‘Come on Mam,’ Michael encouraged. ‘Sit down here and we’ll all have a nice cup of tea.’

‘Oh – but they are lovely,’ Buddug said, turning to appreciate the roses in the crescent bed before Michael coaxed her back to her chair, where she sat, her head skewed awkwardly, trying to keep sight of them through the blur of cataracts. Morfudd sipped her tea and enjoyed the buttery taste of the cakes – and she feasted for a while on Buddug’s childlike pleasure.

Before the gong went for dinner, Alwena Jones noticed the commotion outside. By the crescent rose bed, Kylie, one of the girls who came in to wash the dishes during the school holidays was screeching with laughter, while George leaned on his garden fork and scratched his head. Matron, bent low over a rose bush, was picking at a rosebud as if it was a dog’s stinking turd, by the look on her face. Alwena roused Buddug and Morfudd from their magazines.

‘I want them all taken off, George,’ came Matron’s hysterical entreaty through the open window.

‘What’s she saying to George then?’ Buddug quizzed. ‘Oh, they look so cheap and nasty,’ Matron harangued. ‘Our residents here at the Pines don’t pay for any kind of imitation, George… this isn’t what you’d expect at a private rest home – you’ve been here long enough to know that.’ She held open a black plastic bin liner and gestured to him: ‘I want every one of them off, now!’

Buddug began to wail when she saw George and Matron vandalise the crescent rose bed. Alwena, though confused by what she was witnessing, leaned over and took Buddug’s hand to comfort her. Morfudd, feeling Buddug’s distress, got up from her chair and after steadying herself, walked to the window and rapped her knuckles hard against the pane until she captured the vandals’ attention.

‘Please stop that, Matron,’ she called through the open window with a determination that surprised Morfudd herself. ‘Those roses are giving Buddug, Alwena and me such pleasure. Stop it immediately.’

‘But they’re plastic roses Mrs Jones,’ Matron sallied forth, ‘artificial… not real.’

‘But from here they look beautiful Matron… and when you’re over eighty, and your world has shrunk to the four walls of an old people’s home, a little bit of beauty isn’t a lot to ask for – even when it is an imitation.’

‘Mrs Jones fach, we’re a private rest home –.’

‘And private means that we are paying, doesn’t it Matron?’ Morfudd interrupted with all the sharpness that her drooling tongue could cut, ‘so Buddug, Alwena and I would like you to leave the plastic roses just the way they are.’

And the plastic roses in the crescent bed swayed on in the evening breeze.