‘Is a very good one, no?’ Giacomo enquires, his round, cheery face filled with pride. ‘Is the one my mother makes… much better than the one you buy in the tourist shop.’

‘It is very good,’ Geraint ventures, his gaze drawn and held in the questioning blue-green of Giacomo’s eyes.

‘You want to buy sciacchetrà you come see me before you go back England,’ Giaco says when he’s peered too long into Geraint’s confusion.

‘We will,’ Shôn says stressing the we, jealous that Giaco seems more interested in Geraint.

Giacomo returns to their end of the bar after serving a giggly teenage couple.

‘Can you tell us anything about the carving in the rock above Vernazza?’ Geraint asks.

‘We couldn’t find anything about it in the guide-book,’ Shôn says, competing for attention.

‘I don’t know,’ Giaco says with a shrug. ‘I never walked on this path.’

‘It has three fishboys, like the one on your ring,’ Shôn accuses.

Giacomo holds up his finger and looks, almost seriously, at the silver band.

‘Is a very cheap ring from a shop in Spezia,’ he says, smiling. ‘Is very fashionable to have a ring here,’ he adds, rubbing the middle phalanx with his thumb.

For a while, they watch Giaco’s every move as he serves more customers further along the bar. A larger than life, blonder than blonde girl sweeps into the Bar Gioia with smiles and ciaos for everyone. Shôn observes her carefully and deduces that she’s the local transvestite. She rests her ample breasts on the bar and reaches over to kiss Giaco, ruffling his sandy curls with her crimson nailed fingers. Her skirt rises as she stretches. Geraint and Shôn are distracted by her black lace panties, which are too skimpy to hide her fishy tail.

Just Beyond the Buddleia Bush

Shifting the heavy Victorian chaise-longue hadn’t been as straight forward as Eurig Dafydd had supposed; it had meant moving the formica topped table and the four mismatched dining chairs, and shoving the Welsh dresser over a couple of feet. He’d had to lift the rug too, because every time he lunged at the chaise it had ruffled and snagged around the carved oak legs. Twice he’d nearly given up and, slumping into the solace of the chaise’s worn leather, he’d wondered whether he might not leave the damn thing where it was; where it had stood for twenty odd years because Fflur had liked the view across the strait towards Caernarfon and the mountains. But Fflur wouldn’t be coming back to Cwningar. She’d settled for the house near Rhos in their quite amicable divorce and taken up with a new boyfriend, some doctor from Chester with an annual membership at an exclusive health club that entitled them both to sun-beds, saunas and squash. No more rambles with a Collins pocket flora for Fflur… no more midnight swims in Malltraeth Bay or beachcombing along Newborough Sands. She’d joined the Cheshire set.

Eurig had always preferred the view from the French window, where the three peaks of the Rivals scraped the sky beyond the acres of dunes and the sea, and where a path, just beyond the buddleia bush, cut its way through the August carpet of thrift and common sea lavender in the dune slacks, leading to the secluded beaches near Abermenai Point. With a final shove, he repositioned the chaise and from this new vantage point, lying on the cool leather to catch his breath, he watched two peacocks and a common blue in a complicated dance around the butterfly bush. After some time, the equally intricate moves of two boys, cruising one another as they made for the beach along the path, absorbed his attention. One of them reminded him of Seimon, and lest he should feel again the stab of his oldest son’s words, he sought to distract himself and attended to the rug that he’d slung over the back wall to air in the morning sun.