‘Don’t ever touch me again,’ Helen whispered. Then she turned and walked away, along the gallery and down the stairs with the greens and lemons of her dress floating around her like a summer morning.

Tom’s fingers smoothed the red patch on his face. ‘Bitch,’ he murmured under his breath. Then he thought of pliant, flowery Pansy in her blue ruffles, and after Helen’s dark fury, the beautiful face in his mind’s eye looked dim and vacuous.

As soon as Helen knew that she was out of Tom’s sight, she almost broke into a run. The hall was crowded with people, talking and laughing and gathering round the Christmas tree ready for the stroke of midnight. Blindly she pushed through them, wishing she had turned the other way for the sanctuary of her room.

She was shocked by the violence of her reaction to Tom. He had seemed an ally. Yet a few moments had changed that irreparably. As she forced her way through the revellers Helen had a vertiginous sense of everything peeling away, running out like the last moments of the year, and leaving her standing alone.

Unthinkingly, she was following the route that she had taken with Oliver and Pansy last night. Now she found herself standing in front of the billiard room door. The solid panels offered a secure retreat. She had pushed the door open and closed it behind her before she saw that the room wasn’t empty. Someone was sitting on the corner of the table, turning a billiard cue to and fro in his fingers. With the room lit only by the long light behind him, it was impossible to see his face. She groped again for the handle but he called after her.

‘You don’t have to run away.’

When she looked back he had moved, and she could see him clearly. He had a homely, rubbery face and colourless hair that fell untidily over his forehead. She guessed that he was about thirty. From the weathered but capable hands wrapped round the cue, she thought he might be a farmer, or perhaps a vet. When he smiled, his unmemorable face lit up with quiet good humour.

‘Good,’ Helen said. ‘I can’t think of anywhere else to run to.’

The man made room for her on the corner of the billiard table and she swung herself up to sit beside him. He looked at his watch.

‘A minute to twelve. If I’d brought some glasses and a bottle of champagne we could have toasted each other.’

‘But you didn’t …’

‘So we can’t.’

They broke into laughter. The seconds ticked by and then they heard the long, sonorous strokes of a clock chiming midnight. At once there was a gale of clapping and cheering and then the raucous singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne’.

The stranger smiled again at Helen.

‘Happy New Year,’ he said, and she answered, ‘Happy New Year.’