The "historical bloke"? Surely he didn't mean -- Alice was just going to go ahead and ignore that.

"Oh, God, I'm not celebrating," Alice said, without even thinking about it. Blinking, she took a moment to recover. "My son's not with me this Christmas. With his father." It was the kind of lie Alice'd been raised to tell, with a small grain of truth. "I'm used to spending Christmas Eve doing last minute things. Wrapping, dinner. This is just to keep my hands busy."