1. One

1

PRESENT

I t’s my 15th fake Christmas, and my first as a ghost.

Writer , I mean. It’s my first Christmas as a ghost writer . I should probably have made that clear from the start, shouldn’t I? Honestly, this is the kind of thing that’s probably going to get me fired one day. Okay, let me try this again…

It’s my 15th fake Christmas here in Bramblebury — a village obsessed with two things:

Christmas itself.

My ex-boyfriend, Elliot Sinclair, who once wrote a bestselling book — which then became a blockbuster movie — set right here in the village, and based heavily on our 23-day relationship, which ended ten years ago: on Christmas Eve, no less.

No wonder I hate Christmas, rom-com movies, and Elliot Sinclair — although not necessarily in that order — right? It would be hard not to hate all of those things when they’re practically forced down your throat every December, when Bramblebury is transformed from just your averagely picturesque village into The Most Christmassy Place on Earth.??

(Yes, our village is really called ‘Bramblebury’, by the way, as if it’s in Middle Earth, rather than the middle of England. Sickening, isn’t it? Then again, my parents named me Holly Hart, like a plucky Victorian orphan who might one day get a job as a governess, so I can’t really talk…)

Bramblebury might look adorably festive, though, but, like I say, it’s all fake.

The snow on the window of the bookstore my dad owns, for instance, is fake; it’s this weird foamy stuff that comes in a spray can, and it’ll be absolute hell to scrape it off again in January, but Dad’s been on a mission to make the place look like a shop (or a ‘shoppe’ rather…) from Charles Dickens’ times, and the tourists have been lapping it up like Oliver Twist finally getting that second bowl of watery gruel, so who am I to argue?

I’m just the resident ghost — writer — who haunts the bookstore, desperately trying to divide her time between managing the shop and writing ‘motivational’ self-help books for people whose lives are even more of a mess than mine is.

And trust me, that’s really saying something.

“They’ll be putting up the Christmas tree soon. And the snow globe.”

My assistant manager, Paris, appears from the storeroom — which also doubles as my office — balancing a large stack of paperbacks on one hip, and doing her best to sound like she’s too cool to be excited by the news she’s just shared, even though I know perfectly well she’s had a countdown to today on her phone for weeks now, and is planning to livestream most of it to her 18,000 followers on Bookstagram.

Although she’s technically supposed to be my assistant, Paris has been basically running the show ever since I started my ghostwriting side-gig, and had to take a step back. Even Edgar Allan Paw, our shop cat, treats her with something vaguely approaching respect, and Ed once pooped on Oscar Wilde — well, on one of his books , anyway — so we all tend to do what she says.

“The globe? Is it here yet?” Levis’ head snaps up from his phone so quickly it’s a miracle he doesn’t have whiplash. It’s the quickest I’ve seen him move since the time Paris said she thought she’d seen J.D Salinger outside the shop, but it turned out to just be Billie the postman, who has a wild ginger beard and is — crucially — still alive: unlike Salinger, say, who is not . Levis’ disappointment was palpable, because Levi is locked in a perpetual battle to get more views on his Booktok than Paris gets on Instagram, and an appearance by a reclusive — albeit dead — author would’ve definitely done it for him .

Now, however, he’s found the next best thing.

“Can we go out and get a photo in the snow globe once it’s up, Holly?” he says pleadingly. “Just you and me? Please?”

Paris rolls her eyes and tosses her braids over her shoulder. I’m about to copy her, then I remember that self-help book I wrote for a client last year, packed with top tips on how to be a more effective manager, and I twist my mouth into a reluctant smile instead.

“I’m not sure that would be appropriate, Levi,” I say, my jaw aching from the unfamiliar facial expression. “I’m your boss, remember?”

“Yeah, but you’re also the inspiration for The Snow Globe ,” Levi points out, shrugging. “Which is only the best romantic movie of all time. Of all time , Holly. You’re basically famous.”

“Book,” says Paris instantly. “ The Snow Globe was a book before it was a movie. The book was better. Obviously . And we don’t know for sure the character of Evie is based on Holly. Elliot Sinclair has always refused to confirm whether the story is true or not. He probably just made it all up.”

She looks at me through narrowed eyes, as if she suspects some trickery is at play here, because it’s impossible to believe that someone like me could inspire anything at all , let alone a bestselling novel and the subsequent blockbuster movie based on it. Which it blatantly, incontrovertibly is . You can’t argue with obvious.

“ Duh ,” says Levi, who actually can argue with obvious, and does it at every possible opportunity. “Eve Snow is obviously her. I know Holly doesn’t look anything like Violet King in the movie version, but that’s because Violet is a famous actress — and, like, super hot — and Holly is… the exact opposite of ‘hot’. Sorry, Holly. No offense.”

I tug self-consciously at my cardigan, which I convinced myself had a ‘sexy librarian’ vibe when I put it on this morning, but which Paris — who actually does look like a sexy librarian, but in that completely effortless way women in their twenties have — informs me is ‘giving Coastal Grandmother’. Whatever that means.

“But the character is so based on her,” goes on Levi, who has no interest in either secretaries or grandmothers. “Everyone knows that. Everyone . Well, everyone in Bramblebury, anyway. Or ‘Hollybrooke’, as Sinclair called it. See! He even named the village after her! How many more clues do you need, Paris ?”

I wince; and not just because of the unfair comparison between me and one of the most beautiful actresses in the world, but because I still can’t believe Elliot named the town in his novel after me; as if basing the female love interest on me wasn’t bad enough.

I can’t believe Elliot did a lot of things, though. Putting a fictional version of me — and him — into his book is the very least of my issues with the guy. Giving her a prickly, ‘difficult’ personality that everyone would assume was mine … well, that wasn’t exactly great , obviously, but he didn’t know it would be a bestseller when he wrote it, did he? Or that it would be turned into a movie.

He didn’t know tourists would come flocking to Bramblebury, desperate to see all the landmarks from the story, and he definitely didn’t know that, every year after that, the town council would erect a large plastic ‘snow globe’ in the village square, right next to the equally oversized Christmas tree, so that people could have their photo taken inside it — ideally while standing on tiptoe to kiss their partners through flurries of polystyrene ‘foam’.

No one could have known that. Especially not anyone who knows me, Holly Hart: 34-year-old book nerd, recently single cat lover, and ‘the exact opposite of hot’, as Levi puts it.

“So, can we?” demands Levi, from his position next to the coffee machine. “Can we take a photo in the globe?”

I take a deep breath as I try to figure out how to let him down gently.

I have never had my photo taken inside the globe. I hate the stupid globe almost as much as I hate Christmas, cinnamon, and people who think it’s acceptable to ‘pop in’ unexpectedly for a visit, as if they were raised by savages.

Levi, however, has been coming to Bramblebury every year since he was 17, just to pose inside the damn thing, and this year he finally talked us into giving him a job in the bookstore, claiming it was his lifelong dream to work in the town that inspired his favorite book and movie. He’s only 20, so it can’t have been that long a dream, but he was so persistent that Dad ended up buying a coffee machine, so Levi could serve up gingerbread lattes and other sickly sweet drinks to the customers, while also flogging them a range of Christmas candles with names like ‘Jingle Smells’ and ‘Scenta Claus’. (We called it the ‘Coffee Corner’, after a lengthy stand-off with Levi himself, who wanted it to be ‘Koffee Korner’, and would have had his way if Paris hadn’t threatened to resign over it, saying she couldn’t work with people who didn’t respect the English language…)

Levi bats his eyes hopefully. He’s wearing a bright red Christmas jumper with the slogan ‘Jingle My Bells’ on the front, and his bleached blond hair is extra spiky today. He looks like a member of a 90s boy band, who are about to record their upcoming Christmas single, and between him and Paris, with her low key glamour, it's no wonder customers to the shop sometimes don't even notice me hiding in the background.

“I’m not ‘famous’, Levi,” I say instead. “And I’m not a character in a book, either. I’m a real person. I am not Evie Snow. This is not ‘Hollybrooke’. And Elliot Sinclair isn’t—”

I trail off, thinking again about the ‘effective management’ book, and all of that stuff I put in it about keeping your private life separate from your professional life. Which is honestly pretty difficult when you run a bookstore, and the number one Christmas bestseller every year just so happens to be based on a month-long romance you had when you were 24. ‘ Boss Babe 101: How to Slay as a Manager ’ didn’t cover that particular scenario, though, strangely enough — the client didn’t seem to think it would be relatable to anyone other than me — so it looks like I’m just going to have to figure out how to ‘slay’ on my own here.

“I don’t want to be associated with The Snow Globe , Levi,” I tell him firmly. “Not on social media, and not in real life either, if I can possibly help it. Okay?”

As if on cue, the shop door swings open, admitting a blast of frosty air and a small gaggle of shoppers, who enter the store to the tinny refrain of ‘Deck the Halls’ from the musical motion sensor Dad installed on the door last year.

Ignoring my carefully curated table of indie authors and new releases, the customers flock to the Snow Globe book display by the window, all cooing in unison over how ‘cute’ the store is, with its squishy velvet sofas arranged around a log fire (a roaring one, naturally), and floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with every kind of book imaginable.

There’s only one book that anyone’s interested in, though.

I brace myself as one of the shoppers approaches me, holding her copy of The Snow Globe in front of her like a talisman. I know exactly what she’s going to say, and, sure enough…

“It’s you!” says the woman in an American accent. “Sorry,” she goes on, with a self-conscious giggle. “I’ve always wanted to say that in a bookstore. It makes me cry when he says it in the movie.”

I smile weakly, trying to pretend I haven’t heard this a dozen times already today, and approximately a millionty-one times in the decade since the book came out.

“This is the bookstore from the story, isn’t it?” the customer goes on as Paris rings up her purchase and slides it into a bag. “The one where they met?”

I hesitate for just long enough for Levi to come pushing forward, puffed up with importance.

“It sure is,” he says, beaming. “Hart Books is, indeed, The Book Nook in The Snow Globe . They actually used some exterior shots in the movie. The one where Evie and Luke meet for the first time, and he says that line? That’s the door of our shop you see him walk through. The interiors were all filmed on a soundstage, though.”

The woman gives an excited little squeal, then hands her phone to one of her friends, so she can have her photo taken standing in the doorway in question.

Levi follows them, offering up more tidbits of information about the making of the movie, while I stand there biting my tongue and trying not to scream, that’s not how it happened.

Because it isn’t.

In real life, Elliot and I didn’t meet in the bookstore. In real life, we didn’t do a lot of the things he put into his book.

But books aren’t real life. I should know; I’ve written enough of them for my ghostwriting clients, churning out tens of thousands of words on subjects I know absolutely nothing about (It might surprise you to know this, but I am not, in fact, a ‘Boss Babe’. And I’ve never ‘slayed’ at anything …), but which I somehow manage to convince my readers I’m an expert on.

See? Fake .

It’s all fake; just like the snow on the windows, and the book on the shelf, which claims to tell a true love story, but which actually tells a completely false one.

The one saving grace is that most of the tourists who come here to buy a copy of the book don’t know I’m the girl in the story when they repeat that famous “it’s you” line to me (or to Paris, or to Dad, or to whoever happens to be within earshot when they walk in). They don’t know it was my life before it was a book or a movie. They don’t know I’m the real-life ‘Eve Snow’ — and everyone who does know has been sworn to secrecy. (On pain of death, in Levi’s case).

It’s because I’m not hot , obviously, to quote Levi once again.

No one ever looks at me and pictures me as a main character. Most people don’t really look at me at all, actually; they just look right through me, as if I’m an actual ghost, rather than simply a ghost writer .

And sometimes I feel like one, too.

The day drags on. I retreat back to the safety of my office to work on my latest ghostwriting project — Nine-to-Thrive: How to Build Your Side Hustle Empire . Paris and Levi serve coffee and books, and bicker quietly between themselves about whether Booktok is better than Bookstagram. At some point, a group of men from the council arrive in a van with the snow globe and Christmas tree, both of which they erect in the village square, directly opposite the shop door. There’s a brief lull in the steady stream of customers as they start work, so the three of us stand with our noses pressed against the window, watching as the men inflate the giant plastic bubble, then fill it with polystyrene ‘snow’, which will be blown around by a wind machine for the photos.

“Is it just me, or is this weird?” I ask, as a small crowd gathers to watch them do it.

“It’s just you,” Levi and Paris chorus, in a rare display of unity.

On the other side of the window, a group of kids squabble over who should be first to have their photo taken inside the globe. In the end, they all go in together, and their proud parents snap photos of them throwing the fake snow around, until someone gets a fistful of the stuff in their face, and it all ends in tears.

“I love this time of year,” Levi sighs happily. “It’s just so wholesome .”

We watch silently as a small girl punches her brother in the face, and is dragged out of the globe by her frazzled mother, who yells that Father Christmas won’t be coming to their house now.

So wholesome.

So heartwarming.

I watch idly as the little family walks away, and it’s just as they reach the center of the village square that I see the ghost.

Or what I think is a ghost, at least.

Elliot Sinclair is standing in front of the Christmas tree, one hand shading his eyes against the low winter sun as he looks up at lights, which will be officially switched on in a short ceremony later this week.

But no, he isn’t standing in front of the Christmas tree.

Because it can’t be him.

It just can’t be.

I press my forehead against the window, my breath misting the glass as I try to get a better look.

I know the man in the square cannot possibly be my onetime boyfriend, and long-time nemesis, Elliot Sinclair: bestselling author of The Snow Globe , and professional breaker of hearts.

And yet, he looks so like him; his dark hair curling out from under the edges of a beanie hat pulled down over his ears, his tall frame slightly stooped against the December chill.

I reach up to wipe the window clean with the sleeve of my sweater, firmly reminding myself that there’s no such thing as ghosts. And sure enough, by the time the window’s clear, and I’m looking out across the square again, the figure by the tree is gone — if he was even there at all — and I’m not totally sure whether I’m relieved or disappointed. (Or, you know, just plain terrified that I’ve apparently started hallucinating. Because that’s not exactly great news either, is it?)

I shake my head firmly to get rid of the image of Elliot that’s taken up residence there, and go back to what I was doing, telling myself it’s totally normal to sometimes think you see your ex lurking around your village, even though it’s been over a decade since you last saw him, and he lives at least 4,000 miles away.

It is totally normal, isn’t it?

Customers come and go. At least half of them say the “It’s you!” line as they walk through the door. All of them think they’re the first one to do it. Most of them buy snow globes.

“There’s just one thing I want to know,” says the final customer of the day, handing her copy of Elliot’s book to Paris. “How does it end? Really , I mean? I know in the movie it ends with her standing him up, so he’s forced to go back to America without her. But what happened next? Did he come back? Did she follow him? I can’t believe Elliot Sinclair just left us all hanging like that. It’s so cruel of him! He really should have given us a sequel.”

The woman laughs, her question already forgotten, because she knows — everyone knows — there is no answer to it. There was never a sequel to The Snow Globe . There were no more books at all from Elliot Sinclair after that, much to the dismay of his legions of fans. That famous cliffhanger ending was never resolved; leaving everyone to forever wonder what happened next, and if the couple in the story got to live happily ever after.

But I know what happened.

I know he didn’t come back.

I know she didn’t follow him.

And that’s how I know all of this is fake: the snow on the window, the plastic globe in the village square, and even the story in the book everyone comes here to buy.

Not all stories have a sequel.

Some of them just end.

And that’s why there are no happy endings; not in the book, not in the movie, not in real life.

But, once upon a time, I really thought there could be…