He thrust the Tupperware at her again. ‘Just, please, for me, just look at the bloody Welsh cakes then!’ He seemed hugely disappointed. ‘Jeez, this is a disaster.’

‘What is?’ Confused, Cat took the Tupperware and peeled back the lid. Inside, surrounded by half a dozen of the sugar-dusted cakes, lay a small square box loosely attached to the base with some Sellotape. Catrin caught her breath and barely whispered, ‘Sol. No!’

‘What? Oh my God, how could I have got this all so wrong?’

But Cat was now opening the box. Inside, nestled on a tiny bed of velvet, was the most beautiful ring she’d ever seen – plain silver, adorned with three tiny sapphires. ‘No, I meant, No. I don’t believe what you’re doing … I think I’m going to be sick.’

‘Oh please don’t be! Don’t be sick!’ he panicked, and took the ring from its little bed. ‘Please just say we can get married instead?’

Catrin’s vision was blurred from tears and the cold, but inside she was burning with joy. She just wasn’t able to speak, that was all.

Sol interpreted this as uncertainty, so on he ploughed, trying to convince her. ‘I mean, I know they’ll all say we’re too young and that we don’t know what we’re doing and that it’s just infatuation and there are so many other people out there still to meet and what about our degrees? But it doesn’t need to affect that. We’d just carry on as normal, only we’d be married, we’d be together properly for ever, and we don’t need to buy a house or anything and we don’t need, well, anything, just each other, and oh Cat, I love you so, so much that it … look, I …’

She waited patiently till his loving rant petered out, then said, ‘Oh yes, let’s absolutely get married,’ and immediately tried taking off her glove so that she could put on the ring. Easier said than done, because it had one of those strap thingies around the wrist which was quite difficult to undo.

‘Hang on a minute,’ said Sol, helping her remove it – practical now, not romantic. ‘That’s it.’

Once her hand was free, they both looked down as he slid the ring on to her finger, before staring at each other in disbelief.

‘They’ll all be so cross,’ he whispered, suddenly gripped with uncertainty.

‘Yes, they will,’ said Cat, reassuring him. ‘But that’s OK. It won’t change my mind.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

They sealed the moment with a gentle, timid kiss.

Then, pulling away from him, Cat said, ‘So are we engaged then, Solomon?’

‘We’re engaged, Catrin.’

And the two of them promptly found their feet, jumped up and down and shouted as loudly as they could to the silent horizon, ‘WE’RE ENGAGED! WE’RE ENGAGED!!’ And the panorama of hills and fields twinkled back in congratulation.

24

Gareth

Since Lana had gone back to Guildford on New Year’s Day, he’d received three silly postcards from her and a handful of phone calls. These contained more silences than conversation, and on two occasions she’d only rung to cancel coming home for the night. It was now early February, and Gareth had started to wonder whether long-distance relationships were always doomed to fail. One evening over a game of pool he tentatively asked Judith for her advice. He worried that she might feel compromised, but she’d insisted she was glad to be a sympathetic ear. ‘Least I can do, Gar – the hours you’ve had to listen to me drone on …’bout my self-centred mother, my non-existent love life …’