She woke early. Christmas Eve. Nothing. No tingle. No fizz of excitement. How had Christmas become so dull? Is this what growing up was going to be like? No magic. No mystery. 

“Best days of your life,” her parents’ friends would say to her. Really? It was all going to be downhill from here? What a thought.

In the room next door she could hear the twins giggling, full of the sparkle of tonight and tomorrow morning. At six years old, they knew exactly what Christmas meant, and they were beside themselves with the thrilling joy of it all. She could picture their faces. Billy with his furrowed brow trying to wait till 7am when he’d been told he could open his presents. Maddie teasing him by waving brightly coloured packages from their stockings under his nose, trying to get him to sniff them.

Clarrie sighed. Being 12 was such a drag. She knew everything about the world pretty much, she was bored at school, and she wasn’t allowed to do anything interesting like drive or live on her own or get a job. What was the point of these years that were between her and adulthood? Deadening in their nothingness. It felt like an endless waiting room. 

She sighed and opened her eyes to look up at her wall-map. Her solace. All the places in the world she planned to visit when she was eventually An Adult. All the ones she’d coloured in highlighter orange. Under her bed she had the glossy brochures she’d collected from the travel agency. “School project” she’d shouted over her shoulder as the woman who worked there, heaved herself to her feet to stop her from taking them. They were limp now from all the times she’d pored over them, breathing in the scent of ink and imagining exotic lands. Planning and replanning future voyages.  It felt like the only thing distinguishing her current existence from low grade toothache. 

Hang on though, the map wasn’t there. In fact – she jumped when she realised it – her room looked quite different. She rubbed her hands through her hair – an old habit since childhood. Even her hair felt odd. What was happening? She leapt out of the strange bed in the strange room in horror, catastrophising at top speed. She must have been kidnapped. She’d been drugged. They were going to torture her and kill her. She had to escape. 

She stumbled towards the door – at least she could still walk. Not everything was different. Though she felt off balance – the enormous bump straining against her nightdress was throwing her centre of gravity off. What the hell was this? Had she been in some kind of accident? Her lower back twinged and she felt weird. Like when she used to twirl madly in the back garden until she fell, flailing and dizzy. 

Catching her reflection as she passed the mirror left her gasping. Where was her unibrow? Her pigtails? Her freckles? Who on earth was that not-bad-looking 30-something woman looking back at her? She touched her fingers to her face and the woman in the reflection did the same. The skin felt rougher.

She’d have to sort this out but first she wanted to get her bearings.

She rushed into the corridor to find the twins, confused for a moment by their door being in a different place. Two small children gazed at her in delight. “Mama!” they cried in unison, rushing her for a hug. “It’s Christmas!” squealed a small boy. “No silly Billy, it’s Christmas Eve,” corrected his sister. She looked older than him. Not a twin. What then? Had they been transformed too?

Clarrie reeled, hugging their small, still familiar bodies. As much to comfort her own confused mind, as for them. 

Had she leapt forward in her life? It made no sense. She sat on the bottom bunk, bewildered and disoriented, holding the children close so they wouldn’t ask her anything. 

Where had the missing years gone? How? Could she go back? Did she even want to? 

There’d be things to do, she imagined. Breakfast to sort out, laundry, maybe a husband to deal with? What was her job? How was she going to do that without any training – or would her brain just know what to do now? She was going to have to feel her way through all this. Puzzle it out. Live by her wits.

She felt a fizz. A tingle of excitement.

Maybe this was the best Christmas present she’d ever had.