The TV pictures were not nearly as agonising as December’s EU summit in Bratislava, when Theresa May was shown looking briefly lost as her fellow leaders glad-handed around her.

In fact, the defining image in Malta was May’s long and seemingly cheery talk with Angela Merkel as the pair joined a pre-lunch walkabout through the ancient streets of Valletta.

At one point on the wander towards St John’s cathedral, a British tourist yelled across the metal barricade to say: “You’re doing a good job, Theresa”. The prime minister waved and smiled back.

That, however, was as good as it got for May in Malta, a one-day summit – half a day for her – at which, depending on your view, she was either politely ostracised by the remaining 27 EU leaders or took a deliberately semi-detached position herself.

Both are true in part. While May’s departure after lunch was a matter of little choice, allowing the 27 to discuss the post-Brexit EU, no one forced her to be among the few leaders to not speak to the press on arriving at the venue and avoid a press conference.

May nonetheless arrived with a full agenda. The first element, on efforts to tackle the Mediterranean migrant and refugee crisis, the summit’s main official business, was safely delivered.

She did not just sign up to a general agreement connected to people smuggling and the migrant crisis in Libya, but also unveiled £30m in extra UK funding.

On May’s other main subject, briefing other leaders on her visit last week to see Donald Trump, things went less smoothly. Before the talks had even begun, the idea of the UK being a “bridge” between a sceptical EU and Trump’s administration was ridiculed by the Lithuanian president, Dalia Grybauskaitė.

“I don’t think there is a necessity for a bridge,” Grybauskaitė said as she arrived at the historic Grand Master’s Palace in Valletta. “We communicate with the Americans on Twitter.”

Undaunted, May used a slightly soporific-sounding official lunch of cauliflower and potato broth, followed by Maltese fish pie and sweet fritters, to urge her fellow leaders to “work patiently and constructively” with the US under Trump.

At a post-summit press conference, the French president, François Hollande, was asked about the collective view on Trump. “Do we all agree on how we see Donald Trump and his administration?” he said. “Probably not.”

He was also dismissive about the idea of the UK being an envoy to Trump, if more politely so than Grybauskaitė. “It is not about asking one particular country, be it the UK or any other, to represent Europe in its relationship with the United States,” he said.

And what of Brexit, a day after May’s government published its white paper on the subject? It was curiously absent. Even the non-UK discussion after lunch was more about celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome rather than mourning Britain’s departure.

At one point in his press conference, Hollande talked about a joint EU response to climate change. “Europe is not just 27 countries individually,” he said. Hollande was speaking in the present tense, but the UK was already gone from his thoughts.