“I’m going to write on the back.” Samantha explained. “Make it a bit more personal and hopefully prove to people that I really am up for this!” While her dad continued to admire the invitation, she reached for the chunkiest of the packages. “Ah-ha!” she grinned. “I thought that’s what this was!” Inside were twenty packs of playing card. “They’re just ordinary ones really,” she gave a slightly sad little sigh, “but we were able to put Mum’s cool picture of me roasted on the backs of each one!” she carefully opened one packet and slipped the cards out to show her dad, the picture that was the back of each card clearly visible without the need to break the cellophane that held them together. The box had the same picture front and back along with the message “Merry Christmas” and the year underneath in the same gold script that had been used on the invitations. “I thought it would be nice to make little goodie-bags for everyone,” Samantha explained with a smile, “souvenirs to take home.”

“That’s a really nice idea actually!” Josh agreed with a smile, touched by his daughter’s kindness and her apparent desire to make the day as fun and memorable for everyone as she could, as if having herself roasted and served to them would not be enough. “We can puts some sweets and things in too.” he suggested. “Chocolate coins, that sort of thing?”

“Definitely!” Samantha grinned, sliding the sealed cards back into their box and carefully closing it up. “We ordered twenty five of everything so there would be some spares, just to be on the safe side! You know how stuff sometimes arrives damaged.” She sorted through the remaining parcels as if looking for something particular, looking satisfied when she apparently found it. This parcel was another flat one but a lot larger than the package of invitations, roughly A4 sized and half an inch thick but giving the impression of being a lot more solid as Samantha picked it up and turned it around, looking for the join in the paper wrapper where she could tear it open. “This one’s for you two really.” she smiled as she peeled back the paper to reveal a hardback book, landscape orientation. “Memories of Samantha” was the title in the familiar gold font above a photograph of the young girl, naked once more, reclining on her side, propped up on one elbow and resting her chin on her fist. The photo had been edited to make it look as if she was laying on a furry rug in front of a cosy, rustic fireplace with a window above it through which could be seen a snowy pine forest. Laura had done such a good job of matching the lighting and general colour tones that, had he not been sure that his wife and daughter had never been to such a place a place with such a view and that there was nowhere close enough that they could have sneaked off to without him knowing, he could have taken it for a genuine photo.

Being the only one who did not already know the books contents, Josh leaned in to look as Samantha slowly and approvingly turned the thick, glossy pages. The first half of the book seemed to be a sort of scrapbook of her life, including baby photos, pictures of things she had owned, family holiday snaps and official school pictures interspersed with scans of drawings, cards and illustrated poems she had made over the years and which her parents had lovingly kept in a large shoe-box. These were not formally set out, however, but arranged with a relaxed, almost haphazard appearance as if they had been stuck into the book rather than scanned then carefully dragged into place. The captions, where they had been deemed necessary, giving dates, locations or adding a little extra context to the pictures, were written in a font that was designed to resemble unsophisticated handwriting. The last page in this section had Samantha’s most recent school picture, looking very smart in her uniform with her hair neatly tied back, contrasted with three pictures of her in a bikini from their most recent holiday, wearing dark glasses and posing goofily, on the beach, at a cafe with a large and colourful mocktail in front of her and finally playing on one of the arcade machines.

The next section took the form of a sort of guest book – mostly blank pages with the same holly and mistletoe border that had been used on the invitations and a small picture of Samantha in the outermost bottom corner of each one. These included the roast turkey picture, the one of her kneeling with the Santa hat and an assortment of others, ten different images in total and each one appearing twice, distributed randomly and sometimes flipped so that, if she was not facing directly forward, Samantha was always angled inwards from the edge of the page. In some of these she seemed to be wearing a pointy green hat and elf shoes with her hair in bunches and pointy ears that had either been edited onto the pictures or were prosthetics with the pictures edited to hide the join, in some she wore the Santa hat and in others she was dressed as Sidney Roebuck, her hair slightly curled wearing a pink hat and boots almost identical to the ones Emily had been wearing at the butcher.

“I didn’t know you had a set of those?” he asked curious as Samantha turned the page.

“That’s what I was borrowing the other day!” Laura grinned. “We wanted to surprise you with these pictures and everything we’ve done with them!”

“Oh I see!” Josh chuckled. “So you weren’t asking her husband and son to come fuck your brains out while I was out with the boys after all?”

“Nah, that was after lunch!” Laura teased then stuck out her tongue. “No, silly! Carol does line-dancing and I know pink is her favourite colour so I figured I’d ask if she had an authentic set we borrow for the shoot and she did! They look so much better than the ones from the costume store, don’t they?”

“They certainly do!” Josh agreed, leaning closer to get a better look at the fairly small image. “I just wish these pictures were bigger so I could get a better look!”

“Oh don’t worry!” Samantha grinned. “We’ll get to that!” Marking the end of this section and introducing the last part of the book was a whole page covered in holly leaves, edited together to provide a solid background with bright red berries in cheerful clusters here and there. In big letters across the middle, in the gold font which seemed to be a favourite of Laura’s, or perhaps Samantha’s own choice, were the words “Samantha’s Big Day”, under which, in small letters, it read “Christmas Day” then “25th December” and the year under that. “You have to fill in this bit afterwards.” Samantha explained, showing him the last twenty or so pages that had the same border as the guest-book section but nothing else. “You can stick photos in here, write down comments people make, make an ink-blot test out of some of my gravy, whatever you want really!” She grinned at him proudly. “Just anything that will help you remember me and how delicious I was!”

“As if I could every forget!” Josh leaned forward and kissed the top of her head as she closed the book and showed him the back cover which showed a snowy landscape with trees in the background, just like the view through the window on the front cover, in which three versions of herself – Sidney, the elf and her normal self dressed in nothing but a woolly hat, scarf, matching gloves and wellington boots appeared to be having a snowball fight. “This is awesome!” Josh grinned as he took it from here and flicked through again. “We’ll definitely make sure everyone signs it on the day! Now what else have we got?”

To be continued...