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Thinking of changing the subject, or perhaps to try to get something a little more human out of him, she opened her mouth to ask another question, but James was on a roll. Eyes glazed, arms gesturing, he began to talk her through the show in great detail, but yet not enough to actually give away any of his tricks. Every other sentence seemed to be about the audience’s rapturous applause, their amazing gazes, their cries of delight. Charlotte noticed the driver pull up a glass partition screen between them, and hoped they got where they were going soon, so that she could concentrate on food instead.

She had thought they might be going to a restaurant, but instead they drove out of town, coming to a stop by a remote forest road.

‘My dear, we must alight here.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I have another surprise.’

Charlotte wasn’t all that keen to follow James into a snowy forest, but the driver came with them, seemingly on some other instruction. Opening a gate while glancing nervously back at the car as though it would get stolen the moment they went out of sight, he led them down a woodland track to a clearing in the trees.

‘Your second chariot of the evening.’

What Charlotte could only describe as a hovercraft decked out to look like a floating Christmas sleigh sat idling beneath a towering stand of pine, illuminated by so many fairy lights it was difficult to look at. The size of a small car, it had a raised platform with seats, a stepladder set up to allow them to climb up. Another man sat ready at the controls, wearing the same uniform as the driver of the Rolls Royce. The two men waved at each other, then the driver headed back up the track to the car while the second climbed down from the hovercraft-sleigh to help James and Charlotte up. As they settled into their seats, he turned and smiled.

‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Would you like any particular music to listen to during the ride?’

Charlotte, suitably overawed enough to at least suppress any feelings of guilt, nodded. ‘Do you have Jingle Bells?’

James’s face soured. ‘Can’t you think of something else? Something more romantic?’

‘It’s my favourite song.’

‘Well, I suppose.’ James’s ruffled feathers settled back into place. ‘Jingle Bells it is.’

The driver pressed a button and the song began, coming up from a speaker below their feet. James forced a smile as Charlotte patted her gloves together and swayed in time to the music.

‘Off we go,’ the driver said.

The hovercraft-sleigh bounced along a snowy track, heading deep into the forest. Charlotte had absolutely no clue where they were, but after about fifteen minutes she saw lights through the trees, and they emerged in a clearing encircled by fairy lights with a log cabin standing in the centre. Two men in chef’s outfits stood outside on a veranda, waving as they approached.

‘A little magic in the middle of the forest,’ James said, as the hovercraft-sleigh pulled up outside the cabin and the driver got down. He set up the stepladder and helped them down.

‘This is incredible,’ Charlotte said. ‘Did you arrange all of this yourself?’

‘Of course,’ James said. Then, raising a hand into the air, he clicked his fingers and a circle of fireworks rose from the trees all around them, exploding in the clear sky above. Charlotte flinched, but James put out his other hand and wrapped his cape around her. With a grin, he said, ‘And now … shall we eat?’

The cabin contained a single table. The two chefs brought out a lengthy course of complex dishes, explaining each one in exquisite detail. Charlotte hadn’t realised there was so much to know about the way a scallop was cooked or about which mountain a sprig of parsley had been grown on, but each time James felt the need to ask additional questions, so that by the time they were able to eat, Charlotte had to force herself not to consume whatever lonely morsel was positioned somewhere on each oversized plate in a couple of frantic bites. James, who perhaps had done what she wished she had, and eaten a sandwich before coming out, kept up a relentless monologue the whole way through, talking about places he had been, famous people he had met, crowds he had wooed.

Some of it was fascinating, particularly when he mentioned someone famous off the telly whom she knew, but a lot of it went straight over her head, and to be honest, she was starting to get a little bored. Even after a couple of hours, and nine or ten courses of complicated dishes which still left her hungry, she didn’t feel like she really knew anything about him.

‘So,’ she said, trying to squeeze in a question while he took a bite of some wafer thing with green speckled sauce on the top, ‘do you have any brothers or sisters?’

James sighed. He lifted a hand, rested his knuckles on his forehead and dipped his head in what looked like a practised pose.

‘None by blood. But I do have a family, here in Brentwell. Of sorts. I had hoped that by coming back here, I might have given them a chance to reach out, to make amends.’

‘Oh? Make amends for what?’

‘For how they treated me. How they tried to sabotage my career.’

‘Really? How did they do that?’

‘I would rather end this subject, if you don’t mind. I find the memories … painful.’

Charlotte, however, had finally found something about him that was truly interesting. Sad, perhaps, but interesting nonetheless.

‘Didn’t you say before that you had a stepmother?’