no use,’ she sighed. ‘I can still feel him. Perhaps another glass of champagne would wipe him away.’
‘I know something better,’ he said softly and laid his mouth against hers.
It was over in a second. His lips touched hers for a brief moment, just long enough to obliterate Vanlen, then they were gone.
Through the dim light, he saw the wild astonishment in her eyes and could just make out her lips shaping his name.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘I thought it might help.’
‘I—’
‘Come on.’ Taking her hand firmly, he led her back to where the crowd was beginning to disperse.
David was there, looking around, brightening when he saw her. ‘Ready to go?’ he asked cheerfully.
‘Yes…yes…’
‘I think she’s tired,’ Roscoe said. ‘The sooner she goes home, the better. Excuse me.’
He was gone.
In the car home Pippa pretended to be asleep so that she could avoid talking. But later, when she got into bed, she lay awake all night, staring into the darkness, trying to see what could not be seen and understand what could not be understood.
The following evening she went to have a family dinner at her beloved grandparents’ house on Crimea Street, and where she herself had lived for the last two years of their lives. These days Frank, his wife and children, lived there, with her other brother, Brian, just down the street. Now they returned her car with an air of triumph at having made it usable again.
Pippa hadn’t been back to the old home much recently, and for a while she could enjoy the company of her parents, nephews and nieces, most of whom lived no more than two streets away.
With so many children, it was inevitable that the Christmas decorations should go up early.
‘I keep telling them that it’s still too soon,’ Brian’s wife, Ruth, said in laughing despair. ‘But you might as well talk to the moon. As far as they’re concerned, it’s Christmas already. Hold that paper chain, would you?’
Pippa smiled mechanically. It was true, as David had suggested, that she had her own reasons for shying away from Christmas—for her, it had been a time of heartbreak. But this was no time to inflict her feelings on her family, so she spent a conventional evening climbing a stepladder and hanging up tinsel.
There was a moment of excitement when a box was brought down from the attic. Dust rose as it was unpacked, but the contents were disappointing.
‘A couple of tatty scarves,’ Ruth said disparagingly. ‘Gloves. Some old books. Let’s throw them out.’
‘No, give them to me,’ Pippa said quickly. She’d recognised the gloves as a pair Dee had worn, and it would be nice to keep them as a memento.
She wandered through the house, glancing into the bedroom where they had slept together until the end. Pippa’s mother Lilian crept in behind her and surveyed the double bed, which was still the same one where the old people had embraced each other as they’d drifted contentedly to the end of the road.
‘They were very happy together,’ she sighed. ‘And yet I can never see this room without feeling sad.’
‘I came in one morning to find that Gran had died in the night,’ Pippa remembered, ‘and Grandma was holding him. It wasn’t very long after they took that trip to Brighton, the honeymoon they never had.’
‘And they wouldn’t have had even that if you hadn’t taken them,’ Lilian recalled. ‘They told me it was the last thing that made everything perfect. Afterwards, they just slipped away.’
‘And that was what they both wanted,’ Pippa said. ‘Even missing them terribly, I couldn’t be unhappy for them. All they cared about was being together, and now they always will be.’
‘And one day that’s what you’ll have,’ Lilian said, regarding her tenderly. ‘Just be patient.’
‘Honestly, Mum, I don’t think like that any more. You start off telling yourself, “Never mind, there’s always next time”. But there isn’t really. There won’t be a next time for me, and it’s better if I face that now.’
‘Oh, darling, don’t say that,’ Lilian protested, almost tearful. ‘You can’t live your life without love.’
‘Why not? I have a great time, a successful job, a good social life—’
‘Oh, yes, every man falls at your feet in the first ten minutes,’ Lilian said with motherly disapproval.
‘Not quite every man,’ Pippa murmured.
‘Good. I’m glad some of them make you think.’
‘Mum, please stop. I did my thinking years ago when a certain person did his vanishing act. That’s it. The man who can change my mind hasn’t been born.’
‘You’re only talking like this because you’re always depressed at Christmas, but I just know that one day someone will make your heart beat faster.’
‘You mean like Dad does with you?’ Pippa asked mischievously.
‘I admit your father’s no romantic hero, but he’s a decent man with a sweet temper. If he’d only stop breeding ferrets I’d have no complaints.’
‘Is someone talking about me?’ came a voice from the stairs as Pippa’s plump, balding father appeared.
In the laughter that followed, the subject was allowed to die and she was able to escape.
They all think it’s so easy, she mused. Find a man who makes your heart beat faster and that’s it. But suppose you don’t like him because he’s hard and cynical, and he looks down on you even while he’s looking you over. Suppose he infuriates you because you can’t stop thinking about him when you don’t want to, so that you just get angrier and angrier. Suppose he’s the wrong man in every possible way but that doesn’t seem to help because when he looks at you it makes you think of things you’d rather not think of. And then he does something—the last thing you expected—and it makes you want…it makes you want…oh, to hell with it! And him!
Charlie called her the next day and they arranged to meet for dinner the following evening.
‘And don’t worry about Roscoe turning up because he’s gone to Los Angeles,’ Charlie added.
‘Los Angeles?’ she murmured, recalling the words she’d overheard in his office. ‘But he was so definite about not going, said it was a waste of time.’
‘I know, and then suddenly he changed his mind, which is something he never does.’
‘Everybody does sometimes,’ she said mechanically, trying to ignore certain thoughts that clamoured for entrance to her mind.
They were astounding thoughts. They said he’d gone away to escape
