She’s escaped—lighthearted, light-headed, the snowflakes whirl: silvered pinwheels strung high between the lampposts, pasteboard angels and flocked stars glittering down the kaleidoscope of Regent Street, their illuminations, blue-red and sparkling white, leaving tracers streaming the avenue punctuated by the taillights of passing cars, all of it a magic lantern show reflected on the cold, benumbed faces of the marveling shoppers. She erupted from the Underground at Piccadilly Circus—Eros, child of Chaos, directing six-way traffic on one bronze foot—and headed first toward stylish Jermyn Street, to Paxton and Whitfield, to Fortnum & Mason; then north beyond Nash’s graceful curving quadrant to Hamley’s toy shop, to Liberty, to Dickins & Jones; to an early movie, her next stop, the first she’ll have seen in nearly two years. Back at the flat she’s got clean clothes, groceries, mail; while Ted fumbled over the children yesterday morning, she invested the necessary time at the phone kiosk trawling her address book, turning up an invitation for Christmas dinner, a last-minute baby-minder, neighbors for a toddlers’ tea. With Dido’s Millie installed at home with the children for the afternoon, Sylvia moves strategically through the holiday throngs, horizontal with bags and packages, pausing to let someone pass who’s carrying even more than she, in homely ecstasies over this sudden gulp of liberation, brimming with gratitude for the innocent flimsiness of commercial good cheer. The swags of greenery, the bell ringers, the theatrical window displays, the heat in her cheeks, her swanky new get-up back from the cleaners: She’s heady with London, this glorious venerable bustle, this Dickensian urban hum, and she gapes like a child in the midst of it. Waves of black-suited businessmen in bowlers, sprigs of holly tucked into their lapels, carry little glossy satchels in their bare-knuckled fingers and string bags of oranges imported from Spain. Chic young wives in fur hats pose for the doorman as he swings wide the heavy, brass-trimmed portal under Liberty’s Tudor awning. Fierce, harried mothers like herself—gathering loot, scouring toy shelves, insisting that the aproned clerk climb his stepladder to reach for the last wooden train or the one baby doll whose packaging isn’t crinkled. She’s found a striped rubber ball and that last wooden train for Nick, fine flowery cottons and crocheted trimming for doll clothes, Swiss chocolates and sticky candies, blown-glass baubles and red satin ribbon to hang gingerbread hearts on the tree she’ll decorate in secret on Christmas Eve, after the children are asleep. She’s even eyed the velvet toreador pants at Dickins & Jones for herself, making a mental note to come back for the January sales and splurge with the last of her birthday stash.