When Michael and Gerard arrived just before three-thirty, with roses for Buddug, Welsh cakes for tea and a box of Thornton’s for sharing around, Morfudd lifted her copy of People’s Friend to within inches of her nose and made believe she hadn’t noticed them… but she peeked now and then, and strained to hear their conversation. Michael, whom she dismissed as a balding, bulging, blubbering milksop, fussed for the first ten minutes over his mother’s hearing aid – well, over the fact that she wasn’t wearing it again – whilst Gerard, who looked so much like Gregory Peck, talked with Alwena about the latest twists and turns in Coronation Street. Morfudd could make herself feel quite sick if she thought too much about how indiscreet these boys could be, but sometimes she allowed her curiosity to get the better of her and she’d wonder which of the two wore the frocks and pinafores about the bungalow they lived in together. Gerard looked so manly that she couldn’t conceive of him being the wife!

‘I thought you said the roses in the front had been ruined with all the rain, Mam,’ Morfudd overheard Michael saying with a barb of accusation as he fussed, arranging the bunch of roses he’d brought his mother in a tall jam pot that one of the girls handed him as an excuse for a vase: ‘You’ve no need to be telling me porkies to get me to bring you flowers, you know.’ With this, Morfudd closed her magazine, wiped the ooze from her chin, and waited for events to unfold.

‘But they are all spoiled,’ Buddug insisted, getting up with some difficulty and hobbling over to the window. ‘Poor George, who’s taken such a lot of care with them, was out there yesterday – but….’

‘See,’ Michael said with a full-of-himself ‘I told you so’.

‘Brenin y bratiau,’ Buddug exclaimed, the astonishment causing her to stagger and reach for the arm of Miss Perkins’ chair to steady herself, ‘but only yesterday… I watched poor George dead-heading them.’

‘That wasn’t yesterday Buddug fach,’ Morfudd put in mischievously, knowing that she could sometimes get a bit mixed up. ‘We both sat here watching George one afternoon last week… not yesterday. Come and sit down and open these chocs.’

‘How are you then Morfudd love?’ Michael asked, guiding his mother back to her chair, his voice at too high a pitch, its modulation too singsong. Morfudd hated it that he called her love all the time, and that he was so brazen to think he could be on first name terms with her. ‘Not getting you all excited is it, love… that People’s Friend? They tell me it’s got quite a reputation for saucy stories.’

‘But it’s been raining for days,’ Buddug said, her surprise giving way to an upset bewilderment, ‘and roses never do well in the rain.’