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too soft on him. As soon as she’d gone I made sure he was sorry. He soon got the message, I can tell you. He didn’t dare play me up after that.’
    And they were surprised that so few young people stayed in Penmorfa, thought Kitty, wondering wildly if she would ever have a social life again. Her rented room in a shared house in the student heartland of Cardiff had been minging, but there was always someone to have a laugh with. Her job in Events and Leisure Management had been fun whilst it lasted and her social life had been brilliant. And all that gone, thanks to being stupidly lazy about contraception.
    ‘Quite right, too,’ Delyth was saying, looking faintly amphibious in her leaf-green fleece. ‘It may be marvellous publicity, as you put it, Alys, but for whom? What’s he done for us? He can hardly even bring himself to acknowledge his roots. This village made Gethin Lewis what he is today and all he’s done in return is throw everything back in our faces.’
    ‘Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?’ asked Alys, giving the older woman a despairing look over the rim of her reading glasses. ‘Especially given the demands of his career. I’m sure if we approached him, he’d be only too happy to help.’
    ‘We can manage without help from the likes of Gethin Lewis, especially when he’s shown the whole world exactly what he thinks of us!’ Mair insisted, tucking a handkerchief into the elasticated waist of her flora dirndl skirt. ‘When you’ve lived in Penmorfa as long as we have, you’ll understand these things. Gethin Lewis thinks he’s far too good for us. He couldn’t wait to get away and I’m surprised he’s got the nerve to show his face again now.’
    Now they were getting to the real issue, thought Kitty; Alys could never win in their eyes because she hadn’t been born in the village. Most people in the room had moved with the times, but Delyth and Mair still expected everyone to defer to their decades of experience about the way things were done.
    ‘It’s Penmorfa I’m thinking of,’ said Alys, getting cross.
    The Duo of Doom exchanged a look to suggest that Alys was no judge of character. ‘Well, he’s certainly got you on his side.’ Delyth puffed her cheeks and looked even more like a disapproving frog. ‘He always was a little devil with the girls. Perhaps it’s just his pretty face you’re finding difficult to resist, Alys?’
    Now you’ve done it, thought Kitty, longing for her mother to explode. Her parents had their ups and downs like any couple, but they never faltered in their support of each other. If Alys, with her drive and energy, was like a restless wave, her father was the constant rock absorbing the poundings, forever enduring. Looking at it from the outside, there might have been an element of predictability about the arrangement, but there was a permanence about her parents’ relationship that made Kitty feel rather wistful. It was difficult to imagine being in a partnership of some thirty years when, in her experience, most blokes found it hard to stick around for thirty days. She waited for the fireworks, but Alys just shook her head at the paperwork on her lap and settled back in her chair, her mouth set in a tense line. Even her mother, it seemed, found it difficult to tell Delyth and Mair where to get off.
    In the frosty silence all Kitty could hear was a mint rattling against someone’s false teeth until a log cracked in the wood burner and made everyone jump. Just then the sitting-room door opened. The Vicar, who’d already been delayed because she’d had to run her husband to the station when his car refused to start, only to be called to the phone on her return, finally surfaced.
    ‘So sorry, ladies,’ she said. With her chic dark hair and lovely high cheekbones she was, Kitty was surprised to see, a bit of a babe. For a woman who had five churches to look after, she was remarkably serene, too. ‘That was the Bishop.’ She smiled.