Back in the car, Ffion calls the incident room to confirm Angharad can be released. If Leo notices her red eyes, he doesn’t mention it. There is a comfort, she realizes, in being with someone who knows everything about you.
There were several times over the course of her relationship with Huw when she wanted to tell him the truth. Not about Seren—she’d sworn blind never to breathe a word about that—but about the rape.
Rape.
It’s the first time she’s used the word, even to herself, and yet it’s the only word for it. Rhys raped her.
Ffion had dealt with a job at work once: a girl in her twenties who’d had too much to drink and woken up with no memory of what her body told her had happened. Ffion had driven home on autopilot, then walked through the front door and fallen apart. Huw poured her a glass of wine and said all the right things. That Ffion was amazing to do the job she did, that the stress was bound to come out from time to time. And Ffion took a breath and thought,Now. I’ll tell him now.
“Silly girl, getting so plastered,” Huw said then. “You see it all the time, don’t you? They get the beer goggles on, then the next day they regret it.”
Not now, Ffion thought.I won’t tell him now.
Not ever, as it turned out. And without knowing she’d been raped, without knowing about Seren, without Ffion giving any explanation at all… Was it any wonder Huw couldn’t understand why Ffion wouldn’t start a family? She didn’t deserve a baby, not when she’d given her first away.
Leo knows all this now. And more. He knows what Ffion is afraid of and what she loves. How she feels about the lake and the mountains and the village she once couldn’t wait to leave.
“I suppose—” she says.
“Maybe we—” Leo starts speaking at the same time. “You first.”
“No, you go.”
Leo takes a breath. “I was thinking about when we met.”
“Right.”
“Seeing you at the mortuary. It was…”
“Awkward?”
“Very.” Leo says. “But then… Well, I just wanted to say it’s been great working with you. And not awkward.” He stares over the steering wheel, suddenly quiet, as though he’s run out of steam.
It’s a goodbye, Ffion knows. Her time with Cheshire Major Crime will end soon, and she’ll return to her own patch. She and Leo might exchange a few emails, perhaps see each other at court in a few months’ time, but that will be it.
She mirrors Leo’s brusque tone. “You too.”
“What were you going to say?”
Ffion had been going to suggest they gave it a shot. She wanted to say she’d never felt so comfortable with someone and that when he’d put his arms around her and they’d stood looking out over the lake, she’d never felt so safe.
“Same.”
Something has happened to The Shore. It isn’t just that the twinkly lights are no longer lit or the champagne isn’t flowing. The resort seems somehow tarnished, a place no longer coveted but feared. Avoided. Even the sky seems a little darker on this side of the lake, the clouds a little grayer.
As they get out of the car, the door of the Staffords’ lodge opens, and a couple appear, their arms so entwined, they have to walk sideways, crab-like.
“That’s not Ashleigh Stafford,” Leo says.
“Your powers of observation are remarkable.” Ffion watches as the couple stop to kiss, Bobby cupping the woman’s face and then picking her up and whirling her around. “Get a room,” she mutters.
“All right?” Bobby says when he realizes they have an audience. His grin’s so wide it makes Ffion’s cheeks hurt. “This is the future Mrs. Stafford.” The woman blushes.
“S’mae, Mia,” Ffion says. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“No need for introductions, then, eh?” Bobby pulls Mia to him. “She’s a cracker, isn’t she?” They kiss again. Leo and Ffion exchange glances.
“What happened to Ashleigh?” Leo says.