Exclusive short story by Rachel Joyce: The Boxing Day Ball

Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, has written a short story exclusively for the Observer

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It was too muddy to cross the fields and the girls hadn’t a car between them. They had no choice but to make their way along the back lanes, though it would add almost an hour to the journey. The land shone a dim blue in the moonlight as if all the colour had been chilled out of it. Sometimes they saw a light in the distance but mostly it was dark and cold.

There were ten girls, including the twins, and they moved in a weaving column of ones and twos. A few carried paraffin lamps. Patty Driscoll had a torch. Now and then someone would holler out a snatch of a carol to keep the rhythm going, something like “Good King Wenceslas looked out”, and the others would pitch in with “on the feast of Stephen”, boisterous and not quite in tune. They carried their best shoes in bags and gripped their coats tightly over their short dresses.

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