Cardiff is presented as Ellie Thomas’s former home and the place where her parents and old schoolfriends remain. Her brief return there makes the distance between the life she left and the life she now wants especially visible: she visits familiar haunts, but feels increasingly separate from friends whose lives have moved into marriage and parenthood.

Ellie’s Former Home

Ellie had moved from Cardiff to London, hoping for a brighter life and persuaded that a telesales job might eventually lead into publishing. Instead, London’s routine felt remote from what she had expected. Against that dissatisfaction, Cardiff remains a point of personal history: the city she returns to for a bank-holiday weekend to see her parents and reconnect with old schoolfriends.

A Visit Among Old Friends

During the Saturday night of her visit, Ellie goes around old haunts with friends from school. They are now married and beginning to have children. One friend, for whom Ellie had been a bridesmaid, asks her to become a godmother. Ellie accepts, feeling obliged, but is also mildly unsettled by how separate she feels from her peers. Cardiff is thus not simply a refuge from London; the visit exposes a divergence between the familiar social world she came from and the life she is leading.

The Journey Back to London

After a cold stay in Wales, Ellie returns by train to Paddington, where London seems greyer than ever. On the Underground journey back to Kensal Rise, her thoughts turn to the Greek postcards that have been arriving regularly. The vacant pigeonhole at home confirms that no new card has come; more than a month has passed since the one from Ikaria. That disappointment helps sharpen the question of whether the places pictured on the cards are real, and whether she should see them for herself. She checks her passport and books a flight to Athens, making the spontaneous decision to travel that had, in her mind, been gathering force for months.