Catrin thought she might faint. ‘What? I don’t understand? You’re coming here?’ she said. ‘To Cardiff?’

‘Well, that depends,’ said Sol, ‘on how you feel about it …’

She tried to put him off. Not because she didn’t want him to come, but because she felt she should. ‘We can commute! We can see each other at weekends. You really don’t have to give up Cambridge for me …’

‘I know I don’t have to, but I want to.’

And then he told her about his brother, who had been so in love with a girl called Amy before he went to university. They’d made all these promises, all these vows to stay in touch, and they’d tried to begin with – thinking that their love would withstand the distance. But in the end it failed. And Sol didn’t want to run the risk. ‘I want to be a GP, Cat. Mrs Jones from Pontypony or Major Briggs from Little Whipley or whoever from wherever isn’t gonna care if the fella sat in front of them writing a prescription for Lisinopril spent his five years in Cambridge or Cameroon. As long as he’s qualified!’

Catrin laughed and stroked his arm.

‘I just need to be where you are. I can’t explain it. And it isn’t what I was looking for. And I promise you, just say the word and I will sod off. But I’ve got a feeling you think the same.’

She was silent for a moment. And then she looked up at him and smiled. ‘Your parents are gonna be so cross.’

She wasn’t wrong.

The following day when he’d broken the news to them, he said his mother had laughed and his father had remained silent. ‘Normally I love my mother’s laugh,’ he told Catrin. ‘I call it her glorious Jamaican cackle. But when she laughs sarcastically, it’s really unsettling.’

‘Oh my God, what did she say?’ Catrin was already terrified of Sol’s parents. She wondered whether she’d ever get to meet them and how different they would be from her own. Both his mum and his dad were doctors, for a start.

Sol launched into a well-practised impression of his mother. ‘You are giving up a place in Cambridge. CAMBRIDGE now. To go to Cardiff! Hah! I said, But Cardiff’s good, Mam and my dad said, It’s not Cambridge though, is it, son?’

‘And what did you say to that?’

‘I just told them that it was something I have to do. And that they will love you. Because you are … well, you’re astonishing.’

He reached out across the table and held her hand. ‘So what d’you reckon, Catrin Kelly?’

By the following Monday, Sol had moved into a house-share in the Cathays area of Cardiff. For the rest of that term, he and Catrin would see each other every single day.

15

Judith

A tiny window in her life, it had been – where she saw who she could be and what she could become. How naïve of her to think it wouldn’t be taken away from her.