A loud banging from the back yard disturbed her reverie. Going to the window, she watched as her father called the cats over for their food, clanging a spoon against the tin bowl. He did it with the same rhythm and velocity every single morning. He loved those cats. ‘Betty! Betty! Come on! Twister! Breakfast!’

She watched him stretch and look out over their modest back yard, sighing deeply. I know you’re unhappy, she thought, and a sudden lurch of sorrow clutched at her heart: would he be all right without her? As if sensing she was there, he turned and looked up. ‘All packed?’ he called.

‘I think so!’ she replied, injecting as much jollity as she could to stop him feeling sad.

‘Got time for a game before you go?’ he said with a smile.

Twenty minutes later they were sitting in the sunshine on two nylon-backed camp chairs, sipping strong Glengettie tea: hers made with three sugars and top-of-the-milk cream, his black with no sugar. The backgammon board was laid out in front of them on an old coffee table he’d once rescued from a skip. Whenever in use it had to be stabilized with a folded-up beer mat. Judith threw the dice and made her move, the two of them sitting in comfortable silence like they always did when they played. Betty and Twister lay on the warm paving stones near their feet, indulging in a post-breakfast nap.

As Judith moved the checker around the board she stole a glance at him: the father she had loved as her own since she was six years old. To any onlooker she could easily pass as his flesh and blood. Her thick dark shoulder-length hair, scooped up now and pinned back with a tortoiseshell clip, was the same colour and texture as his – at least, his when he was younger. And her brown Bambi eyes and gentle frown could give her a very serious look, just like him. Though when she smiled, her joy was infectious.

Adopting the voice of a sports commentator, she whispered, ‘It’s getting tense now, ladies and gentlemen. World backgammon champion George Andrew Harris is worried his crown is about to be nicked!’

He laughed, picked up his own dice and threw.

George wasn’t her stepdad’s real name.

Nor was Andrew or Harris. But when he’d arrived in Wales from Cyprus in 1973 he’d quickly discovered that nobody could pronounce Georgios Andreas Charalambos. Even though they’d had no problem getting their tongues around Rhosllanerchrugog or Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Judith had always loved hearing how Georgios became George: how the foreman at the building site where he’d first found work had told him, ‘You’re gonna have to change it, mate. People are funny round ’ere with foreign names an’ that.’ And so overnight he became good old George Andrew Harris. And whenever he told the tale, he said it with a laugh in his voice, making it into a joke. But Judith knew her father secretly missed his real name. On more than one occasion she’d heard him saying quietly to the cats, ‘My name is Georgios Andreas Charalambos. Pleased to meet you!’