Sometimes we had snow in the village at Christmas, but that year was mild. Dampness hung in the air, showing misty over the mountains and clinging to hair and hats and overcoats. Haverth did not look picturesque. It looked, after my six-month absence, primitive. And small. How quickly I had become accustomed to my spacious hotel room! The privy at the bottom of the garden seemed insanitary, even though Mam scrubbed it every day. The garden itself, with its rows of cabbages and potatoes, lacked any beauty. And indoors the rooms seemed impossibly cramped, as if we were all trying to fit ourselves into a dolls’ house.

Da kept saying, “I can’t believe it’s our Sarah!”, and staring at me with moist eyes. When I arrived on Christmas Eve in the taxi from Aberaeron, Mam hugged me so tightly I had to fight her off so that I could breathe. And even Frank, whose new moustache made him look unrecognizably grown up, and far too conscious of himself to show his feelings, squeezed my shoulder. I wanted to embrace him, but had to content myself with admiring the facial hair and seeing his joy when I gave him the Christmas gift I’d brought.

“It’s cells,” I told him as he drew the wooden frame out of its box.

“I know what it is!”

“Well, Mam and Da might not.”

Mam laughed. “Do you know what cells are, John?”

“It’s that thing!” replied Da.

Frank was speechless. He put the framed film cells on the table and contemplated them in awe. Da inspected them too. “I still don’t know what I’m looking at, love,” he said to me.

“It’s the film Sarah’s in, see, Da.” Frank had found his voice, which shook a little. “It’s some of the bits that are all joined together to make the film, isn’t it, Sair?”

I nodded. “I got sixteen because that’s how many make one foot of film.”

Mam was looking baffled. “One foot?”

“Unbelievable, isn’t it?” I went on, feeling important. “A film is one long strip of these cells, or frames, they sometimes call them, and when the strip is passed over the light, the pictures appear to move.” I could not resist adding the particle of knowledge I had cherished ever since David had imparted it to me. “Do you know, for every second of film, twenty-four of these little bits go in front of the light? One hundred make just over four seconds of film.”

Frank had gone pink with pleasure. “People like me never get hold of them!”

“People like film stars’ brothers, you mean?” teased Mam. She poked Frank’s shoulder. “What do you say to your sister now, Frank?”

“Oh, thank you, Sair!” He was too shy to kiss this new Sarah, who wore a layer of paint on her face and expensive scent behind her ears. But he picked up my gift and held it to his chest as tenderly as any lover. “I’ll treasure it.” Suddenly, something occurred to him. “How did you get them? I bet you stole them!”

“She did not steal them!” Mam was indignant, though Da was laughing. “Frank Freebody, you take that back!”

I was glad of Mam’s intervention. It gave me time to compose myself for the moment I had been anticipating ever since I arrived. “I didn’t steal them. I was given them by David Penn, the director of the film. If you hold them up to the light, Frank, you’ll see that I’m in them. Less than one second of me, but me nevertheless.”

There. I’d said his name. And I didn’t think I’d gone red or fidgeted while I said it.

But Mam was regarding me curiously. “You and this David Penn, then, are you … you know, stepping out?”

Stepping out. I tried not to cringe. That was a less approving version of “walking out”, which was the Haverth term for courting with a possible view to marriage.

“No, of course not,” I told her. And now I did go red. The blush crept up my neck and burned my cheeks. “He’s the director of the film, that’s all, and I told him my brother liked films, and he said some cells from the film would be a nice Christmas present.”

They were all looking at me. “And he was right, wasn’t he?” I added brightly.