‘Yes, and then she bloody phoned you up and went on about that magazine thing!’ said Lana.

‘Oh God, how many times! She knows the score. She’s fine about it,’ said Catrin, though this wasn’t strictly true. Yes, Judith had begrudgingly been won round by Catrin and conceded that Lana had no control over what was written about her in magazines, and that it was Becky bloody Williams who’d sent those photos to the Sunday Edition. Nonetheless, Judith’s initial, cautious enthusiasm for meeting up again with Lana had been considerably quashed by that magazine interview. Catrin had judiciously chosen not to tell Lana this. It’d taken so much effort to get them together in the first place, she wasn’t about to uproot the shoots of this fragile little plant before it had had a chance to start growing. And she honestly believed that if Lana came to George’s funeral, Judith, broken apart in the tenderness of her grief, would be so touched by the gesture that it would open her heart and reunite the two friends once and for all.

But Lana would not be convinced. ‘I’ll wait till she comes home, Cat,’ she said, ‘and then I’ll arrange to meet up with her. It’s all a bit sensitive, isn’t it? And I don’t want to mess things up.’

‘Oh bollocks,’ replied Cat, suddenly changing the subject. ‘I was meant to call Patricia. To tell her about George.’

‘Why hasn’t Judith told her?’ asked Lana.

‘She said she couldn’t face it. So I offered. Don’t suppose you’d do it, would you?’

That was four hours earlier. Catrin had chosen not to tell Lana about the row with Sol. Because she knew what she’d say. She’d agree with him – she’d tell her she was being selfish and unrealistic. Or worse than that, she might feel sorry for her. And Catrin couldn’t bear that. She couldn’t bear to be pitied. And so she decided to keep schtum and focus on what mattered right now – which was helping Jude.

At Nicosia airport, Gareth was there to meet her. They hugged for a long time.

‘How is she?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t think it’s sunk in yet, to be honest,’ he sighed. Catrin sensed he might have been relieved to get away from the grief-filled house for a while. ‘It’s not a bad thing, Cat,’ he said as they headed towards Kakopetria in Iannis’s car. ‘The Cypriots, they wear their hearts on their sleeve, and they have the opposite of the British stiff upper lip – but I find it a bit much, the constant crying and outward displays of grief.’

‘That’s ’cos you’re so butch!’ Catrin teased.

Gareth smiled back. ‘I just worry for Jude. She’s surrounded by all this weeping, yet she’s not shed a tear herself.’

‘I guess bereavement affects everyone differently.’

They sat in silence for a while, both lost in their own thoughts, with the windows open and the cool Troodos mountain air filling their lungs.

And then out of the blue Gareth said, ‘I spoke to Sol, by the way. He told me about the baby thing.’