Fridolin had been born some years after Elgan’s shocking, but predictable, fall from grace. Thus freed from his priestly duties and Advent responsibilities, Elgan visited in the weeks before Christmas. The boy was just a toddler when they made Weihnachtsplätzchen together that first time, spilling flour and vanilla sugar, ground spices, chopped almonds and coloured sugar pearls around Heike’s kitchen. With biscuit dough under their fingernails and in their hair they’d sung Christmas carols in German, and Fridolin’s brother and sister had laughed at Elgan’s pronunciation. Making Christmas cookies together became their little ritual. By the end of the third pre-Christmas visit, Fridolin could sing Stille Nacht in Welsh and English, and Elgan could tease him about his pronunciation. Then for a few years the weekend highlight was a visit to the Christmas market in Spandau. The year Fridolin was eight, a heavy winter storm restricted their movements and they trudged around Sanssouci Park through the knee-high snow, Fridolin sitting astride his Patenonkel’s shoulders. Another time, Fridolin’s sister had decided that everyone should go along to the Staatsballett in Berlin to see The Nutcracker… the magic of dance cast its spell and the boy was enchanted.

When he enrolled at the Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in the weeks after the Olympic Games left town, Fridolin had hoped that Elgan would visit him in London. But their diaries had been difficult to synchronize and it was April before they could agree a rendezvous. The pre-Christmas bake-offs had long since been abandoned, but Fridolin had been at Elgan and Joseff’s Civil Partnership in 2006, Elgan had attended Fridolin’s first communion in 2008, and Fridolin and his father had visited Elgan and Jos at their remote hillside cottage deep in the folds of the Rhinog mountains in north Wales for a few days in the summer of 2009; after that visit their communication had become more regular, thanks to social media.

‘But you’re taller than I’d imagined,’ Elgan said after they’d released one another from a long hug. He wondered whether he’d missed some of the more recent photos Fridolin had posted on his homepage.

‘And your hair is more grey than I remember,’ Fridolin said, with a broad, cheeky smile.

‘I can’t believe so many people have turned out for Margaret Thatcher’s funeral,’ Elgan said as they jostled amongst the crowds. ‘Perhaps I should have messaged you. Trafalgar Square is probably not the place to be this morning.’

‘She must have been someone important,’ Fridolin said. ‘Is she something to do with the Queen?’

‘I suppose you didn’t do much modern British history at that Berlin Gymnasium,’ Elgan teased. ‘Margaret Thatcher was the first woman Prime Minister here in Britain, in 1979.’