoffed at herself while topping up her mug with the aforementioned wine. She sat back down on the couch, but she found herself looking back at the kitchen rather than paying attention to her documentary. It was like the glitter was calling to her somehow.

Almost unwillingly, she found herself standing up again and pulling her coat back on. Holding her wine in one hand and the glitter in the other, she let herself out into the back garden.

Now, to find out if the glowing snow had just been a fluke or not!

She took a deep breath and emptied the bulk of glitter onto the snow in front of her.

The glitter sat on top of the snow. Nothing happened.

"Yep." Holly nodded. "I thought as much." She took a step away from the patch of snow, satisfied to have proved to herself the incident earlier had merely been her imagination.

But then the patch of snow started to glow, even brighter than it had earlier. There was no doubt in her mind she wasn't imagining it now. The glow spread over all the other snow in the garden, twinkling invitingly for a second or two before it returned to its normal colour.

Holly took a big gulp of her mulled wine and then put the mug on the path beside her. She'd actually, she'd discovered, really enjoyed making the snowman earlier. It had been so easy to make thanks to the perfect snow.

She had a very creative side and had even got into sculpting and pottery in the past so she had the sudden urge to make some sort of amazing creation of her own while she actually had the wherewithal to do so. Sometimes, when the artistic urge strikes, you just have to go for it. In Holly's case, this was at precisely 7.30pm on the 22nd December while she was mildly inebriated thanks to warm wine.

Accompanied by the light from her kitchen window, she started to create a figure. Somehow, the snow was doing everything she wanted, as if her hands were magic too. She started laughing as she realised she was making herself not a snowman, but a man made of snow.

"My perfect man," she muttered to herself, laughing as she sculpted a face for him using a sharp branch. "Cold as ice." She didn't really mean that, but she seemed to attract that type.

Her hands were starting to get too cold to function, but she was impressed with her snowman. In fact, it was more of a "faux-man", she decided with a giggle, clapping her hands together and standing back to admire him.

"Sorry about leaving you naked," she told him. "But I'm done for the evening." She was about to pick up her mug to go back inside, but . . . "Oh shit. I can't leave you like that. It's just anatomically cruel," she sighed, bending down to pick up more snow.

Six, seven inches? That seemed fair.

"It's what you do with it, after all," Holly snickered to herself.

She was worried it wouldn't hold when she added the snow cock and balls to the statue but the magic snow apparently could accommodate anything.

With freezing fingers, she fumbled in her coat pocket again and produced her phone so she could snap a couple of photos. After all, her faux man would probably be in a melted heap by the morning.

"Bye," she whispered to him, feeling silly as she walked back towards the warmth of her house. She took one last look back at her creation, impressed once again with how handsome he seemed. And how life-like. "I wish you were real, even just for a little while," she found herself saying aloud.

It was the briefest moment of weakness on Holly's part. Feeling lonely and alone at what was meant to be one of the most wonderful times of the year. She shook off that feeling almost immediately and closed the door behind her, heading back to the kitchen to reheat the remainder of her wine.

And, unbeknownst to her, in the now-quiet garden, the snow started to glow again, and the twinkling figure started to move.