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heavy sleep and woke only when the sun, filtered by the plum tree, broke through her uncurtained window the following morning. A blackbird’s singing streamed around her as he hung on the bough of the tree.
    Was it a summer of waking or sleeping? It passed like dreams and rarely did the world outside intrude, from then until the beginning of school. Afterwards, when she was older, she sensed that the summer had been a time of wakefulness before the long sleep of conventional life began.
     
    Christmas was always celebrated by her parents in a particularly traditional English manner, neither of them ever having accepted the notion of a colonial Christmas Day. The very idea of cold meat on Christmas Day was sacrilege. On Christmas Eve, a fire was lit regardless of the summer heat, and the three of them sat in front of it to sing Christmas carols.
    The same ritual was followed this year. The fireplace in ‘that lounge’ had not been used before, which presented some problems, for birds had been nesting in it since the departure of the previous owners of the farm. Smoke billowed back into the room within a few seconds of the paper being lit and the kindling flaring to light. They all staggered back coughing and gasping. Mary filled a pot of water from the kitchen and threw it on the fire, which died to a hissing, spitting little flicker.
    ‘Never mind, Dad,’ said Harriet, ‘we can sing carols without a fire.’
    He stood contemplating the situation. ‘No,’ he decided. ‘If we can’t put ourselves out for Christmas, I don’t reckon life’s worth living. You shall have your Christmas, my girl,’ he said magnanimously .
    Soon he was perched on the roof with a pitchfork in hand. ‘Watch out, here it comes,’ he cried, and the nest came tumbling out of the sky.
    At last the fire was lit, and they gathered around again. ‘Right — one, two, three, go,’ ordered Gerald. He gathered his reedy tenor together for ‘The Holly and the Ivy’, and they dutifully followed him, then it was ‘Good King Wenceslas’, and all the time the fire crackled and roared with a life of its own, and the room got hotter and hotter.
    ‘When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even,’ they carolled on. Harriet began to feel faint She got up and went to the window. Outside it was still light They had beaten tracks in the dry grass and it lay broken and untidy about the house. Why were they sitting here in this house, singing about the snow? It made everything seemed so unreal — perhaps the Christmas story itself was all a myth.
    The idea frightened her. Quickly she came back to the fire.
    ‘What’s the matter, Harriet?’ asked Gerald.
    ‘How do we know it’s true, father?’ she said, staring at the flames.
    ‘Know what’s true?’
    ‘The Christmas story. How can we be sure that it’s true?’
    Gerald studied his daughter and said, ‘It is true.’
    ‘But who says it’s true? There’s nothing to prove it.’
    ‘It’s history. It’s in the Bible.’
    ‘But the Bible can’t be proved to be truth,’ said Harriet. ‘The Bible is a collection of beautifully written literature, much of which was handed down by word of mouth amongst illiterate people, till it was finally written down. There’s no conclusive proof that it is absolutely accurate.’
    Her father’s face was terrible. ‘Who told you that?’
    She wrinkled her forehead. The words had come out so easily that she must have got them from somewhere. ‘I read it,’ she said, remembering. ‘It was in a book that my teacher gave me last term.’ The teacher had not been mentioned since the night the police had called, months before.
    Gerald sat very still. His voice was shaking when he spoke again. ‘You will forget what you read in that book.’
    ‘I can’t forget what I read in books, father. How can I, if you want me to do well at school?’
    ‘Then you will learn to recognise good from evil in your reading.’
    ‘Is it evil?’
    ‘Of course.