Dear Reader,

I hope, if you are reading this, that you love Christmas as much as I do! This story is set in the area where I was born and where my ancestors can be traced back for generations. If there was any snow around, we were high on the hill so we always got plenty of it, and it was wonderful for tobogganing—although my parents would grumble if the roads got cut off and had to drag provisions home on a sled.

Christmas for me was long walks through the beech woods, tobogganing, building snowmen, helping dig cars out of the lane and roaring log fires in the local village pubs. Now I live on the coast, so snow rarely settles for long, but when it does it takes me straight back to those long-ago Christmases.

Louise Allen