‘We need another one, beaut. Milk, no sugar. It’s for your friend.’

‘What friend?’

‘I didn’t catch his name …’

Catrin looked over to the table, where she could see her mother chatting animatedly to a young guy who had his back to her. Then, as if sensing that she was looking at him, he turned round.

Staring straight back at her was Solomon Blythe.

She stood there like a wild deer, interrupted mid-graze.

He smiled first. ‘Hey, Cat.’

She dropped the coffees.

And then they both laughed.

‘Seems like you two have got a lot of catching up to do,’ Huw said a few minutes later, when it was clear that he and Liz were gate-crashing a long-overdue conversation. They said their goodbyes, and as they watched them go, Catrin turned to Sol. ‘So … you’re sat in front of me. In Cardiff. Sol, seriously, what the hell?’

She listened in bewilderment as he told her why he was there, her heart racing, her brain still unable to compute that she was actually looking at him.

‘When I got home from Crete,’ he said, ‘I was a mess. I mean, a good mess, but still a mess … couldn’t eat or sleep, I was continuously nervous, felt sick all the time and was generally useless for days!’

‘Glad I had such a positive effect,’ said Catrin, secretly pleased.

‘And I thought, Right, get a grip, Sol, as soon as you hear from her everything will calm down. I knew you wouldn’t be home for a couple more weeks, so I just decided I had to be patient.’

‘But then you didn’t hear from me …’ said Catrin forlornly.

Sol smiled. ‘No … so obviously I started to think you must’ve changed your mind.’

‘I didn’t! I didn’t change my mind!’

‘But I didn’t know that, did I?’ he laughed. ‘I reckoned you just weren’t interested, otherwise you’d have got in touch.’

‘Oh God, I can’t bear it!’ she said.

‘I had to accept it, didn’t I?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Catrin.

‘Plonker. It wasn’t your fault. Anyway, about a week before I was due to set off for Cambridge, I just had this … epiphany, would you call it? Or moment of insanity? Only time will tell, I suppose …’

He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘Trinity College, Cambridge. It’s stunning. It’s this rarefied existence – I knew how extraordinarily lucky I was to be offered a place there. But the thing was, Cat, there was always this nagging feeling that, no matter how amazing it was, I would still always be in the wrong place. Because I wouldn’t be with you.’

She drank in the glory of his face and wanted to lean over and kiss his eyelids.

He went on to explain how he knew straight away what he had to do. He contacted the medical school at University College Wales, who replied within forty-eight hours offering him an interview. They told him that it wasn’t unheard of for students to want to change universities, and they’d certainly be happy to meet with him and discuss it. He’d driven down early one morning the previous week, and by lunchtime he’d met with the Dean and been offered a place.