Cutting the pork fillets lengthways to make pockets that would later be stuffed with prunes and sultanas, Uwe asked, ‘Has it ever struck you that our dinner guests might think we’re being selfish? Perverse? What do we do if they’re all against our idea?’ It seemed to Uwe that to go ahead after soliciting their friends’ opinions and meeting their disapproval would surely be worse than just doing it and letting them all find out later. Tecwyn answered, ‘Why should any of them disapprove? Besides, the whole point isn’t to ask anybody for permission!’

Tecwyn dug up the parsnips, leeks and carrots that Uwe wanted to roast in goose fat. He cut some young sprigs of rosemary, lifted two heads of garlic and pulled a bunch of parsley from the herb garden. All the time he kept wondering if Uwe was right; that really it was no one’s business but their own. Since they’d virtually decided to go for it, they might just as well get on with it. Uwe would hit forty before Christmas and he’d be thirty-six in the spring; they couldn’t leave it too long.

Arfona Lewis had unpacked her overnight bag and was already helping Uwe in the kitchen when Tecwyn came in with the herbs and vegetables. She kissed her son and addressing him in Welsh asked, ‘How was your week? Have you any more of your manuscript for me to proofread?’

Tecwyn wondered what she’d make of the sexual encounter his main character had enjoyed with a man in a gay sauna. Tecwyn had become so sexually aroused writing it that he’d virtually dragged Uwe to the floor, where their own sex had been as greedy as anything he’d written into Iolo Pawl’s adventures. Before Tecwyn could answer his mother, she’d taken the basket of vegetables, and was asking Uwe, ‘Have you got a knife? How d’you want them cut?’