Page 124 of The Last Party

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There’s more than one way to travel through water. Leo thinks about Angharad’s assertion that no one from The Shore was at the Cwm Coed swim on New Year’s Day, and he knows with absolute certainty that he’s been lied to.

He knows who dumped Rhys Lloyd’s body in the lake.

Fifty-Six

New Year’s Eve

Glynis

Glynis Lloyd is not enjoying the party. Parties are for young people, and Glynis is feeling her age. There is nowhere to sit down, and even though she is surrounded by familiar faces, she feels lonely.

It was Yasmin who persuaded her to come.

You’ll have a nice time, she had said before following it up withAnd what will people think if Rhys’s own mother isn’t there?which was so obviously the primary motive that Glynis almost refused on the spot. Her daughter-in-law cares a great deal about appearances.

“I tried to getOK!to cover it,” Yasmin went on. “But they said it wasn’t theright fitfor them.” She tutted. “Heaven knows what would fit better. The Staffords alone are surely a draw, even if Rhys is no longer—” She swallowed her words, remembering who she was talking to.

Glynis is under no illusions about her son’s failing career. Oh, he has talent, no one ever doubted that, but she—more than anyone—knows how duplicitous this business is. On the surface, all success and smiles, but dip below and the truth is a murky affair.

She feels a pang of guilt whenever she thinks about Rhys’s career. About the favor she’d done one of the Eisteddfod judges, which meant they owedhera little favor, and it wasn’t all the world to mark Rhys the tiniest bit higher, was it? So there he was, on the main National stage, in the right place at the right time to be spotted for success.

Glynis looks for Steffan Edwards—a far cry now from the boy-next-door runner-up who should, by rights, have won that competition. He’s gone home already, or perhaps someone has had the sense to throw him out before he disgraces himself any more.

“There aren’t any male, working-class Welsh singers out there right now,” Fleur Brockman—Rhys’s newly acquired agent—had said all those years ago. “It’s rich territory.”

Glynis had found this casual branding of their family abhorrent, but she’d bitten her tongue for Rhys’s sake. “You really think he’s got the talent to make it?” she said, wanting more of the flattery that justified her cheating.

“Talent?” Fleur shrugged. “Sure, he’s talented. But what it’s really about is building a brand.” She winked. “Put the right marketing in place and I could send a guinea pig to number one.”

Rhys had had the right marketing for a long time, but over the years, the budget was slowly cut, and the team changed until it was unrecognizable. Now, despite all the money her son is throwing at a publicity campaign, Glynis knows it’s only a matter of time before his career is over. She wonders if Yasmin knows it too.

Her daughter-in-law was in the middle of one of her tours when Glynis arrived at the party. Yasmin kissed her on both cheeks and introduced her asthe twins’ granny. Glynis winced. She wasNainto Tabby and Felicia, despite Yasmin’s reticence when they were born.

“No one will know what it means,” Yasmin had complained. Glynis had stood firm. If Tabby and Felicia’s contemporaries could have grandparents called Oompa, Glammy, Loli, and Pop, Glynis could be Nain.

The noise at the party is giving her a headache. All around her, people are shouting, the decibels slowly increasing as everyone fights to be heard. She hears snatches of conversation, almost all English, even though half the room is Welsh. Rhys’s father would have been devastated.

Jac Lloyd had been a staunch nationalist. A railway man by profession, he could turn his hand to most trades, fitting out the hardware shop that had once belonged to Glynis’s parents. The wooden cabin on this side of the lake was set back to allow for the rise of the water, a tall row of pine trees just hiding it from view. Glynis and Jac would meet at Ty’r Lan cabin when they were courting, away from village gossip. Jac would fish, and Glynis would read her book, and then… Glynis smiles at the memory.

The plot itself extended to less than an acre, part of the woodland that had once been Welsh. In 1972, the Local Government Act had defined the UK’s counties, and the strip of land to the east of Llyn Drych had become English.

Glynis had never seen her husband so enraged. The very idea of owning a property on English soil was unthinkable—the butt of so many jokes at Y Llew Coch that Jac took to drinking elsewhere—until a journalist planted a seed that changed Jac’s outlook.

Wales’s Last Bastion, read the headline above a photograph of Ty’r Lan, its red dragon flag flying. The article had presented Jac as a warrior, protector of his language and culture, guarding the soil that remained morally—if not legally—Welsh.

“Cymru am byth,” Jac had said proudly, showing Glynis the article.Wales forever.

How he would despair at what his son has done. Glynis feels a pain in her chest as she imagines the emotion in her late husband’s eyes. No longer Ty’r Lan but The Shore. No longer a bastion for the Welsh but a playground for the English, running roughshod over traditions, and not as much as adiolchfrom any of them except that Clemmie, who—Glynis had to concede—makes an attempt to fit in.

When Jac died, Glynis had spoken to their solicitor. “I’ve got his will somewhere,” she’d told him. Jac had organized it a few years before—one of those kits you could buy from the newsagent. Properly witnessed, all legal and proper. Jac was the belt-and-braces sort—liked to be prepared for all eventualities. At least he had been, before the dementia set in. Jac had made sure that Ty’r Lan would pass to Glynis, who would keep the Welsh flag flying in honor of her husband.

Only then Glynis had received a call from a different solicitor. One in the next town, who didn’t know the Lloyd family from Adam and whose brusque tone made Glynis want to cry.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the woman said. Glynis heard the snap of a rubber band. “Now, your late husband came in six months ago with your son. I have a copy of his will here—”

“I think there’s been some mistake,” Glynis said.

But there was no mistake.


Tags: Clare Mackintosh Mystery