“I didn’t kill him!” Clemmie bursts into tears.
Ffion puts a series of images on the table. “These photos were all posted on Instagram during or soon after the party.” She points to where Clemmie appears in each one: laughing, dancing, drinking. “We’ve pulled the metadata from these images, and you know what’s interesting? In this picture”—Ffion indicates an image of Clemmie doing some kind of jig—“which was taken at ten p.m., you have dry hair. Yet in this one, taken at one a.m. on New Year’s Day, your hair is wet.” Clemmie stares at the photo. In it, she stands in the Charltons’ kitchen, staring into her glass, while the party continues around her.
“Why is your hair wet, Clemmie?” Ffion says.
“I washed it.”
“Halfway through a party?”
Leo leans his elbows on the desk. “You swam out to Angharad Evans’s boat, didn’t you? So you could use it to dispose of Rhys Lloyd’s body. Which suggests to me that you killed him.”
Clemmie’s shaking, her face ashen. “I think,” she says finally, “I think I’d like to speak to a solicitor.”
Fifty-Nine
New Year’s Eve
Clemmie
Is it murder, Clemmie thinks as she hauls Rhys’s unmoving body through the master bedroom, if someone dies because you didn’t save them? She doesn’t let herself listen to the answer. She thinks instead of Caleb, of the downward spiral he was trapped in back home, and of his transformation at The Shore. The lodge can be theirs. No loan hanging over their heads, no paperwork, no threats. Gone.
She grunts as she pulls Rhys onto the balcony, a blast of fresh air chasing away the last vestiges of drunkenness. He’s heavy, but she told Glynis she had to stay in the study in case someone comes. Clemmie is pretty certain Rhys is too far gone to cause any trouble, but what if he suddenly groans or moves?
At the far end of The Shore, the party tent pulsates with music, lights crisscrossing the steamed-up windows. Clemmie’s chest is tight. She waits so long, she risks losing her nerve entirely; she has to pull herself together. There’s nobody outside, nobody can see.
The glass surrounding the balcony stops a foot from the floor. Clemmie pushes Rhys under it, sickened by her own actions but in too deep to stop. There’s an awful moment when she thinks his stomach is wedged and Rhys is hanging off the balcony, but Clemmie puts her foot against him and pushes and—
Thud.
Clemmie gasps. Doesn’t dare look down. The sound was so loud, she imagines Rhys splattered across the decking, body parts strewn like the aftermath of a train wreck. But when she peers gingerly over the balustrade, he’s lying intact, as though he’s asleep.
Clemmie takes several deep breaths, then returns to the study. Glynis hasn’t moved from the spot in which Clemmie found her. She’s stopped crying, but her face is drained of blood and her jaw trembles.
“If we put him in the water too close to the shore, he’ll be found.” Clemmie doesn’t recognize herself or the words she’s using. “Clean up here—there’s bleach in the bathroom, use lots—and meet me on the pontoon in fifteen minutes. And bring that with you.” Clemmie points to the trophy, still lying on the floor.
Glynis lets out a sob. “I can’t—”
“You have to.” Clemmie speaks harshly, but she has no choice. They have to get rid of Rhys, and they have to act fast. Who knows if Yasmin will come back to freshen up or the twins will tire of hanging out with Caleb. At the thought of her son, her heart clenches.I’m doing this for you, she tells him.
Down on the Lloyds’ deck, she doesn’t stop long enough to let the doubts creep in. She drags Lloyd’s body across the wood, grateful for the muscles she’s built up swimming, and lets it fall down the ladder onto the dock between the Lloyds’ deck and her own. Only once it’s out of sight of the lodges does she breathe; only then does she stoop to check again for Rhys’s pulse. She thinks at first he’s dead, but there’s a faint flutter against her fingertips, a barely there reminder that she hasn’t—yet—gone too far. His skin looks waxy in the thin moonlight, a dark tinge around his lips. Even if she called an ambulance now, would they be able to save him? And what would happen to her? The police would be called, for certain, and how would she explain how Rhys got outside, what she was doing with him? Clemmie is committed. She hasn’t yet gone too far, but she has gone far enough.
Several guests arrived at the party in motorboats. Clemmie crosses to the next pontoon, but all three of the boats bobbing in the water need keys. “Fuck!” She’s close to tears. Above her, a shadow crosses the Lloyds’ bedroom window, and she hopes to God it’s Glynis, that the woman’s doing what Clemmie told her to do. She looks frantically around, as though a boat might materialize from the depths of the lake. Moonlight glints on the water, and as the dark clouds scud across the mountain, Clemmie has an idea. She shivers.
She couldn’t.
Could she?
Clemmie’s wet suit is hanging over a chair outside her lodge. She skulks in the shadows, her breath catching when she sees Caleb and the twins inside. The table’s littered with bottles of beer and wine, and the mother in Clemmie wants to rap on the window and lecture them. Instead, she grabs her swimming things and returns to the pontoon.
She’s swum at night before, a flashlight in her tow float like a firefly on the water, but never alone, never with her blood fizzing with alcohol and fear. Her breathing’s already too fast, too shallow, and when she slips silently into the water, it abandons her entirely. She keeps moving, trusting her body, fighting the side of her brain that tells her she’s drowning. She surfaces, and slowly her lungs expand, and she can breathe again.
Clemmie swims breaststroke so she can better keep watch, although she knows she’s hidden in the darkness. The water is inky black, its choppy surface accustomed to hiding what lies beneath. Ahead of her, the mast on Angharad’s boat glints in the moonlight. The water plays tricks on her sense of distance. The boat seems to stay out of reach until suddenly it’s just thirty meters away, and then twenty…ten.
Clemmie hauls herself up, her limbs like jelly. She’s praying there’s fuel in the outboard motor, because in spite of the lessons Angharad gave her and Caleb, she isn’t capable of sailing—especially not in the dark. She remembers to push the centerboard down through the slot in the bottom of the boat, locking it into place, then she releases the hinge on the motor and drops it into the water. She turns it on, grips the starter rope, and tugs it hard.
There’s a splutter and a cough, then silence.
“Oh, come on, come on…” Clemmie tries again and again. Tears of frustration spring to her eyes, her teeth chattering as the cold seeps into her bones. She pulls a third time, and the splutter becomes a roar. She fiddles with the choke, finds the tiller, and points the boat toward The Shore.