December 24th, 1870 – Bloomsbury, London

It was a quarter to six on Christmas Eve when the children were called to bed. Liza settled her lamp down onto the dressing table at the foot of the children's bed, its meagre flame filling the ordinarily airy attic bedroom with light and warmth, or at least the illusion of it. The children wriggled into bed, pulling the heavy woollen blanket up to their chins to keep out the chill of the frost that spread in glittering patterns across the bedroom window.

“Now remember,” Liza said, tucking the blanket more firmly over the smallest of the three children, whose nose only just peeped over the blanket's edge. “You must sleep all night if father Christmas is to come and see you. Is that clear?”

“Yes, Liza,” they said almost as one, the youngest of the three forgetting himself and answering a second out of time. Liza smiled to herself, smoothing rumples from the blanket with the palm of her hand. She stood up from of the edge of the bed and was about to turn away, when a small hand grabbed her by the wrist.

“I don't want father Christmas to come!”

With a faint frown pressing into her brow, she sank back onto the edge of the bed. She swiped at an errant strand of hair that had fallen from her cap, tucking it behind her ear. “Michael..? Why ever would you say that?”

The youngest of the children, now doggedly avoiding meeting his maid's eyes, Michael pouted and wriggled further down beneath the blanket. When Liza looked to the elder of the two boys, John, he too lowered his eyes – and if there was one occurrence that surely gave Liza cause for concern, it was when the children overcame the natural instinct to bicker and came to a consensus with one another. In the quiet that followed, Liza could hear the muffled sounds of talking downstairs. She waited without a word, fixing each one in turn with the kind of meaningful look that told them she wasn't leaving until she'd had an answer.

“I want the shadow to come, not him!” said John at last.

“Yes, Liza! Can't the shadow come and see us instead?” Michael added, quite suddenly on the verge of tears.

The frown of confusion that Liza wore deepened, marked now with concern. Though she'd not long come into the employ of the Darling family, Liza was already familiar with the story of the shadow. She had been warned about it, in particular warned her not to indulge the children's already wildly active imaginations where that particular flight of fancy was concerned. She brushed a hand over Michael's tousled hair, smoothing a wayward curl back into place.

“Now, children. Your father has spoken to you about stuffing your head full of silly stories like that. The shadow isn't-”

“He is!” Michael's head popped out from beneath the blanket, his pout fiercer than before as he interrupted. “He is real! I saw him! We have to leave the window open for him so he can come in and play!”

John nodded quickly, “It's true.”

Michael swiped at his running nose with the sleeve of his freshly cleaned pyjamas. Liza sighed, shaking her head. She looked to the last of the children, the eldest, who had earned the coveted middle spot in the bed. “And I suppose you saw him too?”

Of all the children that Liza expected to hear a tall tale from, it was Wendy Darling, but the girl simply shook her head, though her eyes wandered to the window as she spoke.

“N-no,” she said. “The shadow isn't real,” she added, as the wind rattled the windows and the lamplight shuddered as though caught in a breeze, the shivering flame causing the shadows cast onto the bedroom walls to twitch and dance for the briefest moment.

“He never was real - and he never will be.”