The Yuletide Child

who! I want to go into rehearsal with the new ballet some time in the autumn, and the company goes on summer tour to the States in July, remember.’
Her mind washed with memories of other summer tours: humid New York, noisy Chicago, Kansas City, Missouri’s wonderful Spanish architecture, long nights of trying to sleep with the wail of police cars and ambulances outside in city streets.
Up early to rehearse on bare stages, the temptations of hot dogs and burgers from street sellers, the buzz of excitement on first nights, the passionate applause of audiences who had never seen them before but who were heartwarmingly generous—it had all been wonderful and exhausting.
Oh, she couldn’t deny she would miss it in some ways, but she had done that, been there, got the T-shirt. It was all part of that receding life she was finished with. Sometimes you had to make choices, lose one thing to gain another. Even before she’d met Ross she had known she didn’t share Michael’s tunnel vision, his utterly focused obsession with ballet. She had loved dancing, loved the friends, the sense of comradeship in the company, loved the applause, too, and even the hard work, but she had tired of the sacrifices you had to make to stay at the top, the difficulty of a private life, the fact that you couldn’t have a child because being pregnantmeant not dancing for months, meant stretching your muscles out of shape, indeed changed your whole body for ever. After years of it, she had tired of the strains and demands on your energy and attention. Ross had been the catalyst, but she knew she had no longer been so fixated on the life of a dancer before she’d met him.
Impossible to say all that to Michael. He would never understand. Standing on tiptoe, she brushed her mouth against his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Michael.’ Getting back into the flower wagon, she started the engine, gave him a last wave and drove away without looking back. It was the only way to go.
If she was lucky she would get home before Ross, she thought, as she bombed down the road home. It had been an exhausting day, physically and emotionally. For the first time ever she was happy to see the forest coming into view.
Then her heart sank as she saw Ross’s Land Rover parked on the drive in front of their garage. He was home before her. Well, at least he would have read her note and would realise why she had had to go out to drive Michael up to Carlisle.
As she pulled up outside the house the front door opened and Ross strode out, his face thunderous.
‘Where the hell have you been all this time? I was worried sick about you. I got back three hours ago. I thought you must have walked to the village so I drove there to look for you, and when everyone said you hadn’t been there today I didn’t know what to think.’
‘Didn’t you get my note?’
‘What note? I didn’t see any note.’ He stood beside the flower wagon, staring at it, his frown lifting. ‘Oh, I see—Phil brought that ridiculous object, did he? And you just had to take it out at once! Has he gone backalready? Why didn’t you ask him to stay the night? He’ll be exhausted, going straight back home after such a long trip down to London, then up here, and we have a perfectly good couple of spare rooms.’
She was about to tell him that it had been Michael who’d brought her car when the telephone began to shrill.
‘That will probably be Alan. He said he’d ring to let me know there were no further problems,’ said Ross, hurrying indoors.
Dylan followed more slowly and found him just hanging up. Ross swung to stare angrily at her, eyes cold, mouth bitter.
‘That was Phil. He was ringing to check that Michael had delivered your car safely.’
Dry-mouthed, Dylan started to explain, but stammered. ‘I w-w-was j-just going to tell you when the phone rang...’
‘I bet you were! Just like you left me this mythical note!’
She looked at the kitchen table; it was bare. ‘I did leave one.’ Bending, she stared at the floor under and around the table, but the note hadn’t blown off; there was no sign of it.
‘Don’t bother with the acting,’ Ross bit out ‘I know how good at mime you are! When did he arrive? How long was he here?’
‘He got here this morning, but he didn’t stay long.’
‘You would say that, wouldn’t you. Where have you been in your car? Taking him to whatever hotel he’s staying at?’
She was torn between a desire to placate him and a resentful desire to shout back. Ross was jumping to allsorts of conclusions before he had given her a chance to explain, defend herself.
She chose to speak softly, not to fight fire with fire. ‘He’s on his way back to London—I drove him to Carlisle to pick up a hire car. He hates travelling by train; it makes him sick.’
‘He got here this morning,’ Ross said flatly. ‘He didn’t stay long. You drove him to Carlisle—you should have been there by lunchtime. So where have you been since then?’
‘W-we had lunch at a pub.’ Her stammer was back. Her skin was cold and, no doubt, pale.
‘And?’ Ross was relentless. He wasn’t letting her off the hook until he had all the details out of her.
‘M-Mi...” Under Ross’s cold eyes she could not get the name out. ‘He wanted to see Hadrian’s Wall while he was up here. He’s always been interested in Roman history; he gets some of his inspiration from history, myth...the past generally. We weren’t there long. We just walked around one or two sites, and then I dropped him in Carlisle after lunch.’
Ross took a step closer, staring into her nervous eyes. ‘Did anything happen between you?’
Heat ran up under her skin. ‘Wh-wh-what?’
‘You know what I mean—the man’s obsessed with you. Did he try to