Page 19

‘It says here—’ Kelly began, then stopped.

‘It’s okay,’ Charlotte said. ‘You can read it.’

‘At a little after ten p.m. on Christmas Eve, near the Hawksford junction on the Brentwell to Exeter road, three people were killed when a lorry going at twenty miles an hour over the speed limit veered off the road and hit a car waiting at the junction. Later investigation showed that the driver of the lorry had suffered a stroke at the wheel and was dead before his vehicle hit the waiting car, driven by Frank Harding of Brentwell, Devon. Both Frank and his wife, Laura, were killed in the collision. The only survivor was Charlotte Harding (three), their young daughter, who was asleep in the back of the car at the time.’ Kelly sniffed and put the clipping down. ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte.’

Charlotte sighed. ‘At least I had Grandma,’ she said. ‘I never ended up in a kids’ home, or foster care. Grandma became my mother, and she did a wonderful job. When I think back on all the good times, sometimes I think that I would never change it. But then … I always wonder, you know. What were they like?’‘There’s no video or anything?’

‘Grandma showed me some once, but it was of me, not of them. My first and second birthdays. I can hear their voices, but that’s it.’

‘At least that’s something.’

‘I know. Better than nothing.’

‘Oh, what’s this?’ Kelly said, pushing aside a couple more pictures and pulling out a bigger picture with a thick white border. Charlotte leaned closer, at first unsure what she was looking at. The picture was a blur of silver and black, the front of a car wheel in the foreground, wrongly aligned, the car on its side. Behind it, the road stretched away, lights shining over a hedgerow angled across the picture. In the top right corner, right on the edge of a triangle of dark sky, was a little glittering point.

Charlotte picked up the photograph and frowned, then turned it over in her hands.

‘A police photograph,’ she said. ‘It says on the back.’

‘There are others here,’ Kelly said, picking out a group bunched together. They looked over them one by one, most showing angles of a crashed car, but thankfully nothing else.

‘They must have given them to your grandmother,’ Kelly said.

Charlotte, frowning, turned back to the first picture. She lifted it close to her eyes, squinting, but no matter how hard she tried, the little glimmering dot in the corner stayed just that.

‘What are you looking at?’ Kelly said. ‘Is that a star? Isn’t that a bit low in the sky? I mean, I know the angle’s off and everything, but it looks like it’s just about the hedgerow there. Some nearby house’s outside light?’

Charlotte smiled. So, the camera had caught it after all. Grandma had never believed her, nor had any of her friends, Kelly included. But there it was, plain to see, caught in a police photograph, the evidence irrefutable.

‘It’s him,’ she said, feeling the same glow she had that night, when, in the aftermath of the crash, instead of feeling shock and horror, she had felt only a sense of peace, of calm, that someone had come to protect her.

‘Who?’ Kelly said.

Charlotte looked up at her, hopeful that finally Kelly would believe her. She pointed at the glimmering spot to emphasise her point.

‘That, right there … that little glowing spot … that’s Father Christmas.’