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    A Christmas in Time
    A Christmas in Time
    A Christmas in Time
    Ebook109 pages1 hour

    A Christmas in Time

    By Sally Nicholls and Rachael Dean

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Alex and Ruby are back in their SECOND time-slip adventure, tumbling back into a Victorian Christmas! From multi-award-winning author Sally Nicholls comes another brilliant action-packed adventure for 7+ readers, beautifully illustrated by Rachael Dean.

    When Alex and Ruby fall through the mirror in their aunt's house, they find themselves in a different historical period, each time with a different task to perform before they can return to the present. From Edwardian crime capers to Victorian Christmasses, their time-slip stories are always exciting and beautifully told.

    A Victorian Christmas is lovely - all the food and candles and games and singing - unless you're poor, motherless Edith who is condemned to be sent to a cruel boarding school on Boxing Day. Can Alex and Ruby persuade her strict father that home is where the heart is instead?

    Full of action and humour and featuring exciting black-and-white illustrations throughout, this is another superb time-slip story which brilliantly brings history to life as part of an adventure.

    'A clever vehicle for introducing the differences between then and now in an accessible way, with a fast-paced plot and a lovely spooky ending' - The Times on A Chase in Time

    Have you read Alex and Ruby's other adventures: A Chase in Time, An Escape in Time and A Secret in Time?

    Cover illustration by Isabelle Follath.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNosy Crow Ltd
    Release dateOct 1, 2020
    ISBN9781788007344
    A Christmas in Time
    Author

    Sally Nicholls

    Acclaimed author Sally Nicholls has written several novels for children, including Ways to Live Forever, Shadow Girl, and Season of Secrets. She has won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize and the Dimplex New Writer of the Year Award. Her short story in Mystery & Mayhem is ‘Safe Keeping’, a tribute to Boy’s Own-style adventures.

    Read more from Sally Nicholls

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      Book preview

      A Christmas in Time - Sally Nicholls

      To my nephews and nieces,

      McKenzie, Finlay

      and Freya.

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHRISTMAS WITH AUNT JOANNA

      "Who comes to a bed and breakfast for Christmas?" said Ruby Pilgrim, staring out of the windows in disgust.

      People who don’t like cooking? said Alex. He was busy hanging baubles on the enormous Christmas tree which stood in the hall at Applecott House. Their own tree at home had tinsel and knitted snowmen and all the decorations they’d made in nursery school, but this one was very classy – all colour-co-ordinated baubles and white lights. He secretly rather disapproved – he loved their messy, family tree – but he had to admit that Aunt Joanna’s did look lovely.

      "Christmas is for family! said Ruby. For spending all morning in your pyjamas eating selection boxes! You’re supposed to spend it watching Christmas telly and playing video games and having fights over who does the washing up! Not going on holiday!"

      I don’t think everyone spends Christmas playing video games and eating selection boxes, said Alex cautiously. Not grown-ups anyway. He hung a very old-fashioned-looking reindeer on the tree, careful not to break it. Some of these decorations are over a hundred years old, Aunt Joanna had said to him. There had been Pilgrims living in Applecott House for over two hundred years. Had his father and his grandfather and all his great-great-grandparents hung some of those same baubles on their Christmas tree?

      It was rather a nice thought.

      Alex didn’t need to imagine those people from another time – he’d met them; well, some of them anyway. Last summer, something mysterious and wonderful had happened to Alex and Ruby. They’d stepped into a magical looking-glass in Aunt Joanna’s hallway, and been transported back in time. They still didn’t know why, but Alex believed they’d been sent there to help solve a historical problem – to find a lost Saxon treasure, and save Aunt Joanna’s house in the process.

      He had hoped that perhaps they were connected to the mirror now; that it would use them to right old-fashioned wrongs and solve ancient mysteries. Perhaps they would have a new adventure every time they came to stay with Aunt Joanna! But the problem was, they didn’t come here very often. Applecott House was in Suffolk, and Alex and Ruby lived in a little town in the north east of England, two hundred miles and a long car journey away. They came every summer, and often in the Easter holidays too, but when you’ve been sucked into a magical mirror and transported back to 1912 to solve a high-stakes crime, the Easter holidays is a very long time to wait to do it again.

      And then, a week before Christmas, Aunt Joanna fell downstairs and broke her leg.

      Christmas at Applecott House was the busiest time of year. Aunt Joanna organised a whole three-day celebration for her bed-and-breakfast guests, with a carol service in the village, a musical evening in the drawing room, and a Boxing Day quiz. There was fizzy wine with Christmas breakfast, and candlelit dinners on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which Aunt Joanna had to cook. Alex privately agreed with Ruby that it didn’t really sound like Christmas at all, but lots of grown-ups seemed to like it, and she was always booked out months in advance.

      And now it looked like she would have to cancel.

      Aunt Joanna had called the children’s father in a panic. All of the food and wine was ordered already. She’d paid a deposit for the wine glasses and the musicians. Everyone was relying on her. She couldn’t ask her own children to help (Aunt Joanna had a son who lived in Australia and a daughter who had baby twins, and obviously neither could be expected to drop everything and run Christmas in Applecott House). But perhaps Alex’s family might be able to…

      There won’t be any beds, said Alex’s father. All the rooms are booked, so we’ll be sleeping in the living room, I’m afraid. Aunt Joanna thinks she should be able to supervise the cooking – at least I hope will, because you know what our cooking’s like, and Stacey will be in as much as she can. Stacey was a woman from the village who helped Aunt Joanna out at busy times of year. It’s mostly getting the rooms ready … and the washing up, and the vegetable-chopping … and the decorations – apparently that’s very important. And I suppose there’ll be lots of tidying up and laying tables and so on. But she’s been so good to us over the years – I don’t know what we’d have done if she hadn’t agreed to look after you children. And… Well. I didn’t really feel I could say no. And it’s supposed to be rather a luxury holiday … I understand people pay a fortune, and of course we’d get to eat all the food and so forth. I think it might be quite fun, really…

      But it’s Christmas! Ruby had said. Christmas Day!

      I don’t imagine you children will have to help too much on Christmas Day itself, their mother said hurriedly. (Alex got the impression she wasn’t keen on spending Christmas laying tables and loading dishwashers either.) I expect you’ll be able to hide somewhere with your presents if you’d rather.

      I don’t see where, Ruby muttered. "We won’t even have a bedroom."

      But Alex didn’t really mind. Just being back at Applecott House – his favourite place in all the world – was enough to make him happy. They’d arrived yesterday, just after lunch, and even an afternoon spent making beds and vacuuming bedrooms had been fun. He’d enjoyed hanging up all the decorations, and helping Aunt Joanna ice Christmas biscuits. He was looking forward to eating all this fancy food – and after all, he thought, their father was right. Aunt Joanna was family.

      We’re hardly going to see Mum and Dad all Christmas! said Ruby furiously. "They’re going to spend all day washing dishes and chopping carrots, just you wait. It’s going to be awful! I wish we were anywhere else. I

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