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He was apologizing for having behaved the way he did,’ she explained. 'He was very sweet about it and I do like him quite a lot, you know.' She raised her hands and clasped them behind his dark head, her eyes shining. 'Mainly because he’s so like you.’ He kissed her, gently at first, and then with such fierceness that she heard nothing until she heard Emlyn’s voice behind her.

‘Well, well, well! 'and a faint gasp of surprise, presumably from Tracey. Helen felt the colour in her cheeks as she half turned in Evan’s arms to look at them. Emlyn's smile was wide and knowing and he held Tracey close in the curve of his arm, her dark eyes wide with disbelief.

'
Did you think you had a monopoly?’ Evan asked, and only Helen sensed the anxiety behind the question. 'Helen’s going to marry me, so you’d better make some rapid readjustments, boyo.’ There was a trace of the sing-song accent she had heard him use once before to Emlyn, and his son laughed.

'
I made those adjustments a week ago,’ he told him. 'I’m neither blind nor a fool, Evan, though I admit I was a bit doubtful about Helen as a stepmother at first. Anyway,’ he held out a hand to his father, their two faces so much alike that they might have been brothers, 'I’m very glad, Evan.’ He grinned. 'I presume I may kiss your bride. After all, you can’t really object, can you?’ He kissed her on the forehead gently. 'I knew you wouldn’t be leaving,’ he told her confidently. 'I told you so, didn't I?'

'
You did,’ Helen admitted. 'But I had no way of knowing how right you were.’

Later when Emlyn and Tracey had disappeared again, Helen remembered the old woman at Lake Olwen and her persistent cry of advice which Evan had refused to translate. 'Do you remember the witch from Hansel and Gretel?’ she asked, watching his face as she spoke and he nodded, a smile round his mouth as if he suspected what she was about to say, or at least some of it. 'What did she forecast for me, Evan?'

He looked at her for a moment in silence. 'Your future,' he said at last slowly, 'and mine too. They ran together, but I couldn't tell you that then, could I?'

'I don't see why not,' she argued, and could not resist repeating the words that Doctor Neath had translated for her. '“ Love him well, sweetheart, love him well." 'She laughed delightedly at his look of surprise and he studied her for a moment before speaking then nodded slowly.

'Doctor Neath,' he said. I'd forgotten he speaks Welsh as well.'

'I can tell you something else too,' she told him. 'The wishes that you wish at Lake Olwen do come true; mine did.'

He kissed her, smiling at the brightness in her blue eyes and remembering how he had once advised her to read more fairy tales. 'I know they do,' he said. 'Mine came true, too.'