Over the past months, Alwena Jones and Buddug Jones had both stopped putting on make-up, which saved them ten minutes in the mornings. They were already looking into their tea when Morfudd came into the dining room. It was Alwena’s idea, to stop smoothing away the wrinkles with foundation and powder: ‘Duw, it’s time we stopped plastering Polyfilla into the cracks… time to grow old disgracefully,’ she’d coaxed. Buddug, being the most weak-willed of the three, had followed suit after a short time. Morfudd, commenting frequently that they both looked like death warmed up, remained faithful to her Seamless Liquid Foundation in porcelain and her Sun Frolic crème puff, but her enthusiastic attempts to disguise the ravages of age often led to grotesque consequences. As Morfudd poured herself a cup of tea, Alwena noticed all the scratches from the rose bushes.

‘You had your hands in Joseff-Fferm’s ferret bag?’ she goaded.

Morfudd smiled, answering, ‘I’ve been sewing the buttons back onto my winter coat after it came back from the dry cleaners.’ Buddug, who was more than a little deaf, said that her Michael was coming for tea.

‘I hope he’ll bring me some roses – that rain has spoiled all the ones in the crescent bed. Maybe he’ll bring some Welsh cakes from Corner Café too!’

Alwena raised her eyes to the gods and wondered if senility was infectious. Morfudd peered between the two women, whose backs were to the window, and beamed at the crescent rose bed where the Deep Secrets and the Mischief swayed in the breeze off the sea.

‘Your Michael is such a good boy, coming to see you like he does,’ she remarked, remembering the hundreds of Marlboro’s he’d given her when he and his friend had resolved to give up smoking. The smile got lost in the slobbery burlesque line of Max Factor’s Firebrand and her eyes dimmed beneath the smudged aquamarine eye shadow. She couldn’t remember when her surviving son had last called to see her.

A while later, as Buddug and Alwena disagreed over an instruction in the knitting pattern, Morfudd wondered what had kept her Aled away for so long. She knew that being a solicitor was an important, busy job – and he and Melissa had, after all, seen to it that she was in a private rest home… though why she couldn’t have gone into their granny flat was beyond her. Wasn’t that what granny flats were for? But then, Melissa had her aerobics and her golf – and all her commitments on the bench. Feeling herself becoming despondent, she straightened her back and thought about how effeminately ridiculous Buddug’s Michael was. It was a disgrace, how lovey-dovey he and his friend were. And thinking it was better to have no visitors at all than to be visited by ones quite so queer, she felt her spirits rise again.