The Snow Globe That Remembered Summer

Ada's snow globe had no snow in it. This was a serious defect in a Christmas present, especially one she had made herself.

She shook it over the kitchen sink. Inside the glass, three yellow butterflies sailed past a tiny washing line. A tomato plant leaned against a fence. Somewhere beyond the fence, a dog barked, although Ada had not put a dog in the jar.

"I used glitter," she told her grandfather. "White glitter."

Grandad rubbed a circle in the mist on his glasses. "Perhaps it melted."

"Into butterflies?"

"It has been an unusual year."

They had found the globe kit in a charity shop. The box contained a glass dome, a wooden base, and a folded instruction sheet. Ada had added a miniature fir tree. Now there was neither fir tree nor snow. The garden inside the globe looked hot enough for bare feet.

Grandad went very still when he saw the washing line.

"That can't be," he said.

Ada waited. Grandad carried the empty mixing bowl to the wrong cupboard. He took it out again, dried a bowl that was already dry, and announced that they needed more wrapping paper.

She knew this kind of busyness. She used it whenever someone asked about her maths homework.

After lunch, Ada unfolded the instructions. There was only one sentence: A good present remembers what its receiver needs.

She had meant the globe for Grandad. He had spent their first winter in the flat saying he liked the view. The view consisted of a car park and the back of a supermarket. Ada suspected he missed his old garden, but whenever she asked, he said the lift here was wonderfully convenient.

"It's showing your old house," she said.

Grandad nodded. "A long time before you were born."

Inside the globe, a boy in enormous shorts entered the garden. He was carrying two sticks and a biscuit tin. Another boy waited by the fence. They solemnly shook hands.

"That one's me," Grandad whispered. "And that's Ben."

The tiny boys buried the biscuit tin under the tomato plant.

"Treasure?"

"A promise. We were going to build a boat together when we grew up. We saved six coins and a button towards it."

"Did you?"

"Build the boat? No. Ben moved away that Christmas. We wrote for a while. Then there were exams, work, children. Letters became cards. Cards became meaning to send cards."

Ada shook the globe. The same afternoon began again. The washing lifted. The butterflies rose. Two boys believed there would always be plenty of time.

"We can find him," she said.

Grandad looked frightened in a way she had never seen. "He may not want to hear from me."

"Do you want to hear from him?"

"Yes."

"Then we know at least half the answer."

Her mother helped them search old address books. They did not post private information online or call strangers at random. Grandad remembered Ben's sister, whose Christmas card was tucked into a cookbook. Mum rang the number written inside and left a careful message.

They waited. Ada made paper snowflakes. Grandad watched the car park. The globe kept showing summer.

On Christmas Eve morning, the telephone rang. Grandad answered so politely that Ada thought it must be the dentist. Then he sat down on the bottom stair, although their flat had no stairs. He had accidentally sat on a box of decorations.

"Six coins and a button," he said into the phone.

Ada could hear laughter from the other end.

Ben lived two towns away. His knees were troublesome, his cat disliked visitors, and he still had the button. They arranged to meet after Christmas at a café beside the boating lake.

"The promise is fixed!" Ada said when the call ended. She shook the globe.

Summer continued. A butterfly bumped against the glass.

Ada felt cheated. She had solved the mystery and found the friend. Surely now the snow would come.

Grandad fetched cardboard from the recycling box. "We haven't built the boat."

They made a small one with a milk-carton hull, a pencil mast, and a sail cut from wrapping paper. Ada wanted to paint it silver. Grandad suggested blue. They argued cheerfully for ten minutes and made it blue with a silver stripe.

Before bedtime, they called Ben again. He showed them, through Mum's phone, a boat made from a butter tub. His sail was a supermarket receipt. They agreed the first launch should take place indoors because neither captain fancied falling into a lake in January.

Ada placed the two phones beside the globe so Ben could see it. Inside, the boys by the fence turned towards them. One raised his hand. For a moment, Grandad's hand rose too.

Then white flakes drifted past the washing line.

They settled on the tomato leaves and the buried biscuit tin. It was the most impossible snow Ada had ever seen, falling softly through a summer that had waited more than sixty years.

"There," she said. "A proper Christmas present."

Grandad turned the globe slowly. "It was proper before. I just hadn't opened all of it."

On Christmas morning, Ada found a tiny parcel under the tree. It contained a brass button on a blue ribbon. Ben had asked his daughter to bring it round.

The note said: For our newest shipbuilder.

Ada wore it all day. Outside, rain washed the car park clean. Inside, two little boats waited by the bath, and the snow globe remembered summer without being stuck there anymore.