‘This Etienne, then,’ she said in her usual mixture of Welsh and English, ‘he sounds like a real cachgi, an absolute shit.’

‘No.’ Hywel said, shaking his head. ‘No, he’s not; he’s…’ He searched the afternoon heat for some words to describe his French lover, but Marc stole his thoughts.

‘He was drop-dead-gorgeous I suppose,’ Lowri said, ‘with blonde hair and a sun tan? And a big cock? Good in bed, was he?’

Hywel wiped the tears from his eyes and asked, ‘What about Marc then? Has he been in touch?’

‘Marc?’ Lowri’s face gave away the bad taste which his name left in her mouth. ‘Not a dickie bird, but that suits me. I don’t care if I ever see him again.’

‘I still love him, Lowri.’

‘Oh! Come on, Hywel… We went through all this after he left. He’s not worth it.’

‘I know it… And I thought he’d stopped haunting me. It was so good to be in France, away from everything that reminded me of him, and after meeting Etienne, and letting myself fall in love again, I thought I was over him. But when I drove back from the airport yesterday, the closer I came to home, the more vividly he came back to me… You just can’t stop loving someone because they decided to walk out.’

‘No… I suppose that’s right, but then, you didn’t have to deal with all the deception.’

‘Last night, when I was putting the suitcases back in the box-room, I found some of his stuff in a carrier bag; some CDs, a couple of tee shirts, a pair of swimming trunks. I wore one of the tee shirts all evening and listened to his music…’

‘So what about this Etienne,’ she interrupted, ‘how did you leave things with him?’

‘He’s coming in ten days.’

‘Here? To Llan-Aber?’

‘I told him that if things worked out for us I’d move to Lyons.’

‘But Hywel bach, what about your job and the house? What about all those kids who idolise you and end up more fluent in French than in English just because they want to please you. And all the work you’ve done on the eisteddfod committee, you can’t just drop it all.’

She stopped herself saying ‘What about me?’ but she knew Hywel had heard that too.

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time. Etienne asked me if I’d like to live with him and because I thought I’d got Marc out of my system I said that I’d give it some serious thought.’

‘But you can’t just drop everything here and go’n live in France with some Frenchman you’ve only known for five minutes,’ she said, gripping his arm.

‘Until Marc started to haunt me again I didn’t think there was much left for me here, but now I’m confused. If I thought for a moment that he’d come back, I’d write to Etienne and tell him not to come.’

Lowri thought again about the chance meeting with Marc’s brother at the theatre in Harlech the week before and she changed her mind about not telling Hywel. ‘There’s been some talk in the village that he’s in Bangor. You could call round at his mother’s; she might be able to tell you something, an address or a phone number maybe.’