‘And God knows what sort of life she’d have had,’ said Catrin.

‘Exactly!’ said Lana, who couldn’t resist a drama. ‘He would probably have spent the next couple of years trying to bump her off. You’d have got a call one day to say she’d mysteriously fallen into her soup and drowned.’

‘At least she’s safe now,’ Jack said, ever the voice of calm.

It was decided that they should sell the house to pay for Patricia’s sheltered-accommodation fees, and should any of the capital be left ‘after my days’, then this was to go to her great-granddaughter Ivy May, with whom Patricia had become obsessed.

‘Looks like you’ve been demoted,’ joked Gareth to Jack, who gazed at his daughter with abundant fatherly pride.

In an astonishing private moment between herself and her mother, Judith was almost moved to tears when Patricia thanked her for everything she’d ever done for her. Lana and Catrin were shocked when she told them.

‘What, she actually used the words thank and you?’ asked Lana.

‘Actually, she said Thank you, love – really.’

‘Oh my God! So d’you think she’s softening in her old age?’

‘Jesus, no!’ laughed Judith. ‘In the next sentence she was telling me to turn the volume down on the TV and was I trying to deafen her?’

‘Lepers and spots, I guess,’ said Catrin.

And her friends exchanged a look.

‘You’ve always got that saying wrong!’ said Judith.

‘No, I haven’t,’ objected Catrin.

‘Yes, you have! It’s leopards, you fool,’ laughed Lana.

‘But I thought it was to do with leprosy. Y’know, the skin condition, like in the Bible stories – lepers and spots.’

‘And she’s a bloody doctor!’ said Judith to Lana, both sharing a huge moment of affection for their mutual friend.

Over the preceding months, Lana and Judith had slowly and steadily crept back into a camaraderie of sorts. There was an ease between them now which seemed to improve, the more time they spent together. But things weren’t back to how they used to be. And both of them had come to accept the possibility that this might always be the case; so disconnected had they been from each other’s lives, so uninvolved, for thirty years, that even with Catrin as the glue to hold them together, the closeness they’d once known had become sadly irretrievable.

‘Too much water under too many bridges,’ said Lana one day.

‘I thought mixing metaphors was Catrin’s thing?’ said Judith.

‘Oh shut up, you pompous cow,’ retorted Lana with a smile.

It was now just half an hour away from midnight. Patricia was fighting sleep, and Huw was checking he had the TV on the right channel for the fireworks at midnight.

‘Ladies,’ said Catrin. ‘Come upstairs a minute. There’s something we all need to do.’

Bemused, Judith and Lana followed their friend upstairs.

When they entered Catrin’s old bedroom, they found her sitting there triumphant, holding up a tatty hard-backed notebook.

‘I found it the other day, sorting through old boxes in the attic.’