Page 43 of The Secret Christmas Library

‘Uh-huh,’ he said, and once again she was conscious – warmly, embarrassingly conscious – that she had absolutely no idea where the line was between them; if there was something there, or if she had imagined the entire thing.

Taking off her mittens, she fumbled with the straps with cold fingers, and nearly fell over.

‘Come here and sit down,’ he said. ‘This is a very comfortable . . . um, rock . . . ’

She did so, and he knelt on the ground and started tying the buckles together tightly to make her shoes secure.

It felt oddly personal, him on one knee down by her feet.

She looked at his bent head, the sandy hair falling over his face, and thought, what would it be like?

What if he were bending over her feet . .

. and leaning down to kiss her ankle . .

. which would be tanned, somehow, obviously .

. . and then he would kiss her, slowly, taking his time, bit by bit, slowly moving up her body, looking up at her with his piercing eyes, that smile that went right through her.

She felt a blush rise to her cheeks, suddenly in that instant wanting nothing more than to be held tightly in his arms; to crush herself against him; lift her legs around his long, lean torso . . .

‘What?’

‘What?’ she said, startled, as he did, indeed, fix those hazel eyes on her. There were flecks of green in them.

‘You looked absolutely miles away.’

‘Nothing!’ Suddenly, Roger came over and licked her hand and for reasons completely mysterious to Jamie she burst out laughing. ‘I was miles away. Never mind.’

She was still pink, and he looked at her curiously and straightened up, blocking out the sun in front of her. ‘Ready?’ He held out his hand.

She looked up at him, took a deep breath, and grabbed hold of it.

‘To die? Always.’

Down on the loch, Esme was already circling, and, as she stood up, Mirren stopped for a moment to watch her, her long, slim body encased in high-end ski gear, making her look chic, rather than, for example, a woman who wore all her clothes at the same time to avoid budget airline baggage charges, the way Mirren did.

She was a lovely skater, could turn, and go backwards, and Mirren, watching her, couldn’t help but feel a tug of envy.

Theo, it was becoming obvious, didn’t really have a clue what he was doing, and was clumping extremely nervously around the side of the loch.

There was a wooden deck, for jumping and diving in the summer, and he was holding on very hard to that and stumbling forward, still looking very, very wan.

There were no ominous creaking noises, Mirren noticed.

‘Is the ice definitely okay?’

Esme heard this and rolled her eyes. She stood right in the middle and stomped loudly with her skates on. ‘Come on, City Mouse,’ she said. ‘It’s perfectly safe.’

Mirren took a step and skidded, went slightly off balance and put her arm out. Jamie caught her, effortlessly.

‘Come on,’ he said, tucking her arm into his left elbow, and leading her down to the side of the dock with his right hand. ‘Okay,’ he said, as they stood, the ice solid under their feet, with a leaf and a few twigs here and there that Esme was picking up. ‘You ready?’

Mirren smiled.

‘My icy doom,’ she said, and held on tight, as he skated out, firmly, to the middle of the lake.

This ice was different from skating-rink ice: it was bumpy, where the water had formed in crenellations, and it was dirty, but the old skates were solid and square and non-aerodynamic, designed instead to cut through debris; they worked surprisingly well.

The real surprise, though, was Jamie. He led them to the other side, far away from Esme’s antics and from Theo, who was still holding tightly to the dock and looking very uninspired.

Keeping close to the centre where the ice was smoothest, Jamie started to pull Mirren round in vast circles.

It was quite the contrast, his nervous demeanour in the house, compared to here, where he moved confidently, freely.

He was fast, and Mirren was soon breathless trying to keep up with him – but she could keep up, she found, to her amazement, once she stopped worrying about twisting her ankle or the ice cracking, and simply let herself go.

Once she relaxed into his grip, they became even faster and he passed her from hand to hand, simply because he could, and she found herself laughing out loud, staring up at the blue sky, her cheeks pink, her breath white, and felt something she couldn’t quite put her finger on, and then realised: it was joy.

It was a joyous thing to do on Christmas Eve morn; a joyous crisp, sunny, icy day to be abroad, to forget everything else in her life and just enjoy, for once, this moment, with no phone, no photos, no worries, no family, nothing, except a strong hand in hers; a place where it felt completely natural to be.

She heard the scraping of the metal blades on the hard-frozen lake – earth stood hard as iron, Mirren found herself thinking, water like a stone.

She felt the cold air in her face, the laughter and fresh air in her lungs, as he spun her under his arm and somehow, miraculously, she managed it and ended up back there, facing him, both of them laughing at one another.

‘Oh, my God, are you guys waltzing?’ came Esme’s voice, breaking the spell, and they started to slow their turns, both of them pink-faced and out of breath and staring at one another.

‘And what the hell is that?’ said Esme suddenly, and they both turned around, Mirren afraid once again that the ice was going to crack.

But it wasn’t. It was just Theo being copiously sick by the side of the dock, and the spell of the morning was broken.

They packed the skates away at the far side of the little loch.

‘Thank you,’ said Mirren, meaning it. ‘That was a lot of fun.’

‘Did it make up for the fact that there aren’t going to be any presents apart from the books?’

‘The books are enough. Plus, that was a gift,’ said Mirren, quite seriously.

He grinned. ‘Not everyone thought so.’ Although Theo, it appeared, was much recovered after his spew and was marching on happily.

They went to catch them up. About two hundred metres due north of the loch was a gate that led out to the clifftop, the sea far below them on the right.

And there, beyond the gate, was the twisting, turning, white-fringed deep green of a hedge maze.