‘And, just so there’s no misunderstanding,’ he continued, scanning the shelves as they moved on, ‘the only thing I was asking Frank to keep an eye open for was anyone else showing signs of the bug that laid Pam low.’

‘But-’

‘The last thing I need at this time of year is an epidemic. Staff passing it on to the children visiting the grotto.’

She looked up at him, searched his face. He submitted patiently to her scrutiny, as if he understood what she was doing. He looked genuine but so had everyone else she’d met in the last few months. All those nice people who had been lying to her.

She could no longer trust her own judgement.

‘Can I believe you?’

‘It doesn’t really matter what I say, does it? If I’ve called Henshawe to tell him where you are there is no escape. If I haven’t, then you’re safe. Only time can set your mind at rest.’

‘So,’ she asked, a wry smile pulling at her lip, ‘is that a yes or a no?’

His only response was to reach for a bottle of maple syrup and add it to the trolley.

‘Suppose I insisted on leaving?’ she persisted. ‘Right this minute.’

‘I’d find you some warm clothes and then drive you wherever you wanted to go.’

‘Why?’

‘Because, interesting though that outfit is, I imagine you’d rather leave wearing something that doesn’t look as if you’ve escaped from a pantomime.’

Lucy discovered that she couldn’t speak.

‘Because you’re under my roof, Lucy. Staff, temp, customer, you’re my responsibility.’

She shook her head in disbelief.

‘You’re afraid I’d trick you? That I’d take you to him?’

He didn’t appear to take offence which, considering the way she’d been casting doubt on his character, was suspicious in itself and Lucy shook her head again. Her entire world had been turned upside down for the second time in months, but this time not for the good.

‘I can’t trust anyone. I thought I knew Rupert. I thought he cared for me. I don’t and he doesn’t. The only thing he appears to care about is his profit and loss statement.’

‘Are you sure? I don’t know Henshawe, other than by reputation,’ he continued when she didn’t say anything. ‘What I’ve read in the financial pages. Frankly, he’s not a man I’d want to do business with, but love can change a man.’

‘Well, that’s just rubbish and you know it,’ she declared. ‘The only time you can change a man is when he’s in nappies.’

She saw him pull his lips back tight against his teeth, doing his best not to smile. His eyes let him down.

‘It’s not funny!’ But she found herself struggling with a giggle. ‘Rupert Henshawe is not, and never was, in love with me. What we had was not a romance, I discovered today, but a marketing campaign. That’s why I gave him back his ring.’

‘A masterpiece in understatement, if I might say so. You have a good throwing arm, by the way. Have you ever played cricket?’

‘They showed that on the news?’ She groaned, mortified at the spectacle she’d made of herself. Then she sighed. ‘What does it matter? It’ll be on the front page of every newspaper tomorrow morning. The only story about our relationship that wasn’t carefully stage-managed by his PR team.’

‘You and the PR team got lucky. Tomorrow’s headlines will all be about the weather.’

‘It’s still snowing?’

‘Deep and crisp and even,’ he said. ‘Traffic chaos from one end of the country to the other. It’s no night for an elf to be out.’ He paused. ‘Especially not in something that doesn’t cover her-’

‘I’ve got the picture.’ She tugged on the back of the tunic. ‘Thank you.’

When she still didn’t move he took her hand and pressed his phone, warm from his pocket, into it.

‘If you can’t trust me, take this, call Enquiries and ask for a cab firm, although I warn you you’ll have a long wait in this weather.’

Calling her bluff. He knew she had nowhere to go. She opened it, anyway. Keyed in the number for Enquiries but, before it was answered, she broke the connection.

‘We both know that if I had anywhere to go, anyone to call, I wouldn’t be standing here in this ridiculous outfit,’ she said. ‘I’d be long gone.’

Nat watched her accept the bitter truth and felt his heart breaking for her. No one should be so alone. So friendless.

‘I’m sorry. It’s tough when you love someone and they let you down.’

‘Love is a word, not an emotion, Nathaniel. We’re sold on it from the time we’re old enough to listen to fairy tales. Songs, movies, books… It’s a marketing man’s dream. I was in love with the idea of being in love, that’s all. Swept up in the Cinderella story as much as anyone buying the latest issue of Celebrity. It’s not my heart that’s in a mess. It’s my life.’ About to hand the phone back to him, she said, ‘Actually, would you mind if I sent a message?’

‘You’ve thought of someone?’

Why didn’t that make him feel happier?

‘Half a million someones,’ she replied. ‘My Twitter and Facebook followers. Some of them must be genuine.’

‘It seems a fair bet,’ he admitted. ‘What will you say?’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not about to ask them to descend en masse on Hastings & Hart and rescue me.’

‘Pity. It would make this the best Christmas H &H have ever had,’ he said, then wished he hadn’t.

‘Sorry. While I’d like to oblige you by delivering a store full of customers at opening time, right now I’m doing my best to stay beneath the radar while I figure out what to do.’

‘It’s your call. What will you say?’

‘Trust no one…springs to mind. Or does that sound a touch paranoid?’

‘Just a touch.’ He turned away, giving her a moment to think while he pretended to scan the shelf. ‘And since Henshawe, in his statement to camera regarding your outburst, managed to imply that you not only had an eating disorder but were mainlining tranquillisers to deal with the stress of your new lifestyle, that might not be in your best interests.’

‘He did what?’

‘He was touchingly sincere.’

Her eyes narrowed.

‘I’m just saying. Having met you, I can see how unlikely that is. At least about the eating disorder,’ he added, tossing a packet of chocolate biscuits into the trolley. The ones with really thick chocolate and orange cream in the middle. Maybe they’d tempt her to stay.

‘Thanks for that!’

Lucy noted the chocolate biscuits. The man was not just eye candy. He paid attention…

‘Any time. And, let’s face it, you’re a bit too sparky to be on tranquillisers.’

‘Sparky?’ She grinned. Couldn’t help herself. ‘Sparky?’

‘I was being polite.’

‘Barely,’ she suggested. ‘You’re right, of course. It was my mouth that got me into all this trouble in the first place. But I can see how his mind is working and that does scare me.’ And, just like that, she lost all desire to smile.

‘He blamed the press for causing the problems by hounding you out of the flat you shared with your friends.’

‘If you’re attempting to reassure me, I have to tell you that it’s not working.’

‘You didn’t feel hounded?’

Nat added some crackers to the trolley, then crossed to the cold cabinet and began to load up with milk, juice, salads, cheese.

‘A bit,’ she admitted, trailing after him. ‘I couldn’t move without a lens in my face, but since it was his PR people who were orchestrating the hysteria it seems a bit rich to blame the poor saps wielding the cameras. But I have fair warning what to expect when Rupert catches up with me.’

Nat glanced at her.

‘I’ll be whisked into one of his fancy clinics for my own good,’ she said, responding to his unasked question.

‘He has clinics?’

‘He has a finger in all kinds of businesses, including a chain of clinics that provides every comfort to the distressed celebrity. A nip and tuck while you’re drying out?’ she said, pulling on her cheeks to stretch her mouth. ‘No problem. A little Botox to smooth away the excesses of a coke habit? Step right in. Once he’s got me there, he’ll probably throw away the key.’

Lucy attempted a careless laugh, but he suspected that she was trying to convince herself rather more than him that she was joking.

He was more concerned why Henshawe would want her out of the way that badly-or why she’d think he would-and when he didn’t join in she stopped pretending and frowned at the phone. ‘How about, I’ll be back!…?’ she offered.

‘Will you?’ he asked. ‘Go back?’

‘To Rupert?’ She appeared puzzled. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because that’s what women do.’

‘You think this is just some tiff?’ she demanded when he didn’t answer. ‘That it’ll blow over once I’ve straightened myself out? Got my head together?’

‘It happens,’ he said, pushing her, hoping that she might volunteer some answers.

‘Not in this case.’

She snapped the phone shut without sending any kind of message and offered it back to him.

‘Why don’t you hang on to it for now?’ he suggested. ‘In case you change your mind.’

She looked at him, still unsure of his motives. Then she shrugged, tucked the phone into the pouch at her belt. ‘Thanks.’

Her voice was muffled, thick, and he turned away, picked up a couple of apples and dropped them in the trolley. Giving her a moment. Sparky she might be, but no one could fail to be affected by a bad breakup. Especially one that had been played out in the full gaze of the media. Tears were inevitable.

After a moment she picked up a peach, weighed it in her hand, sniffed it. Replaced it.

‘No good?’ he asked, taking one himself to check it for ripeness.

‘They are a ridiculous price.’

‘I can probably manage if you really want one. I get staff discount.’

That teased a smile out of her, but she shook her head. ‘Peaches are summer fruit. They need to be warm.’

And, just like that, he could see her sitting in the shade of an Italian terrace, grapes ripening overhead, her teeth sinking into the flesh of a perfectly ripe sun-warmed peach straight from the tree. Bare shoulders golden, meltingly relaxed.

Her lips glistening, sweet with the juice…

‘I get why you ran out of the press conference, Lucy,’ he said, crushing the image with cold December reality. ‘But, having dumped the man so publicly, I don’t understand why he’s so desperate to find you.’

She swallowed, managed a careless shrug. ‘I thought you didn’t want to know.’

He didn’t. If he knew, he would be part of it, part of her story. But, conversely, he did, desperately, want her to trust him and the two were intertwined.

‘I have something of his. Something he wants back,’ she admitted.

The file, he thought, remembering the glossy black ring binder she’d been holding up in the news clip. That she’d been carrying in her bag.

It wasn’t there now, he realised.

‘Maybe you should just give it back,’ he suggested. ‘Walk away.’

‘I can’t do that.’

Before he could ask her why, what she’d done with it, she was distracted by the sound of voices coming through the arch that led to the butchery.

‘It’s just one of the cleaning crews,’ he said quickly, seizing her wrist as panic flared in her face and she turned, hunting for the nearest escape route. ‘Good grief, you’re shaking like a leaf. What the hell has he done to you? Do you need the police?’

‘No!’ Her throat moved as she swallowed.

‘Are you sure? What about this?’ he demanded, releasing her wrist, lifting his hand to skim his fingertips lightly over the bruise darkening at her temple.

She stared at him. ‘What? No! A photographer caught me with his camera. It was an accident. Nothing to do with Rupert.’ She looked anxiously towards the archway, the voices were getting nearer. ‘Please…’

‘Okay.’ He wasn’t convinced-he’d heard every variation of the bruise excuse going-but this wasn’t the moment to press it. ‘We’re done here,’ he said, heading for the nearest lift.

‘You can’t take the trolley out of the food hall,’ she protested as the doors opened.

‘You want to stay and pack the groceries into carriers?’ he asked, stopping them from closing with his foot.

A burst of song propelled her into the lift. ‘No, you’re all right.’

‘Doors closing. Going up…’

‘What?’ She turned on him. ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘Believe me, you’ll be a lot safer on the top floor than the bottom one,’ he said quickly. ‘There’ll be no security staff. No curious cleaners wondering why you look familiar. Where they’ve seen you before.’

She opened her mouth, closed it again, her jaw tightening as she swallowed down whatever she was going to say.

‘You’d never have got away with it, Lucy.’

‘You don’t know that,’ she declared, staring straight ahead. ‘And it would test your security staff. If they found me you’d know they’re as good as you think they are.’