‘But didn’t you have to tell the owners why you fired him?’
‘I’m a partner in the business.’
‘So you pulled strings for him?’
He grunted.
‘And you’ve guaranteed his debts?’
‘Guaranteed them. Not paid them. Now, can we drop this?’
‘I just can’t get my head around it. Nobody would guess the truth about you.’
‘But you think you know the truth? ‘ he asked savagely. ‘After the way you attacked me about him, what did you expect me to do?’
‘I didn’t expect you to take any notice of anything I said. And I’m not even sure you did. I have a suspicion that you’d have done it anyway. Scrooge outside and Santa inside.’
‘How dare you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she mused. ‘But I dare.’
After a while she said, ‘This isn’t the way to my home.’
‘I’m taking a detour. The traffic’s heavy because we’re close to Trafalgar Square.’
‘Ah, yes. That’s where they set up the huge tree that the Norwegians give us every year.’
‘Let’s go and see it,’ he said, turning into a side road and stopping.
Taking her hand, he drew her forward to where the crowds were gathered. There was the great tree rearing up into the night, covered in lights. More lights set the fountains aglow and the huge buildings around the edge of the square. All around, carol singers gathered, their voices rising into the chilly air.
‘Beautiful,’ Roscoe murmured.
Receiving no reply, he turned to see Pippa standing with her eyes closed, her face wet from snow, or maybe tears. Her head was uncovered and now her glorious hair was drenched and hanging drably.
‘Pippa,’ he said urgently. ‘Pippa, what is it? Tell me, for pity’s sake.’
He shook her shoulders gently and, when she didn’t react, he drew her close, kissing her with the fierceness of a man trying to reawaken life.
‘Pippa,’ he whispered. ‘Where are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessly. ‘But I can’t escape. I’m trapped there and I always will be.’
‘You can. Let me help you.’
He kissed her again and again and she gave herself up to the feeling, trying to find in it a way out of the fears that tormented her. But she knew there was no way out and she must try to make him understand.
‘Let me go,’ she said desperately. ‘I have to get out of here.’
She wrenched herself free and darted away, vanishing into the crowd so that for a moment Roscoe lost her and looked around desperately. She had vanished into thin air, gone for ever, and for a moment the demons that pursued him seemed to be mocking him.
Then he saw her at the end of the street, fleeing him without looking back. He gave chase and managed to catch up before she vanished again.
‘No,’ he said fiercely. ‘We can’t leave it like this. It’s too important. Let’s go back.’
‘Not to that place,’ she said, pointing to Trafalgar Square, whose lights could just be seen in the distance. ‘I couldn’t bear it.’
‘But why?’
‘Christmas,’ she said simply. ‘I just can’t cope.’
‘Let’s go home.’
He led her back to the car, saw her tucked in and headed back to her home. She sat in silence, her arms crossed over her chest for the whole of the journey, then let him shepherd her upstairs. She knew this moment had to come. They must have a long talk, and she must make him understand why this path was closed off to her. Then, and only then, would she be ready to face the bleakness of life without him.
When they reached her apartment he fetched a towel and began to dry her hair, which was sodden from the snow, pulling it down so that he could work on it properly. The movement reminded him of that first day, when he’d seen her hair and her young, voluptuous body in their full glory.
Now there was nothing young or glorious about her. With her hair bedraggled, her face pale and strained, he had a sudden blinding glimpse of how she would look as a weary old woman.
He had never loved her so much.
At last he tossed the towel away, but still kept hold of her.
‘I can’t believe the way things went wrong with us without warning,’ he said.
‘There may have been no warning to you,’ she said. ‘For me, there was.’
‘But everything was beautiful between us. We made love and found that our hearts and minds were open. We could talk and trust each other. I thought it was wonderful. Was I wrong?’
‘No,’ she cried passionately. ‘It was wonderful. But that was what scared me. It was wonderful once before. All that trust and hope for the future. I know how little it means because I had those feelings with Jack, and they ended in a smash-up. I loved him so much. I was ready to give him everything I had, everything I was, everything I might be, and I thought it was the same with him.’
She began to pace the room.
‘After that night you and I spent together, I woke up full of fear. It made no sense when things were so good between us, but I had this terrible sense of darkness. I tried to force it away, and I might have managed it, but then that Christmas carol came on the radio. And suddenly I was back there with Jack.
‘Christmas was coming and our wedding was set for the New Year. The church was booked, the reception, the presents had started to arrive. I went to see him at his flat, and I was so stupid that I never realised anything was wrong. I could see he had something on his mind but I thought he was planning a special surprise for me.
‘There were carol singers in the street below. They were singing that carol; how joy was here for ever and there would be “New day, new hope, new life”. And it seemed to fit us so exactly that I began to sing the words. Jack looked a bit embarrassed. I’ll never forget that look on his face, but of course it was because he was about to tell me that it was all over.
‘I had some mistletoe that I’d been keeping hidden, waiting for the right moment to produce it. I thought it was the perfect moment. I brought out the mistletoe and held it up, saying “This is where you’re supposed to kiss me.”
‘But he just looked more embarrassed, and suddenly blurted out that he would never kiss me again. It was over. He was marrying someone else. I just stood there, trying to take it in, and all the time those words were floating up from the street. Since then, I’ve never been able to hear them without a shudder, but until that day I didn’t know how deep it went.’
‘But one song—’
‘That’s what I’ve tried to tell myself, but it’s more. That one carol seems to sum it all up. The very fact that we were so happy seems like a threat. I’m afraid of happiness. I daren’t let myself feel it because I can’t face what happens when it ends.’
‘And you think it will end with us? You don’t trust me to be true to you? How can I prove it?’
‘You can’t. It’s my fault, not yours. After Jack, I shut out love, hid myself away from it. That’s why I live as I do, because it keeps love away. Let people think of me as a floozie who doesn’t need real feeling! It makes me angry sometimes, but it also keeps me safe, and safe is what I want to