This voice. Very quietly.

Let’s start at the start.

It’s winter. Moony night in a small town. Trainer-scuff black. Follow me, invisible, down to the Coke-bottle bobbing sea, past terraced kingdoms (with enchanted gardens just about big enough for the wheelie bins). See the cashpoint, charity shop, betting shop, chippy. Smell the beer-and-crisps lure of The Dog and Sparrow (but beware the troll who asks for ID). All about the town, lights are roped, more gaudy than a landlady’s jewellery. Strings of treasure they are, a sign that joy is around the corner. Unless the way they wink only reminds you how distant life is from a Christmas-card scene.

Onwards we go, through golden ink spots dropped by lampposts, past doorways spilling real warmth and fake laughter. There’s treasure afresh to be found as we near the suck and spit of the great grey ocean – treasure more valuable than starfish and seaweed, crabs and old shoes. The lights of the Magical Palace shine all year, whatever the season, yet still no one comes to this yawning, dumbhead town to play the amusements. People only come here to sleep. For this town is a home. And home is a place people go back to, not a place they head for in the first place. So take the advice of a resident – those grab machines in the Magical Palace will never reward you with what you desire. I’ve been trying to get me a bluebird for months now. Could have bought one outright five times over with the gold that machine has eaten.

Look, listen and cross the road. Step inside the Co-op on the corner.

See that girl with the long-long hair buying baked beans? She’s called Rae. She likes a bit of Dylan Thomas, if you hadn’t noticed. Doesn’t mind a bit of Poe either, a Grimm tale or two. Books, basically. Stories and tales and songs and skits – the things we gift ourselves when the universe refuses to pay out. This girl, this Rae, you don’t see her much, whether it’s December-cold or the sun is sending ice cream running down your wrists. When Rae’s not at school, she’s locked in a tower. Some say it’s an ogre that keeps her there. That’s what they call Rae’s dad. Though they don’t understand. Ogres grow out of difficult situations. If your mum does a moonlight flit, leaving no word of explanation, it bends and shapes your so-soft dad into something seeming less human.

So look up, up, above the Magical Palace, above the coloured bulbs that are cursed to dance that sequence for eternity, and there you’ll see it. The tower. The two-bed flat. The living-room windows, at least. The entrance is on the side street by the skip and the cobbles, and that’s the view Rae has when she sings from her window. There are no tunes of jolly snowmen and candy canes and sleigh rides and bells. Not when Rae is doing the deciding. Judy knew how to tell it. All the right festive words – a gay yuletide, days of gold – set to a key that will break your heart.

But turn your gaze, for now, away from Rae and on to the boy in the Co-op confectionery aisle. Because he’s the important one in this story. Watch as he zips a box of Ferrero Rocher inside his trackie top. That’s Ben, prince to Pregnant Tanya, and he’s shoplifting only because it’s bad luck to ignore the cravings of a girl who’s expecting. Rae sees what he’s doing – oh, she’s observant as well as being lyrical – but she doesn’t give it too much mind. If she did, she’d have to notice how Ben and Tanya are part of a gang, a family of sorts, made up of people a little bit like you but different enough to be different. People you choose. Ones you don’t have thrust upon you. And noticing that would make Rae sad.

So she pays, leaves, doesn’t let herself sigh.

*

She heads back to the two-bed tower as the cold-cold day turns into a freezing night. She upends those beans into a pan and serves them warm on toast to the friendly ogre, who is watching the snooker. Then later when Rae is in her room, singing Judy’s seasonal, sorrowful song about faraway troubles, Prince Ben happens to be passing the Magical Palace. He hears our Rae singing that song, letting it drift down from her bedroom window, past the skip, across the cobbles, and he feels it enter his hard, hoodie-covered heart. He stands, as if held by a spell, so that he might hear more. Though lord only knows why! Oh, Rae can sing sweet enough but – here she goes! – shifting into a new song, an unseasonal one, with words so sour – all about a bird breaking into a house and getting more than a broken wing for its trouble.

“Hey! Rae!”

The stone pings from the window and bounces into the rubble of the skip. The tune cuts. And there is Rae, long-long hair tucked for safety behind her ears, hanging from the window frame, peering into the gloom at the cobbles below.

“Whaddya want?” she says, not measuring out her words, even though this is His Royal Highness, Prince Ben of the seaside, stealer of Ferrero Rocher, breaker of hearts.

“You,” he replies. “Come down here.”

She scoffs. She splutters. “You’ve gotta be kidding!”

And Ben scoffs and splutters in return. He has never had anyone say ‘no’ to him before. He is struck dumb now, as well as still. He is struck fascinated.

“Me dad’ll be done with his dinner soon,” Rae goes on. “Then he’ll need a cup of tea. And who’ll be doing that if I’m gabbing on the street?”

“Well, he knows where the kettle is, dun’t he?” says Ben, recovering his tongue.

“Yeah, but by the time he’s got to it, he’ll have forgotten what he wanted it for.” Oh, it’s so hard to explain to the ogre-uninitiated! “I just don’t want him to have the stress.”

“Oh,” says Ben. “Oh.”

“Oh,” says Rae. “Oh.” And though she has always known how to pitch a note to dismantle even the most vigorous of listeners, she had never before realized the power of her own speaking voice. That is, she had never really noticed what was in it – lurking, giving her away. There in that everyday melody, without her having to try, was an overwhelming sadness. She hears it as she sends words out to the prince below and she cannot pretend that he doesn’t hear it, too.

“Oh, come on, Rae!” The prince begins his gentle begging. “Let your hair down. We all need to let our hair down every once in a while.”

Maybe it was the timing, the position of the moon marking out the angles of his face, the clouds his breath made in the lamplit dark. Maybe it was a perfect alchemy of hormones and the upcoming holidays. Or could it have just been the distant promise of a stolen Ferrero Rocher. Whatever it was, just as her song had drifted down, Ben’s words drifted up. Those words, they enter Rae’s closed-off, cardiganned heart.

*

There was to be a day trip – a quest, if you like – to the next town, to see if it was as slow and black as the place they had always called home. To see how gaudy its Christmas lights dared to be. Rae is invited.

But she has been warned about villainous boys and witchy girls and the dangerous world outside their flat. The ogre is hopeless at making tea, but he is good at warnings. It would be a waste of hard-won time even to bother asking to go.

But every night, as the hush comes, Ben is there at Rae’s window with words of persuasion.

“Come out, Rae, have some fun, let your hair down.”

He even shins up the drainpipe, using the leverage of the lip of the never-emptied skip, and places an early Christmas gift on the peeling paint of her bedroom windowsill. It is a necklace – shiny and star-like, with a stone impersonating the beauty of a ruby – and it is the most brilliant thing she has ever seen. Treasure – maybe. She puts it on, looks at herself in the mirror and catches a glimpse of who she might turn out to be.

*

When Rae finally finds the courage to ask, the answer comes just as she had foretold.

“No,” says the ogre. “No way, no how.”

She lets some days pass and asks again.

“No, Rae, no. Who’ll get my tea? Who’ll answer the door if someone knocks? What if your mum calls? It’s Christmas soon. She’ll be thinking of us now. What’ll happen then?”

But she won’t call, Dad, is what Rae wants to tell the poor, downtrodden ogre, but it doesn’t need saying out loud. He knows it already.

Our Rae does not give up though. She may not be popular, or skilled at being free, but she’s nothing short of hardworking. In all things. English, maths, housework, care. And so she applies her diligence to convincing the ogre to let her go.

It’s just one day, she says, just a few miles away. It’s just, it’s just, it’s just…

And the ogre begins to soften.

He sets her tasks.

“Fix that drip on the bathroom tap, then maybe I’ll let you go.”

“Get the council to sort out the damp in the kitchen, then maybe I’ll let you go.”

“Get that Bolognese crust out of the living-room carpet once and for all, then maybe…”

So Rae wrenches and phones, she washes and scrubs. She goes above and beyond, onwards and over. She fetches paint and brushes to brighten the walls of every room, runs up a new living-room curtain to please you peerers-in. She sweeps out the kitchen cupboards, evicting all mice (which, in this story at least, show no signs of banding together to sew Rae a dress for an upcoming ball). She drags home a tree and decorates its branches, sensing a glimmer of how it might feel to sing a song in a different key. And it is only then, as the angel is placed up high, almost out of reach, that the ogre issues his final task: “Now bring back your mother.”

The skin is hanging heavier than ever from the bones of his face. His black eyes are wet in the flickering light of a late-night comedy. Laughter spills from the television.

I can’t, thinks Rae. My mother is a puff of smoke, a green gas. She was turned into a white rabbit, a pumpkin, a croaking frog, long long ago. She is far far away.

But Rae doesn’t say this. She strokes the stray hairs on the ogre’s head and takes herself off to bed.

*

Morning. In the dark before dawn, while the salt winds still whistle through the alleyways and passages, Rae combs her long-long hair and decides to let it hang free. It whips across her face as she opens her bedroom window and climbs out, away from all the Thou Shalt Nots of that two-bedroomed flat above the Magical Palace. She slides down the drainpipe and waiting beneath is her Prince Ben with his trusty steed (a rust-dappled 1997 Fiat Uno he affectionately refers to as Jacob). They gallop away – just one car in a joyous family procession, off on a quest for a treasure called fun.

When they arrive in the next town, gasping exhaust smoke and their own anticipation, their mouths fall open to see a pier that hasn’t slipped into the water, fairground rides that haven’t been eaten by the brine. Those so-called villainous boys and witchy girls tumble out of their cars and on to the sands in search of candyfloss and a decent tattoo parlour. The rising sun dances on a clear bobbing sea, making no promises of warmth but guarantees of light. Other people arrive, and they come to play, not to sleep.

“That baby ain’t mine,” is what Prince Ben tells Rae later over a banquet for two – chips wrapped in paper, taken to a bench on the promenade edge. “Tanya ain’t mine either.”

“Oh,” says Rae, fanning her mouth against the heat of a nuclear chip, a heat that comes welcome, wrapped as they are, much like their food, but in scarves and hats and jackets like duvets. The sea plays the role of the vinegar bottle, sprinkling them as each wave hits the wall. “I just do the robbing,” Ben adds with a pride that doesn’t seem so misplaced at the time. So when he leans in to give Rae a Tango-and-tomato-sauce kiss, I – Rae loves him back with all of her might.

*

Back home, in the thin night, Rae prepares herself for a sermon on the sinfulness of men. What she does not prepare herself for is the sight of the ogre standing at her open bedroom window.

“Go,” says Rae to the prince, pushing him away. Though he knows more than her about calling up at windows and winning over the sad, he knows nothing of ogres, the way they are filled with pain, leaving no room for love.

“Are you sure?” he asks, looking up, watching as the fat, glassy tears of the ogre are whisked away by the wind.

Rae nods and the prince does as he’s told, untangling his fingers from hers.

“And you can go, too,” yells the ogre to his daughter. “Stay out! You’re not coming back in here now you’ve betrayed me. The cat’s got you. He can keep you. You’re as bad as your evil mother.”

“Shall I call the police?” These are Prince Ben’s final words, but Rae shakes her head and he drives away, the sound of Jacob’s engine eventually lost to the sea.

The ogre and his daughter listen to the waves sigh and swallow.

“Come out,” says Rae.

“No,” growls the ogre.

“Please, Dad,” she says. “Let your hair down. We all need to let our hair down every once in a while.”

The seagulls cry, filling her silence, and the ogre disappears from the window with a shake of his head. Rae is left alone in the wasteland of the cobbles, with the rise and fall of the sea, the cotton-wool bass of passing car stereos, the chatter and the giggle of the amusements.

But that’s when the door opens, the one that leads from the street to the two-bedroomed flat above. The ogre is there – a silhouette in the yellow light that trickles down from the lobby’s tired lampshade. One more step and the ogre will be out in the night, in the dangerous night, where a boy could rob him of his wallet any minute, rob him of his daughter, even. And he takes that step, the ogre, and he doesn’t turn to dust, so he takes another, and another, towards the orange light of the streetlamps, towards his daughter.

Two stray passers-by twist their necks to stare at this miraculous scene – an ogre showing itself to the world, out in real life. They turn to whisper about how he seems so much more human than they remembered. One even dares to say hello.

“Hi,” replies the ogre, his voice crackling like the sound when you unwrap a parcel.

Rae takes the hand of this half man/half ogre/all father and they go, steady on the frosting cobbles, around the corner of the building to the main road, towards the excitable notes of the Magical Palace, past the boys and girls in their flammable anoraks, blowing smoke up at the artificial illuminations. And this is when the snow starts – an omen that they should go inside. So they do, Rae leading the way, towards the grab machine that promises dreams but never delivers.

“Here.” She hands the ogre some gold, explains how you must press this button first, then this one, and how you only get one chance, you can’t go back for more. She understands that the ogre, quivering in the newness of the air, will need directions, but she’s prepared to steer him a little through the wilderness if it means she can go, every once in a while, into the undiscovered country herself.

The coin drops and the machine immediately wakes, burbling its delight. The ogre presses the first button and, as he does, Rae tells him about the wonders of the town next door, the shiny fairground, the hot fat chips. As he presses the second button, she tells him about the A-level college that’s there, its impressive library.

Down drops the claw, open and ready. It closes, hungry, around … the bluebird! The bluebird! It’s quite violent in a way, the sudden reflex of that grab, but so wonderful all the same. Rae grips the human skin of the ogre’s wrist in anticipation as they watch the crane wobble its way back to the drop chute. She doesn’t want to let go, not just yet. She wants to hold on to this moment, have it hang there in sight. Here is the promise of a ‘yes’, the greatest treasure of all.

But Rae does let go – because the universe has paid out! Life has delivered! The claw has opened and the bluebird is theirs! Rae jumps up and down. She claps her hands and she cheers. The machine plays a song in a key just right for a time like this. The ogre’s eyes are shining, and not with tears. This Christmas won’t necessarily be big and jolly, but little and merry, Rae decides, will do. She crouches down so that she might ceremoniously collect their winnings. Here it is, a bird set free.