Page 72 of All I Want for Christmas

Darcy’s eyebrows raised up. ‘You don’t have a Christmas tree?’

‘No.’

‘What?...Never?’

‘No.’

The card machine beeped as the payment went through and the vendor handed back his card and the toy, now tissue-wrapped and placed in a paper bag.

‘How can younothave a Christmas tree?’ she asked in astonishment as he started to move along again. She had to skip to catch him up.

‘Because I don’t celebrate Christmas.’

‘Why not? Religious reasons? Lack thereof?’

He turned to look at her. ‘Because I don’t do Christmas. That’s all.’

It was no answer, but clearly he had no intention of opening up to her on his opinions of the Holy Trinity. They walked past some more stalls in silence, but if he was emotionally distant, he remained close by her side, his hand ever hovering behind her but never quite touching.

She gave a shiver, and he noticed. ‘Cold?’

She nodded, seeing he was wearing the scarf Angelina had passed to him at the weekend. Cashmere, no doubt; it probably still smelled of her perfume.

‘I know how to warm you up,’ he said. She looked at him sharply, but he was already heading for a hot drinks stall. ‘A hot chocolate,’ he said to the stallholder. He glanced back at her. ‘Hold the cream?’

She shook her head.

‘What are you? Ten?...You want the sugar dump?’ he asked, surprised.

She shrugged. ‘Sugar. Tequila. Crystal meth...My days are long at the moment.’

He grinned as he looked back at the stallholder. ‘With creamandmarshmallows.’

Darcy’s gaze fell to the neighbouring stall and she drifted over while the drink was being made to admire some ceramic lamps she saw there – they were matt white domes studded with tiny pinpricks, tracing the shapes of angels and stars, through which the light shone.

‘Here,’ he murmured, joining her a few moments later.

‘Thanks.’

They began to walk again, but more slowly now; ambling past the stalls, along avenues punctuated with Christmas tree sellers and small fairground rides. They passed larger-than-life-size reindeer figures, completely made of lights. Max pointed at an elaborate Cinderella coach – as round as a pumpkin and lit like a birthday cake – where people were paying to have their photograph taken.

‘You should get a picture. Remember this day for ever,’ he said drily.

‘I’m not sure this should be the memento of my only Christmas in Copenhagen,’ she replied with equal cynicism.

He looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean, only?’

‘Well, I’m here for a year. I’ll be heading back to London come the summer...You knew that, surely?’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘Yeah. Of course...I wasn’t thinking.’

She watched him, wishing she could see inside his head, wondering if even then he would remain an enigma to her.

‘Watch out,’ he said suddenly, hooking his arm around her and pulling her out of the way of a man coming towards them at pace with a beer barrel on his shoulder. ‘...You okay?’

‘Sure,’ she nodded. But as they resumed walking, his arm didn’t drop from her waist and she fell into the daydream she’d been trying to ignore – being with him here, not on anerrand but out of choice, the two of them wandering around together on a Saturday, in their jeans and not their work clothes, his arm slung lazily over her shoulder, kissing her hair as they shopped for the quiet Christmas they’d enjoy together at his place...Why was it such an impossibility, when she knew he was drawn to her too?

She finished her drink and looked around for the nearest bin. Reluctant to leave his accidental embrace, she nonetheless headed over and dropped the cup in, her eyes catching on another lamp stall; these projector lamps were wooden and revolved slowly and she dropped into a half-crouch to watch, enchanted for a moment.

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