A letter to SANTA

A child's Christmas list on an old piece of paper – did their wishes come true?

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Cal wiped a sheen of perspiration from his forehead. He and his brother Jimmy had been working on the old chimney stack since six that morning. They'd removed the exterior bricks and were now excavating the section of chimney that ran through the loft down into the front room of the Victorian house. It would soon be time for a cuppa.

'Grab a hold of this, mate.' Jimmy was standing at the top of the stepladder, handing down the remainder of the flue.

Cal grabbed it and tossed it on to the pile of dusty bricks and concrete that had accumulated on the loft floor. A scrap of paper caught his eye and he bent to retrieve it from the rubble.

The paper was fragile, dusted with soot and mottled with age, its edges singed by fire. Writing in a childish scrawl was scattered over the surface. Cal smoothed the paper carefully and squinted at the barely legible words.

'Ere, Jimmy, I think I've found a kid's letter... to Father Christmas!'

Jimmy joined Cal at the bottom of the stepladder and peered at the sheet of paper in his brother's hand. He could just make out the words Dear Father Christmas at the top, but the short list that followed and the name of its writer were impossible to decipher in the dim light of the attic.

'Well, I'll be,' Jimmy said. 'It must have been there for years. How the blazes did it survive?'

Cal shrugged. 'It was caught between two bricks. Probably carried up by a pressure draft. A fissure in the brickwork must have protected it from the fire.'

'Let's take it downstairs,' Jimmy said. 'We'll get a better look there.'

***

Cal and Jimmy were renovating an old house for its new owner, Lauren Birch.

'I love the quirkiness of this place,' Lauren had said, when they first met her. 'But some of it is just plain dangerous.'