With Piaf at full volume Seth continues west. After Dolgellau he winds the car with the Mawddach to the wide estuary and the coast. The village signpost still bears the scars of the fatal accident more than a year ago, one of its poles rusted and bent, the bold lettering pitched at sixty degrees. Not much seems to have changed in the village. Before reaching the house he passes the bakery: the sign, M. Z. Williams & Son – Fine Bakers… Baking your Daily Bread since 1922 has been repainted. Miss Morris, who’s worked for his father for half a lifetime, is standing at the door talking to Mrs Caradog the Minister’s wife… about their rig-outs for the wedding, most likely. Mrs Caradog will be exasperated, as is her way, by the prices of everything in Chester… she always shops in Chester, Browns, so dependable! Miss Morris will be retelling, in every detail, how Nancy Parry helped her choose from the lovely selection of twin sets in stock at London House… new for the spring and very reasonable. Miss Morris recognises Seth and waves a welcome, which he returns. At the village’s only traffic light he turns right into Enlli View Road. The Llŷn Peninsula and Bardsey Island fill the windscreen after the turn. The signpost still shows stains from a dousing with green paint. The Language Campaign seems years ago now.

By dinnertime that evening Ceinwen Williams had re-ironed her son’s shirt, sponged and pressed his suit and expressed her distaste for the tie he’d chosen to wear. Seth cares little for his mother’s taste in ties and is actually grateful that she’d troubled with his suit… but Jude had ironed his shirt that morning and her re-ironing of it was an interference that he resents. He hadn’t expected to be alone with his mother. Naomi had been home most of the week and he’d assumed that she would be about, fussing. But Seth had caught only the briefest glimpse of his sister. Her best friend from school and now her bridesmaid-to-be, Shân, had phoned as Seth had walked in through the door to say that her car had broken down the other side of Dinas Mawddwy. Naomi had rushed to rescue Shân, while Chris was checking that his family were all settled at the George III Hotel in Penmaen Pool.

Stirring the gravy, just Seth and his mother in the kitchen, he ventures to share his most recent good news: that from September Jude will be Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Liverpool University. Ceinwen straightens her back as she lays the masher on the worktop beside the steaming pan of mashed potato. She spits the words out in her precise Caernarfonshire Welsh: ‘That Jewish man’s success is none of my concern. It’s time you settled down… properly! Family weddings are not the time to bring disgrace on us.’