He shook away the knowledge of what happened next and who’d been involved and, slithering occasionally on the snow, hurried across Main Road where every house had a Christmas tree or advent candles in a window.

Hoping to find Laurel in the studio, he took the side path and was glad to find the ghosts of earlier footprints heading only one way across the garden. Plants poking through the blanket of snow reminded him of painting the Christmas scene and Laurel saying, ‘things grow through snow, not on it’. The studio lights were on and he caught a glimpse of Laurel standing close to a big canvas, lips half-parted in concentration. Her hair was pulled back and a big shirt spattered with paint covered the lush body he loved to hold.

He hesitated, wondering whether to disturb her. But then she must have seen him from the corner of her eye because her smile blazed, a smile so welcoming it made his heart bounce about. He stamped snow from his boots before letting himself in through the door.

She welcomed him warmly. ‘Finished at the fair already?’

He closed the distance between them and, avoiding the loaded paintbrush in her hand, dropped several kisses on her face, grinning at the pink paint flecks on her forehead. ‘It’s dead today. I packed up early.’ He rested his cheek against hers to study her canvas. Last time he’d seen it, it had been little more than a sketch of light and shade.

Now, much of the main body of the painting was done. A happy, dancing woman turned her face up to whirling funnels of snow while a man watched, entranced, from the shadows. The woman’s dress and hair fragmented into an explosion of flowers that seemed to eddy in her wake. The reflection gleaming in an icy puddle at the woman’s feet was so realistic he wanted to touch it. The top right corner of the canvas, which was just taller than Laurel, was in deepest black and red shadow overlaid with tiny stencilled patterns. ‘Awesome,’ he breathed.

She nestled against him. ‘I’ve been building up texture and now I’m using the wrong end of the brush to scratch in movement in her hair. Sgraffito.’

‘It’s so obvious you’re trained and I’m self-taught,’ he observed, absorbed by the vibrant, joyful picture. ‘Look at the blues and purples in her hair.’ She felt so right in his arms that he pulled her closer.