‘Oh, Sol. Shall we just run away to Gretna Green?’

‘They’d never speak to us again. Plus, I want all my friends to hear Father O’Leary’s accent. It’s superb,’ laughed Sol.

‘He’s not a bloody cabaret act,’ Catrin replied, trying to sound stern. Though she had to admit, when they’d gone to see Father O’Leary to organize reading the banns of marriage and receive their pre-nuptial instruction, it had been hard to remain straight-faced.

‘Marriage is like a multinational business,’ he’d said, high-pitched and with Cardiffian rapidity. ‘You have to keep investin’ in it to reap the rewards. Solomon, you and Caitlin here—’

‘Catrin,’ Sol had corrected him.

‘… sorry, Catherine,’ the priest had continued, ‘you’re both like the managing directors of this business, y’know? The CEOs, if you will, and you have to, like, keep an eye on the accounts, y’know?’ Father O’Leary had seemed really pleased with his analogy, one which Cat and Sol suspected he thrust upon every couple planning their wedding at his church. They also wondered if it would feature in his sermon on the big day.

‘I miss you,’ she said now quietly, hugging the receiver.

‘Yeah, I miss you too,’ he replied. ‘How’s Histology?’

‘You old romantic! Not bad, actually. It’s Neuroanatomy I’ve been struggling with. Keep getting my corpus callosum mixed up with my caudate nucleus. Still, I’m having a night off tonight. Lana’s home for a few days, so the three of us are having pizza at mine.’

‘Good luck with that one!’

‘Oh, it’ll be all right. They just need to spend a couple of hours together.’

Things between Lana and Judith had turned decidedly frosty since the night of the fight. Judith hadn’t actually said anything to Lana, but it was obvious that she’d taken Gareth’s side.

‘I don’t get why you’re so annoyed, Jude,’ Catrin had said when she’d seen her a week later.

‘It’s the lying!’ Judith said, incredulous. ‘After finding out all that stuff about my mother and how she lied to my dad, I’m not a massive fan of deceit.’

‘Of course,’ said Catrin, who knew how much Judith had suffered since discovering the truth about her parents’ marriage.

‘And honestly, Cat, if you’d seen Gareth that night. I’ve never seen anyone so broken. It was awful.’

Catrin didn’t know what to do. She was torn. She could see Judith’s point of view – and poor Gareth: what had taken place was horrible. But at the end of the day, Lana was their friend, and even though she’d been an idiot, it was Lana they ought to be supporting. ‘She’d do the same for you, Jude. You know she would.’

But Judith had just shrugged it off and Catrin gave up trying to persuade her.

Since then there had been little contact between the three girls – partly because of the whole Gareth/Lana debacle, but also because they were all bogged down with work. Judith had opted to take some Civil Service exams and spent most evenings with her head in her books, Catrin had been gearing up for her first-year assessments on top of wedding preparations, and Lana had been deep in rehearsals.