She woke up to find a bright sun streaming through the waiting room window. Annie sat up, wincing at the stiffness in her arms and legs, and looked around. Ray Burns was gone, but someone had left a fresh paper cup of coffee on the floor beside her, and she noticed how her coat had been tucked in around her legs. She smiled, then picked up the paper cup.
Someone had scrawled a message on the side: Thanks for looking out for me. R.
Where had he gone? Through the window, the platform was empty, the train gone. Had it already departed or not yet arrived? She wasn’t familiar with the timetable yet, but Ray could have already left.
At the thought of it, Annie felt a knot of regret in her stomach. Apart from his name, and that he liked to go hiking in wildly inappropriate footwear, Annie knew nothing at all about Raymond Burns, and likely never would know.
With nothing else to do, she trudged back through a fresh layer of snow to Stone Spire Hall, where Mrs. Growell was waiting to berate her for staying out overnight without word. Annie apologised, then joined Mr. Fairbrother—who gave her a knowing smirk—and Isabella for breakfast.
‘That told you,’ Mr. Fairbrother said after Mrs. Growell—having already finished—had taken her plates down to the kitchen. ‘Although she was a lot nicer to you than she would have been to Lord Wilf. Would have torn strips off him.’
Isabella just sniggered behind her hand, then suddenly clicked her fingers. She lifted up a bag, then pointed up into the air. ‘After breakfast,’ she said, which Annie took to mean she had finished another prototype for the clockwork flying bird.
‘Got it,’ Annie said. Then, turning to Mr. Fairbrother, she said, ‘Ah, Les … roughly how many bedrooms are there in this place?’
Mr. Fairbrother looked at the ceiling and frowned. ‘Off the top of my head … seven in the west wing, five in the main building, and another seven in the east. So that’s what … nineteen?’
‘And how about some of those reception rooms downstairs? Could they be made into dormitories?’
‘Well, I suppose they could. Why? Got some friends coming to stay?’
‘Just mulling over a few ideas,’ Annie said. ‘I think I’d like to have school parties or disadvantaged children come here. It’s a wonderful place, and I think we should share it.’
Mr. Fairbrother nodded. ‘Got a couple of spare sleighs in the shed,’ he said. ‘Could do races.’
‘Yee hah!’ Isabella said, snapping a pair of imaginary reins.
‘And her down there is used to cooking for big groups,’ Mr. Fairbrother said.
‘Really? Did she used to work in a school?’
Mr. Fairbrother smirked. ‘Prison,’ he said, then chuckled, leaving Annie unsure whether he was joking or not.
‘Well, at least she could keep the kids in line,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘Proper boot camp, like.’
‘I was thinking of something a little more relaxed,’ Annie said. ‘But I suppose a bit of discipline wouldn’t hurt—’
Mrs. Growell had appeared at the top of the kitchen steps. She paused to look out of the window beside the main doors, then pushed through the partition door and looked pointedly at Mr. Fairbrother.
‘There’s a man in the garden,’ she said. ‘I suggest you go out there and redirect him to the village.’
Mr. Fairbrother folded up his newspaper and headed for the main doors, Annie and Isabella following behind.
‘Well, so there is,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘I wonder what the poor chap’s doing.’
Annie, leaning over Mr. Fairbrother’s shoulder, let out a little gasp. On the other side of the driveway, Ray Burns was walking between snow-covered flowerbeds, head down in concentration, hands behind his back. He looked cold, confused, and more than a little lost.
‘I know him,’ Annie said. ‘He came in on the train a few days ago, but has been sleeping in the station waiting room. Margaret, can you put some hot chocolate on and maybe make a sandwich or two? I’m not sure how well he’s been eating.’
‘Are you sure that offering charity to a stray is a wise decision, Mistress?’
Annie met her gaze and smiled. ‘It’s three weeks until Christmas,’ she said. ‘I think it’s absolutely a wise decision.’
‘Very well. As you require. Isabella, dear, would you mind giving me a hand? I’ll let you slice the bread.’
‘Goody goody,’ Isabella said, rubbing her hands together.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Mr. Fairbrother asked.
Annie shook her head. ‘No, I can handle this.’
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll just keep an eye,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘I’ll be out in the garden, building snowmen.’
Annie put on boots, a coat, gloves and a hat, then, as an afterthought, grabbed a scarf and a spare pair of gloves for Ray, whose own seemed to have been lost. Then, with her boots crunching through the fresh snow, Annie marched out into the garden and up the path to where Ray was now standing, peering down at something in the snow.
‘Um, excuse me? Ray? Are you all right?’
Ray looked up. His eyes met Annie’s and he smiled. ‘Oh, hello. I do apologise if I was trespassing, but there’s no clear boundary marker between these gardens and the moor, and I was just following a trail. Is this where you work?’
Annie blinked. ‘Oh, ah, yes, it is. That’s right.’
‘It’s a beautiful place. Does it belong to Lord Collins?’
‘It did.’
Ray gave a sad smile and looked down. ‘A terrible shame.’
Annie’s internal jury was still out on whether or not she agreed, having slowly got to know her grandfather from his notebooks. She just gave a noncommittal shrug.
‘That’s life, isn’t it?’
Ray nodded. ‘Yes. I suppose it is.’
His shoes were again soaking wet, and his trousers from the knees down were muddy and stained. He looked for all the world like some kind of vagabond, but in his eyes there was kindness, and his face gleamed with hope.
‘Ah, did you say you were following some kind of trail?’ Annie asked.
‘Yes. There,’ Ray said, pointing at a line of prints in the snow. ‘I’ve been following it from beneath the Christmas tree in the square over there in the village. Isn’t it a delight? I’m sure it’s some kind of elf or pixie. Look at the way its pointed, as though it was someone wearing shoes. An animal would have a spread front, to indicate paws, while a bird would have toes out to the side. Plus, what bird would walk so far?’
Wondering if Ray were in fact mad, Annie said, ‘I’m pretty sure it’s not a fairy or an elf. Probably just a rabbit or something.’
Ray smiled. ‘But wouldn’t it be nice if it was?’
Annie felt a little uncomfortable under his gaze, but it was a good uncomfortable. She liked the way he looked at her, and found herself saying, ‘Why don’t you come up to the house? Your shoes are soaked. I’m sure we can find some for you to wear. And I’ll ask the housekeeper to make you something to eat.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Come on.’
Annie headed back to the house, looking back over her shoulder every few steps, on the pretence of checking to see if Ray was following, but really just to see if he was … well, following. That was all.
He’s not really suitable boyfriend material, Annie. Even if you’re sitting at the bottom of the barrel yourself.
‘Hello lad,’ Mr. Fairbrother called, as they passed where he was fashioning a lump of recently shoveled snow into a vague pillar shape. ‘Nice to see you again.’
‘You’ve met?’ Annie said.
‘Was casting my line off the pier last evening,’ Mr. Fairbrother said. ‘We had a craic for a few.’
‘Did you catch anything in the end?’ Ray asked.
Mr. Fairbrother chuckled. ‘Not sure. The ice froze up again around my line so I left it down there. Could be a whopper hanging on it, for all I know. I’ll pop down later and have a look.’
‘If there is, perhaps get a stone fire burning down there by the waterside,’ Ray said. ‘Would taste fantastic.’
‘There’s a plan,’ Mr. Fairbrother said.
Annie glanced at Ray. There was something strangely nostalgic in the way he spoke, sepia-tinted, almost sad. Shaking off the feeling, she said, ‘Come on, Ray. Let’s get you warm, dry, and fed.’
Annie led him into the house, then instructed him to take off his shoes and socks. Mr. Fairbrother kept a box of thick, winter socks by the door, presumably to change when he came inside, and Annie figured he wouldn’t mind if she lent a pair to Ray. His trousers were still wet, but after he had dried them with a towel, they would last until Annie had time to find him some others.
She had just sat him down at their usual breakfast table in front of a fire Mr. Fairbrother had recently stoked, when Mrs. Growell and Isabella came up the stairs. Mrs. Growell carried a plate of sandwiches, Isabella a large teapot, which, from the smell, was filled with hot chocolate.
‘Oh,’ Ray said. ‘Has your family served the Collinses for a while then?’
‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘Well, that’s your mother and daughter, right? I can see the resemblance.’
Annie winced, but luckily Mrs. Growell and Isabella hadn’t heard. ‘We’re all unrelated,’ she said, although, even as she said it, she felt a tingle on her tongue as though in some way, it was perhaps a lie. Isabella, for one thing, did look like a much younger, slightly more pixiefied, easygoing version of Mrs. Growell, and she—
‘Your daughter has your eyes,’ Ray said.
‘She’s not my daughter,’ Annie almost snapped, getting the words out just before Mrs. Growell and Isabella came into earshot, but getting a stern glare from Mrs. Growell anyway as the housekeeper looked Ray and up and down with a look of disdain, as though she’d just found a drowned rat lying on the front doorstep.
‘Sandwiches,’ she said.
‘And hot chocolate,’ Isabella chimed in, grinning wildly.
‘Ah, Mrs.—ah, Margaret, do you think we could find a change of clothes for Ray here? He’s a little wet.’
‘Certainly. I’ll have a look in the closet.’
As Mrs. Growell set down the sandwiches and marched off, Ray said, ‘Wow, you have her under your thumb. Anyone would think you owned this place.’
Isabella began to giggle. Annie felt her cheeks flush. ‘Ah, I suppose, technically I do. I’m … ah, Wilfred Collins’s granddaughter.’
Ray’s reaction was immediate and unexpected. He had been sitting in a chair, but now he knelt down on the floor, clasping his hands together as though to pray, and looked up at Annie with tears in his eyes.
‘Your grandfather was a wonderful man,’ he said. ‘And in his absence, I’d just like to thank you for making a poor man extremely happy.’
‘Marry?’ Isabella said.
‘I don’t think Ray means it like that,’ Annie said. ‘Uh, Ray, can you get up, please? What’s going on?’
Ray stood up, his eyes not leaving Annie’s. He sat back down on the chair, took a sip of hot chocolate from a mug Isabella had filled, then smiled.
‘A long time ago, there was a very poor man,’ he said. ‘His wife had died unexpectedly, leaving him to bring up his young son on his own. They had very little money, but they got by, because the man loved the boy very much. However, the boy got sick. Very sick. The boy was going to die without a special kind of treatment that wasn’t available in his own country, but the man had no money to send the boy overseas. The man tried everything, but he was one of the little people, between the cracks, the type no one really cares about. He got turned down for grants, turned down for loans. Letters to prominent public figures were ignored, and attempts to fundraise were met with apathy. With no other choice, he sold everything he had of value, but it still wasn’t enough. In short, he had no way to save the boy.’
Isabella was nibbling her fingernails, eyes wide. Annie wiped away a tear.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘The man, perhaps in desperation, perhaps because he was drunk or had gone crazy through grief, did the only thing he could think of that he hadn’t yet tried, something so ridiculous he would surely have laughed at himself in other circumstances.’
‘What?’ Annie asked.
‘What? What? What?’ Isabella echoed.
Ray gave a sad chuckle. ‘He wrote a letter to Father Christmas.’
‘No!’
‘Nooo!’
‘Yes. And then he forgot about it, and set about trying to make the boy comfortable in his last days. Not wanting to miss a single second, the man quit his job, and spent his days with his son, wanting to bag every memory he could. And then, from nowhere, a miracle happened. Father Christmas wrote back.’
‘No!’
‘Nooooo!’
‘What did he say?’
‘The letter, addressed directly to the man and his son, talked about how it was important to believe and never to give up. To stay strong, and to have hope, and to know that magic existed in the world, and that magic could do anything if you only believed in it strongly enough. It was, in short inspirational.’
‘And that saved the boy? His self-belief?’
‘Noooooooo!’
Ray smiled. ‘Not quite, but it helped him stay positive through everything. The letter also contained a cheque for two hundred grand.’
‘What?’ Annie gasped.
Isabella clapped her hands together and started laughing.
‘Father Christmas’s very generous donation helped that boy get the treatment he needed, and he not only survived, but he went from strength to strength. And the man’s desperate prayer was answered, because he never, ever gave up.’
Isabella sniffed. Annie glanced at her to see that the girl had tears streaming down her face.
‘That’s amazing,’ Annie said. ‘And that man was you?’
Ray, his own eyes filled with tears, smiled as he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was the boy.’