Chapter Three
Of the three, perhaps unlikely friends, it was Lillian who had lived in Cyprus the longest, coming up for eleven years.
Despite a lifetime of wishing for the sun, it actually took Lillian and her husband more than twenty years to emigrate for a number of reasons: finances, they couldn’t afford the gamble; concerns about the children’s education; and Lillian’s unwillingness to leave all she had known and loved. Her husband Derek, on the other hand, appeared to harbour no such sentimental ties to either the UK or his children, but Lillian found herself paralysed by pending grief. However, when Derek was offered a job abroad, he issued a ‘now or never’ ultimatum, pointing out that Dan and Lucy were no longer children, but young adults; little birds who had flown the nest some
