Merry December! As we hurtle towards Christmas, I thought I’d share a festive tale from my collection The Stairs Are a Snowcapped Mountain (available to buy here). It’s about the beginning of a Christmas romance, told from the POV of a rat….

Click Clack Twitch

I watched her emerge through the office’s gleaming glass door and hurry to the bus stop, pulling on her mittens. With a flick of my ear, the electronic sign glitched, showing false news of all buses running late.

She pursed her lips and settled on the tilted plastic seat, drawing her knitting from her bag. Click clack, click clack – the sound made my whiskers twitch.

The harrumphing bus drew up, and she leapt aboard, flustered by the prompt arrival challenging the lying sign.

One glove dropped in her haste. I waited till the bus was gone and then rescued the fallen mitt; swept it in my teeth to my children’s nest beneath the waste storage container.

My three children took to their new bed with squeaks of joy. Tell us again, Mama, tell us again about the princess who lost this glove.

I told them of her beauty and her radiance and how she worked so hard each day inputting data and dreamt-away each journey home knitting scarves and gloves for the love she’d yet to recognise.

While my children three slept snug in their bed, I crept onto a bus – the same bus repeating the route that carried our princess from shining glass door to blue-painted door. Crouching on a windowsill, I watched through the glass as she upended her bag on the floor: yarn, knitting needles and all.

In vain, she searched for the dropped glove that now lined our nest.

Her flatmate entered at that moment. She stood as short as our princess stood tall and was as fair as our princess was dark.

What’s going on? she asked, and our princess sighed and spoke of the mislaid glove.

The flatmate took the princess’s cold hand between both of hers and kissed it.

The princess blinked, startled. But you…? But I…?

But we… the flatmate answered, and both beamed like the stars rising behind me.

I scurried home, glad of a happy beginning to tell my children three.