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longer.
    Eventually, Mum called it a day. “Enough is enough, lovey,” she said, switching the grill off. “We’ve got four whole days this year. We’ll do better tomorrow.”
    Callum was so relieved to be going home that he ran all the way to the car, even though it meant getting wet because Mum had the umbrella.
    By the time they were halfway home, the sleet had turned to snow.
    “Too wet to settle,” Mum said wisely, but by midevening the air had turned crisp and a thin crust was building up on top of the hedge and on the shed roof. Callum bounced between thinking it was brilliant and worrying he wouldn’t get to go and play with Jonah after all, because they might get snowed in and start to starve and then have to eat each other to survive (obviously, they’d eat Leanne first, because she was annoying).
    “Oh, shut up , Callum,” Leanne snapped without looking up from her copy of Sugar . “I don’t know why Mum even takes you with her.”
    “Is that an offer to babysit, Lee?” Mum called from the kitchen.
    “I’d rather die ,” Leanne proclaimed, throwing herself back over the arm of the sofa in disgust.
    “I’d rather you died too,” Callum told her, grabbing her magazine to see what she was looking at. It was yet more pictures of boys, and he squinted at it, trying to see the appeal of whatshisface, the blond one from S Club 7. He supposed that, if you were into the whole kissing thing, he looked like he wouldn’t be too slobbery, and—
    Leanne snatched the magazine back. “Give it here!”
    “You fancy him!” Callum crowed, to distract her. “You want to be his girlfriend!”
    “You’re never going to have a girlfriend!” Leanne snapped.
    “That’s ’cause I’d never want one,” Callum told her, and he kind of knew he meant it, and that he really shouldn’t.
    She let out that really annoying superior laugh she’d started using lately. “Shows what you know.”
    “Shows what you know,” he copied, and that proved to be enough fun to keep him amused until Mum had to come through and separate them. By then, there was a good inch of snow on the ground, and even Miss Teenage Stroppy-Pants (and he had to remember to call her that next time her friends came round) wanted to go out and run around in it and toss great handfuls at him.
    They did make it to the Christmas market the next morning, although Callum had never known Mum to drive so slow or the car to move in such a shivery, slippery way. The cathedral close looked like a Christmas card, with the big Christmas tree in the middle weighed down with snow, and all the white rooftops framing the spire where it reached up into the clear blue sky. It was bitterly cold, and Callum had to shove his hands into his armpits and dance until Mum finally got the grill going, but that was okay, because he was so busy looking and looking and looking at everything.
    When the first customers arrived in their big coats and bright hats and scarves, he twitched because he wanted to draw it so much. He wanted pastels, big smudgy ones to show how soft the lines of the snow were and how bright it made everything look.
    Then Jonah came out of one of the old houses, wearing his usual green cloak over normal clothes. He was accompanied by a skinny, completely bald bloke in black robes, and they came straight over to the stall, Jonah trotting a little to keep up.
    Callum shot out to meet them. “Hi. Isn’t this the most awesome snow ever? How come you’re wearing jeans?”
    “We have girls now,” Jonah explained, shrugging. “They’re doing the morning service today, and we’re doing evensong, and then we’re singing together for the rest of the week, for all the carol services and the procession and everything.”
    “I suppose that’s one use for girls,” Callum said, and was taken by surprise when a firm hand landed on his shoulder and propelled him back toward the stall.
    “Come along, boys,” the bald bloke boomed above them, and stepped