The afternoon’s snow was already turning to slush when Lizzy finally managed to escape the party.

Drunken carol singing and the clinking of glasses crept around the edges of the pub’s front door but the sounds were quickly chased away by icy wind. Lizzy zipped up her fleece, her breath clouding in front of her. It was a relief to be free of the suffocating merriment inside but she wished she’d grabbed a coat before sneaking out.

Hands shoved deep into the pockets of her jeans, Lizzy looked up and was startled to see her best friend, Nora sitting in the snow atop of one of the wooden tables in the pub’s courtyard.

‘Nora?’ A shiver ran up Lizzy’s spine, which had nothing to do with the cold night. ‘Is that you?’

‘Obviously.’ Nora jumped down from the table, her trainers making no noise on the snow covered flagstones. ‘Did you think I’d miss your mum’s Christmas party?’

‘Well… yes.’ Lizzy remembered the squeal of the car breaking too late, the black dress and smart, flat shoes shoved to the back of her wardrobe, the broken look on Nora’s mum’s face as the coffin was lowered into the ground. She shook the images out of her head. ‘You’re dead. You died months ago.’

It felt like one of them ought to mention it.

Nora rolled her eyes. ‘Like I’d let that keep me away.’

It was the eye roll that did it.

Lizzy rushed forward. Immediate, stinging tears blurred her vision.

‘It is you.’ Lizzy reached out but Nora moved away. Lizzy’s fingers closed on cold air.

‘Are we going for a walk?’ Nora asked. She forged ahead into the open moorland without waiting for an answer.

Wet grass squelched beneath Lizzy’s feet, quickly soaking through the thin canvas of her trainers, but still she followed Nora, doing her best to keep up with her friend’s confident stride.

She didn’t understand how Nora could be here. She didn’t care. All that mattered was that her friend was back and that she didn’t let Nora out of her sight.

Nora looked exactly as she had the last time Lizzy had seen her. Her golden hair was pulled back in a low ponytail. She was wearing the same ripped jeans and oversized t-shirt, too cold for this late December night. When Nora turned to check that Lizzy was still following, she wore the same pink lipgloss smile Lizzy knew so well.

‘What?’ Nora asked when they had walked far enough away from the pub that the wind howled louder than the guests. ‘Why are you staring at me?’

‘I missed you so much.’ Lizzy’s words struggled to find their way out.

Nora shrugged. ‘Well, I’m here now,’ she said, as though she had just been away for a weekend, as though Lizzy was being silly.

‘But how?’ Lizzy asked.

Nora raised her hands high above her head. ‘It’s a Christmas miracle,’ she shouted up at the wide, starry sky. Lizzy laughed like she hadn’t in months. ‘Come on.’ The girls ran through the snow together.

Up ahead, the old engine house, where Lizzy and Nora had shared so many pasties and secrets, loomed against the skyline, but Nora didn’t head towards it as Lizzy expected. Instead, she veered off to the left, towards a wire fence that bordered an open mine shaft.

Lizzy stopped.

The ground over the mine shaft had collapsed years ago. Lizzy’s mum had always told her not to go near it but there wasn’t a child or teenager in the village who hadn’t leant over the fence to try to see the bottom, throwing stones and secrets into the dark pit.

Except Nora.

Nora had seen the mine shaft collapse. She had appeared on the local news, clutching her dad’s hand while he told the reporter what it had been like to watch the earth split open right in front of them. All Nora had ever said about it was that it had been scary. She had never gone near the mine shaft again.

Now, without hesitation, Nora climbed over the rusted wire fence.

‘What are you doing?’ Lizzy asked, reaching out to pull Nora back, away from the great hole.

Something stopped her hand before she could touch Nora’s pale, bare arm. It wasn’t Nora moving away that stopped her this time but a feeling, a prickling on the back of Lizzy’s neck, which told her to run back to the pub full of people and lock the doors behind her.

Lizzy gripped the fence next to Nora.

‘It’s fine.’ Nora held out a hand to Lizzy. ‘Come on.’

All their lives, Lizzy had followed Nora. She had almost followed her into the road that day in June.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when she couldn’t sleep for the ache in her chest and the memories in her head, she almost wished she had.

Now, she looked down at the dark, vast hole in the earth. The wire fence dug into the flesh of her palms.

When Lizzy looked back up, Nora’s smile was so bright that her teeth seemed to glow in the moonlight, and so what if that smile was a little wider than usual, if she could see a few more teeth? It was Nora. Her best friend back from the dead. 

A Christmas miracle.

Lizzy reached for Nora’s hand, just like she always did. At last, their fingers made contact, Nora’s icy hand wrapping comfortingly around Lizzy’s, soothing the stabbing ache from where she had gripped the fence so tightly.

‘Lizzy?’ a voice called, somewhere far away.

Nora’s smile turned into a frown. Lizzy tried to turn around, to see who was calling her, but Nora pulled her forward, slamming her body into the fence. The old wire dug in painfully, straining against her torso.

‘Come with me,’ Nora said but it didn’t sound like Nora’s voice at all anymore.

‘Lizzy?’ the far away voice called again. ‘Is that you?’

Lizzy tried to pull back her hand but Nora’s grip was too strong.

‘Let go.’ The fence rattled between them as Lizzy struggled to free herself from Nora’s hold. Her foot slipped on the snow-sodden grass. She grabbed the fence with her free hand and cried out as the wire ripped the skin on her palm. Feeling the stinging, warm rush of blood on her cold hand, Lizzy let go of the fence, eyes drawn to the cut.

Nora finally let go of her.

As Lizzy fell, Nora’s face above her disappeared, replaced first by an angry, dark shadow, and then, as Lizzy’s back hit the cold, wet ground, by nothing at all.

Hands grabbed Lizzy’s shoulders. She flinched away but whoever the hands belonged to, they were insistent. They pulled her up, out of the snow, and bundled her into a coat. They cradled her cut hand.

Someone was talking but Lizzy wasn’t listening. She couldn’t look away from where Nora no longer was.

She had let Nora out of her sight and now she was gone.

She had let her go again.

It wasn’t until the person who had pulled her up moved, blocking Lizzy’s view of the mine shaft, that she realised it was her friend, Hannah.

‘What are you doing?’ Hannah asked, as she buttoned Lizzy into her own pale pink duffel coat. ‘You’re freezing.’ Hannah was shivering, in only a knitted dress and sparkly tights. Lizzy realised she was shivering too. ‘And what happened to your hand?’ Hannah demanded. Now that she had got Lizzy successfully into her coat, Hannah rubbed her hands up and down her own arms.

Lizzy looked again at the jagged cut on her palm. She curled her fingers into a fist around the blood. ‘I cut it on the fence,’ she said, hoping Hannah wouldn’t ask why she had been holding on to the fence in the first place.

‘Well, I hope you’ve had a tetanus shot.’ Hannah hooked her arm around Lizzy’s elbow and turned them both away from the mine shaft, to face the soft, golden light of the pub in the distance.

The pub was further away than Lizzy expected. She hadn’t realised she had walked so far.

‘What are you even doing out here?’ Hannah asked.

‘I was going for a walk,’ Lizzy answered. She remembered that but she wasn’t sure why she had walked to the mine shaft. That was a silly thing to do at night.

Lizzy tried to remember anything from the last few minutes but it was all fuzzy and just out of reach, as though she was trying to remember something that had happened years ago.

‘Without a coat, in December?’ Hannah asked. ‘Is the party that bad?’

‘Yes.’ Lizzy curled towards the warmth of Hannah’s body. Hannah extricated her arm and wrapped it around Lizzy’s shoulders instead.

‘Well, I’m here now,’ Hannah said. Lizzy had a strange feeling she had heard that before this evening, though she couldn’t think where. ‘We’ll sort your hand and then we can sneak upstairs and have our own party. Like we used to do with Nora,’ she added, her voice softening at the mention of their friend. ‘How does that sound?’

Lizzy nodded. ‘That sounds nice.’ They could remember Nora together.

It might almost feel like she was there with them.