The girl’s name was Mairi. She didn’t have a surname; her parents were separated. To choose one name, and only one, to keep as hers seemed offensive and very final. Her hair was blonde, because Kennan hated the hue, her future was dubious, because she had chosen certain paths, and her attitude towards everything in life was deceivingly nonchalant.

Alone, she had strung the tree with alphabet threading and blue twinkle lights. Ornaments were a liability – breakable things were always going to be a liability – and so instead she hung soft things from the branches; cloth dolls, half-baked gingerbread cookies, flat, cardboard cutouts of reindeer dusted in glitter. The final effect was childish and sobering. It took her aback, the reality of things, and she had sat down to cry into the pine-tinged air.

When she lived at home, Christmas had been striking and different. A holiday full of seasonal magic. Her mother had done greenery along the mantel and banister, hung stockings down the stairs. There had been portraits of Saint Nick on the walls and an elaborate miniature town had occupied an entire side table, cloaked with fake snow and resplendent in the face of mere gingerbread bread houses. And the tree, of course, had been much grander than the one she faced now.

But what was she to do about it? She had a low-rate job – as it turned out, no one wanted to hire someone eighteen and pregnant – and little money left in her bank account. She had thought that her decision to live with Kennan with fill her with life; that sometime, around twenty, there would a ring and a cupcake dress and a stability to their relationship, a saving grace. Instead she had been drained of her innocent love and good intentions. The only emotion left, when she sat and tried to feel anything, was unsettling numbness.

Wasn’t that how the stories went: it hadn’t always been like this? No, once upon a time Mairi knew, with fierce certainty, that she had seized hold of premature miracle. In hindsight, the sheer deception of that mirage felt more painful than even the existence that she was forced to face now.