I woke up very very early and sat up as slowly as I could, trying not to shake the bed. I didn’t want to wake Vita or Maxie. I wanted to have this moment all to myself. I wriggled down to the end of the bed, carefully edging round Vita. She always curled up like a little monkey, knees right under her pointed chin, so the hump that was her stopped halfway down the duvet. It was so dark I couldn’t see at all, but I could feel. My hand stroked three little woolly socks stretched to bursting point. They were tiny stripy socks, too small even for Vita. The joke was to see how many weeny presents could be stuffed inside. Vita and Maxie appreciated Santa’s sense of humour and left him a minute mince pie on a doll’s tea-set plate and a thimbleful of wine, and wrote him teeny thank-you letters on pieces of paper no bigger than a postage stamp. Well, Vita couldn’t fit her shaky pencil printing on such a tiny scrap but she wrote ‘Dear Santa I love you and pleese leeve me lots and lots of little pressents from your speshal frend Vita’ on a big piece of paper and then folded it up again and again.
