Woman in green coat picture prompt

Holly loved this time of year. Now, anyway. As a child growing up in the war, Christmas held little joy and certainly no peace. With the family home in London’s East End destroyed, Holly, her two brothers and her mother, considered themselves fortunate to have not been destroyed themselves. Unlike her father, killed in France in the last days of the conflict. Holly missed his bear hugs, his teasing, his scent of coal tar soap tarnished by an overlay of lingering cigarette smoke.
Christmas these days provided a stark and welcome contrast. Since Holly had learned the secret, and where it could be found.

Her first time was when she was fourteen, the war had just ended, the celebrations over and the desperate slog of rebuilding had begun. Holly’s family were living with an aunt of her mother’s in a pretty, untainted village in Cumbria. A substantial home, far grander than the bombed-out London house, and the aunt – Maddie – had welcomed them in, saying how she loved to see the rooms filled with the noise of children again.
Again?
Yes, Maddie explained. She had grown up here with their mother’s mother (sadly lost early to a cancerous growth), and several brothers.
Holly had known nothing of these uncles until now. Her mother shook her head. They disapproved of your father, she told Holly. Only Maddie kept in touch.
Where are they now?
Maddie pursed her red-lipsticked mouth. Gone, she said cryptically, and Holly didn’t care to ask for more detail. Not after her father …
But the secret…
A week before their first Christmas, snow fell, softly, heavily, turning the lit up village into a charming picture of what Christmas should be.
Come along with me, dear, Maddie said to Holly late one afternoon. Holly’s mother frowned but offered no objection, so aunt and girl wrapped up warmly – Maddie insisting Holly wear the new rich green coat and bright red gloves she had bought for her, saying it was important to blend in – and stamped through the snowy village to the edge of a wood.
Here we are, Maddie said.
Holly looked about. ‘Here’ was a field, the misted trees a short way away.
Maddie smiled. Now, she said, I want you to hold your hands, cupped – see, like this – in front of your face, and breathe in deeply. Make three wishes for the coming year.
Holly did as she was told, enjoying the game. But the expected rush of icy air into her lungs didn’t happen. A fizziness danced on her tongue and teeth, light, sweet, bright. She squinted her eyes half open, wondering. A rainbow of tiny bubbles streamed out of nowhere, into her hands and then to her sucking mouth.
No, not out of nowhere. A few feet ahead of her, Aunt Maddie stood, very still, arms at her side, eyes closed in deep concentration. The rainbow cloud swirled around her, a diaphanous gown, with one wide tendril lifting from near her heart to sweep through the still air to Holly.
Holly closed her eyes again, sensing the fulfilment of her wishes for the next year come alive as if they had already happened, leaving her content.
That was ten years ago. Maddie had opened many more secrets to Holly over that time. But the Christmas wishing spell was still the one Holly held most dear.

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