Constance had already found her way into the TV room and turned on the set. A flawless young blond was in the middle of a solo of ‘Silent Night’, the camera all but shoved down his tenor throat. A dentist could have examined his teeth.

‘Queer as Dick’s hatband,’ Constance decided.

Finally the camera drew back and panned the choir, all eager young faces and clean hair, washed in the blood of the lamb they wanted it known, for what audience would be watching them but old Christian shut-ins, pining for the promised land?

‘It’s indecent for us to watch this,’ Diana said, getting up and switching from channel to channel. There must be something fit for a couple of old pagans like us.’

The only movie she could find was a war film. Flashing guns and exploding bombs were even worse than all those sleigh bells in the snow.

‘We don’t have to watch,’ Constance said reasonably. ‘Turn it off and remember something for me.’

Diana turned from switching off those alien images and said, ‘Christmas in Borrego Springs.’

The name called up no recognition in Constance’s face, but she waited, receptive.

‘We flew down to San Diego and after a couple of days there, we rented a car and drove over to the desert. There was snow in the mountains, not enough to make driving difficult, just enough to whiten the trees. As we got further east, the trees and the snow disappeared, and then down below us in the bright sun there was the desert.

‘You’d never seen the desert before, and I had to stop the car at the first cactus. You got out and set right off across the sand. It was warm. There was a dry breeze. Even I could walk and I did. We must have wandered around for an hour before we got back into the car and drove into the town to find a place to stay, a motel right in town that first time. We had an enormous bed, a tiny kitchen, and a big bare living room.

‘We realized why there weren’t any rugs. A little woman who talked to herself had to sweep out the sand every day. The wind never really stopped blowing. The tumbleweed piled up against the fences, and some days the wind blew so hard the deck furniture would slide right into the pool, but there were trails at the foot of the mountains where you could get out of the wind. One day we followed a little stream part way up the mountain and had a picnic sitting on a boulder looking out over the valley. You said the golf courses looked like patches of spilled green ink in that great spread of dusty gold. And we could see the squares of date palm and grapefruit orchards.