At least, Judith hoped it was going to be a happy-ever-after.

Realizing they couldn’t stand there for ever, Maria took charge, encouraging Judith and Sofia to go inside the taverna, sit down and talk. Catrin gently apologized and pointed out that it was now five o’clock and they still had nowhere to stay. ‘So whilst Jude catches up with Sofia, me and Lana will go and find somewhere, yeah?’

When Maria translated this, Sofia became animated again. The subject wasn’t even up for discussion. ‘She says you must stay with her,’ said Maria. ‘All of you.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Of course! You are her family!’ said Maria with a smile.

And so within an hour of discovering a brand-new aunt, uncle and two young cousins, Judith was on her way with Catrin and Lana to Sofia’s smallholding, a mile or so out of the village, where they’d been offered a bed for the night. Maria had agreed to come with them and translate, which Judith thought was bloody kind of her considering she was meant to be attending her own family party. But then on reflection, as Lana said, ‘I bet she’s gagging to know about George!’

They were greeted in the yard by a handful of chickens and a goat with two kids, who came running over to see what all the fuss was about. Heading inside, Iannis, Sofia’s husband, invited them all to sit at the kitchen table whilst he made coffee and put out glasses of water. Sofia produced a large platter of cookies called koulouraki and a dish full of glyka or ‘spoon sweets’ – pickled figs, and cherries and walnuts.

‘I am going home the size of a whale!’ Lana mumbled to Catrin, who didn’t care and couldn’t wait to get stuck into the treats.

When they were finally all settled around Sofia’s kitchen table, they began – with Maria’s help – to unpick the mystery of Georgios Andreas Charalambos.

‘You may have heard about the war,’ said Maria.

‘What, like with Hitler an’ that?’ asked Lana and Catrin discreetly kicked her under the table. Obviously not that war.

‘No, you mean here in Cyprus, don’t you?’ said Judith. ‘In the mid seventies?’

‘Yes, 1974. The Turkish Army, they invade the north of the country and many families they have to leave. It got very bad.’

‘Papagálos,’ said Iannis, who was sitting next to Maria, smoking nervously.

‘Who’s Papagálos – like a priest or something?’ asked Judith.

Maria smiled sadly. ‘No, papagálos means parrot – his family they had a pet parrot and they left it behind because they thought the fighting was just for short time and soon they would go back home. But they never went back. This happen to many, many families. They lose everything.’

‘That’s so sad,’ said Catrin, sucking furiously on a spoon sweet.

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Judith, trying to calculate dates in her head, ‘George, my dad – he wasn’t living here then.’

‘No,’ said Maria with a wry smile. ‘Because Georgios he is a clever young man, and he sees a long time before the war that there is trouble coming between the Turks and the Greeks, and he thinks it will be dangerous to stay in the North, and so he says to his mother, We must leave, let’s go to our Theíos Nicolaous, our uncle in Kakopetria, where we will be safe. And in 1971 that is what they do – they move from Petra in the north and they come here and live in this house. Long before the war.’