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‘The butterfly is a symbol of resurrection, Marian,’ I say to her. ‘It means change and hope, endurance and life. My father was on the committee of the local council when it was designed so I know all about it. Oh, and I happen to live right across from that park so I can see it from my front window every day.’

‘Well, then!’ says Marian. ‘Resurrection? Now that’s a good enough sign for me in more ways than one and at least I know where to go on Christmas Day. I’ll give you a wave if I see you around, Ruth. Thank you for giving me a little bit of hope and the energy I need to get out and face the world again. I’m going to enjoy this walk and I’m going to look forward to meeting you on the twenty-fifth. Thank you so much. I’ll look at that butterfly in a very different way from now on.’

I stand up and reach out my arms, holding Marian into a tight hug, and she clings to me like it’s the one thing she’s been missing most of all. I think of her daughters who would have held her so many times before when she needed it, like it was the most natural thing in the world. I think of how, as humans, we take the power of such a simple embrace for granted, yet starve for it when it’s so far away and then, like an electric shock, it hits me. This is what it might feel like to hug my own mother now at this stage of our lives. I gasp for air. I let her go.

‘Are you okay, love?’ Marian asks me. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

‘Yes, yes I’m okay,’ I tell her, somehow delighted at this realisation of what I am missing so badly and what my own mother is too.

We have both missed out on so much and I don’t want to miss out on her any more.

‘I’ll see you on Christmas Day,’ says Marian and she walks me to the door with a new hint of confidence that wasn’t there when I arrived here earlier.

‘I can’t wait!’ I tell her, and I really mean it. I want it to be Christmas right now, to meet all these wonderful people again who are so brave and so enthused about coming to spend Christmas with me and a group of people they’ve never met.

I have so much to do. I need to clean the house and put up more decorations. I need to pick up the turkey and shop for food and I want to get some little surprises to make it extra special, but first I need to meet Nicholas and I realise I’m running late. I’d better hurry up. I don’t want to keep him waiting.

‘I bet you weren’t expecting to meet the real Father Christmas before the big day,’ says Nicholas when I rush up the twenty-five church steps to see him all decked out in a fine camel coat, trilby hat and a fancy cane that looks very dapper with his white, bushy beard, matching white hair and fine-rimmed silver glasses. I know how many steps exactly as I used to count them as a child every Sunday when I’d be dragged here whether I liked it or not and made to stay silent for almost an hour. What torture!

‘You must get it all the time!’ I say to him. ‘You definitely a doppelganger for Saint Nick! I’m Ruth. It’s so very nice to meet you.’

We shake hands and I follow Nicholas into the Church, not the most ideal place for a chat but since he suggested it I didn’t argue. To my surprise, we don’t go towards the seats but instead he leads me up a tiny winding stairway just past the entrance and when we get to the top, we reach a little wooden pew in which sits, up against the wall, the most magnificent church organ, gold in colour with pipes that climb up the walls into the ceiling. Its décor is ornate and detailed and when Nicholas takes a seat on the red velvet cushioned stool that accompanies it, he looks like he is in his very own paradise.

‘Have a seat.’ He gestures to me and I sit on a nearby wooden bench that looks down on to the majestic church floor.

‘I’ve never been up here before,’ I whisper as I take in the sights below. An ornate altar with a purple and green advent wreath, a hand made life-size crib with all the trimmings, including a very real-looking baby Jesus, and on the surrounding walls are the various stages of the Crucifixion.

‘This, right here, just might be my most favourite place in this whole town,’ says Nicholas. ‘Oh, how I’d love to hear this organ sing. Well, I mean under my own fingertips. I hear it sing on any given Sunday when I pop by for a service. That’s the best thing about being an unlabelled Christian. I pick and choose which of the three main churches to visit but no one knows that it’s really to hear the beautifully varied music that fills the walls each time. I can be a Roman Catholic one day, a Presbyterian another and a Church of Ireland the next. It’s a fun approach to religion. Variety is the spice of life.’

He chuckles to himself, as if he has just let me in to his innermost secret.

‘Don’t you play at all any more?’

His face drops and he shakes his head, staring at the ebony and ivory keys below him.

‘No,’ he whispers. ‘I don’t have anywhere to play so I don’t have a choice. Ruth, this might sound silly, but I can honestly say that without my music I don’t even feel like I’m myself any more. I don’t know who I am without it. Perhaps I am nothing. Perhaps I am of no use to anyone without it.’

I scrunch up my face in disbelief.

‘But you can’t live like this, Nicholas, it’s just not right,’ I tell him. ‘There has to be a way – there has to be somewhere for you to play. There just has to be.’

His fingers dance across the keys and he closes his eyes as he hums out a hymn and I sit up and listen. I recognise the tune. It strikes a chord in me. Gosh, yes, I remember it. It sounds so, so familiar, then all of a sudden, in my mind I am down below in one of the pews on the floor, whispering to my mother as she hushes me, her head tilted to the side and her face etched in sorrow as she listens to the priest chant and preach on the altar. She would wipe my nose with a tissue from her handbag that smelled like her lipstick and I’d pray for only one thing – that the whole ceremony would just hurry up so we could get back home where I could play with my toys and not be restricted to these walls of silence.

What comfort did she get here, I wonder? What was it she was praying so hard for? Why did she cry sometimes when she prayed? I had totally forgotten that she had.

‘Music can take us to any time in our memory,’ Nicholas says to me, catching me in deep thought. I open my eyes and take a deep breath.

‘Sorry, I was miles away. That was beautiful’

‘Music has the power to heal the most broken hearts, and to break them all over again, of course,’ he says to me. ‘I do miss my music, Ruth. I miss it so much that my own heart is broken.’

‘I know, Nicholas,’ I tell him softly. ‘I really enjoyed your hymn just now, even if you were just humming, so I can only imagine what your piano or organ playing might be like. It’s hypnotising and you’re right. You just have to keep playing. There can’t be any question of that.’

Nicholas blushes under his white beard.

‘So, you really want to invite me to dinner on Christmas Day?’ he asks me, almost in disbelief. ‘You haven’t changed your mind having met me in the flesh?’

I flash Nicholas a beaming smile.