‘Merry Christmas Harry darling. I do love you, and of course I’ll think about what you’ve said.’ She held on to him for a moment. ‘Oh Harry. If only Em could’ve—’

‘I know Franny,’ said Harry, ‘I know.’ For just a moment they held each other. And then she went into her bedroom and Harry wriggled down under the duvet on the sofa. He missed his own bed. But it was only once a year. He fell asleep almost at once.

Frances turned off the bedside lamp, lay in her double bed in the bedroom of the flat she had rented for over twenty years, since the break-up of her marriage with the laughing dentist. She did not go to sleep.

She cared for Harry more than anyone else she knew, and she guessed he had made the suggestion because she had said she was lonely. He was a good person.

But hidden in a very secret part of her mind was the vision of lonely ageing actresses at first nights and parties with gay men, the fag hags people called them, the animated chatter and the waving and the loud loud smiles.

She was just drifting off to sleep when there was an urgent, noisy ring on the doorbell. She sat up at once, heard Harry stir in the next room, quickly put her dressing gown over her shoulders as she opened her door. In the doorway between the two rooms, as the doorbell rang loudly again, she stood blinking at Harry who had put a light on. She knew that however ridiculous it seemed they were both thinking at once of Emmy Lou, as if Emmy had somehow come back for Christmas after all.

‘We are stupid,’ she said aloud, ‘look, it’s only ten-thirty.’ But as she went towards her own front door she turned and said, ‘Come with me Harry?’

At the main door downstairs a harrassed-looking man in uniform stood holding a huge bunch of yellow and white and pink roses.

‘Good heavens,’ said Frances.

‘Miss Frances Kitson?’

‘Yes.’ She looked at him, puzzled.

‘I am so sorry to arrive so late with these, they should have been here hours and hours ago but I had an accident, skidded in the snow – I had to wait for hours for the AA to come, to get going again.’ He stood there in the night, surrounded by roses, the scent of them drifted between the darkness and the light. At last Frances took them from him.

‘Will you come in?’ she said, bemused still. ‘Have a drink, get warm?’

‘No, no, thank you, I must get back now, I think the roses are all right, I didn’t let them get too hot in the car, I laid them in the snow for a while.’

‘Roses in the snow, what a lovely picture.’ Frances smiled at him. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t come in?’