chapter two

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t w o

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When it comes to wrapping presents, I'm a firm believer that what's on the inside matters a lot more than what's on the outside. Whether the paper is neatly creased along every corner or haphazardly taped to hold it together makes no difference to its contents, which serves me well considering I seem to have some kind of wrapping-paper-specific incapacity. My measurements never quite work, and you can forget it if what I'm wrapping isn't a box: I just can't do neat.

There are five piles at the other end of the table, one each for my parents and my three sisters, who were luckier than me when it came to being named by the eternally odd – but lovably so – Debbie and Dustin King. Contrary to the popular belief held by everyone who finds out that my name is Bethlehem and I was born on Christmas Day, there is actually no relation between the two: my parents may be as big on Christmas as I am, but they based their naming convention on the age-old brilliant idea that is ... name your child after the place in which they're conceived.

It's a very risky plan, and I could've had it worse seeing as they were only in Bethlehem for three days, having come from Jerusalem, before they got a bus to Jericho. My oldest sister, India, narrowly avoided being named Agra, after my parents' expedition to see the Taj Mahal; between us is Juneau, who spends her life correcting people who assume she's named after the Greek Goddess of love and marriage, rather than a city in Alaska that happened to be a stop on our parents' glacier cruise.

The baby of the King family fared the best of us all: she's only sixteen, born after our parents put their globetrotting ways on pause, and luckily for her, they didn't choose the Cotswolds or Plymouth for their romantic weekend away, but Paisley. If we were Glaswegian, she'd probably have spent her whole life being teased for it, but it seems being four hours north makes all the difference.

I'm running out of tape and this roll of paper is coming to an end. It probably could have serviced my entire to-wrap list, if I'd been more economical with it, but there's no teaching an old dog new tricks and almost-twenty-four, it seems, is too old to break bad habits. I manage to parcel up one last present for Paisley with the final scrap and set myself a reminder to buy more of everything related to present-wrapping tomorrow.

This evening hasn't gone exactly as I told Casper it would: I'm not watching Miracle on 34th Street as I wrap, because I underestimated how much space I would need and a mammoth task such as this required the entire kitchen table. Instead, I've had a Christmas playlist going for the past couple of hours while I painstakingly taped and folded and tagged, and now it's time to settle in with a film.

It's pitch black outside, hardly a light to be seen other than when the occasional car trundles past and its headlights illuminate my postage stamp-sized front garden, Xenon beams cutting through the gap where I've failed to adequately shut my curtains. The rain is unrelenting, slashing down and filling potholes, heavy droplets bouncing off puddles, and it's only a hint of what's to come. It's due to snow in the next couple of days, according to every forecast I've checked, and I can't wait. Saint Wendelin's may be a strange town, but sunk into a valley in the north, surrounded by forests and mountains, its location means snow is guaranteed every year. More often than not, I've woken up on my birthday to a white Christmas.

But for now, rain. Lots of it. Even inside the house, I can smell it in the air, that fresh, dewy scent. When I turn off my music, letting The Eagles finish their slightly maudlin festive tune, the rain is almost loud enough to drown out my thoughts as it pelts my window and pummels the roof. The window in the sitting room, which faces out over the garden and the road beyond, is slightly loose in its frame and it rattles with the force of the wind and the downpour, a whispering breeze crawling through the gaps that the curtains can't quite keep out.

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