Hi! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you all have had a wonderful Christmas and got everything you ever wanted! It's also me done for 2020! Thank you so much for all the support that you have given me and I hope I've brung some entertainment to your lives during this weird time of our lives. Keep safe and thank you so much!

Christmas Day 9:05 a.m.

I wake up after having the best sleep I've had in months. Despite the fact that I awoke on the sofa at 3:00 a.m. and dragged myself into bed with a hell of a crick in my neck, I'm feeling pretty refreshed.

As I lumber into my living room, I wonder whether to keep the curtains closed as I had vowed to. I pull one open a tiny bit and peek out.

Wow.

The entire street is covered in a blanket of fresh white snow. The sun is high and bright, there are families and dog walkers and hungover people milling around, all of them chatting to each other. Next door there's a young kid trying out his shiny new bicycle, being cheered on by his proud parents. Yesterday, all this would have made me scoff. But today, well, it makes me smile.

I slide the curtains open all the way and tell myself off for having been so stubborn and ridiculous about the festive season. It's Christmas morning and I have nowhere to go, nothing to eat and nothing to do. Oh! But I do have a gift!

I hurry over to my handbag and take out the brown-paper wrapped box that Evelyn gave me yesterday. A long-lost excitement runs through me as I tear open the paper and discard it on the carpet.

Ooh! It's quite a large jewelry box. I open it up to see a little golden key nestled on a dark velvet display pad.

"A key?" I say aloud, totally confused as to why Evelynhas given me a key and what on earth it opens.

I pick up the little matchbox-sized card beside the key and flip it open.

My part-time trainee designer/part-time PA is going to need her own office if she's going to get all her work done.

Oh my God! Evelyn's taking me on as a trainee designer. And I get my own office? I laugh out loud. This is the best gift ever! My heart leaps as I picture myself designing amazing spaces to make people happy.

And then it occurs to me that Evelyn gave me this gift yesterday. So technically, I'd already gotten what I wanted without having to accompany Tobias around all day.

But then if I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten to sing in the private park, or eat two hot dogs in a row, or tell a snotty bookseller that she fancied her horse, or smell every single perfume at the pharmacy, or pick out the most beautiful tree star I've ever seen, or gotten closure with Robert, or kiss Tobias and see the possibility that I could one day find someone to love.

I smile sadly as I think of Tobias. I wonder what he's doing right now? Probably in bed with Nita, the pair of them having made up with an all-night sex session just in time for a perfect loved-up Christmas morning.

I'm scowling at the very thought when my doorbell rings three times in a row, making me jump.

Who the hell is that? Mum? Did she come back from Australia to see me?

No. She would never do something so frivolous.

I hurry down the hallway, my too long pajama bottoms making me trip and stumble on the way.

I open the door to find Tobias wearing a Santa hat, red-faced, and wobbling precariously on his crutches. There's a large shopping bag hanging from his arm and the tree we bought yesterday is tied to a piece of rope and resting on the ground beside him.

"Fuck! It's taken me twenty minutes to hobble one hundred yards through that snow with all this stuff. Let me in, I'm freezing!"

Laughing out loud at the sight of him, I pick up the tree and head back inside, Tobias hopping in after me.

"What are you doing here?" I ask once we're in the living room.

"I missed you," he says, looking me up and down like he wants to undress me right here, right now. "Nice pajamas."

"Yeah, yeah. What about Nita?"

Tobias takes my hands in his, and my heart starts to flip and dance. "It's over. It was over months ago. She was just the first one to do something about it. I needed to tell her last night that we were never getting back together, which is why I let you leave."

I nod slowly, taking it in.

"I would have come over last night, but Nita and I were talking until late and I didn't want to wake you up."

"What about your mum?" I ask. "Doesn't she want you to spend today with her?"

Tobias laughs and shakes his head. "Well, apparently,she suspected this might happen." He gestures between us. "She saw how I reacted to you last year at your office and it seems that she played matchmaker yesterday."

"What?"

"I know."

"So... Jasmine Crossley Jones' design emergency at the Oxo Tower?"

"I think she embellished the urgency of it a little bit..."

"I can't believe it!"

"It was a pretty ballsy move."

The pair of us sit down on the sofa, and I start giggling to myself.

"Why are you laughing?' Tobias asks. "I'm all red, aren't I? Walking on those crutches and carrying a Christmas tree is no easy feat."

"I'm laughing because I feel happy," I say, moving closer so that I can kiss Tobias' lips. "And that's a relief." He kisses me back and it feels better than anything has felt in a very long time.

Tobias nuzzles his cold nose against mine. "You're nice," he murmurs, pressing his lips to mine again.

"I'm afraid I don't have any Christmas food in the house," I say pulling away.

"Aha!" Tobias digs into the shopping bag he brought, and after pulling out the baubles and the copper Christmas star from yesterday, emerges with a bag of dried noodles and a jar of sweet and sour sauce. "Found them in the back of my cupboard."

I laugh in delight. "Noodles! Perfect! But not very traditional."

Tobias takes my face in his hands and searches my eyes. "Maybe it's time to start some new traditions. Just for you and me."

You know what? I think he's right.

THE END