“Some of you may not be aware that, in the course of the murder investigation, DC Brady and DC Morgan responded to an emergency situation on Mirror Lake.”
Beside him, Leo feels Ffion tense. Leo had glossed over their exploits when briefing the DI, telling him only that a local girl had gotten into difficulties. Ffion’s story is her own to tell. Hers and Seren’s.
“The conditions on the lake were treacherous,” Crouch says. “Yet these officers went onto the water with no consideration for their own welfare and brought a young girl to safety.” He smiles at Ffion, then his eyes rest on Leo. “Great work, you two. Really great work.”
This time, even the oldest and most jaded members of the team are stirred into a response. Leo tries to stay nonchalant, but he can’t stop the swelling in his chest as his colleagues give him and Ffion a round of applause. He takes in the admiration on his colleagues’ faces and the curt but genuine nod of respect from Crouch, and he grins.
He won’t ask for a transfer back to Liverpool. He’ll stay on Major Crime, and maybe he’ll look again at promotion. And in among all that, once he and Ffion are no longer working together, maybe he’ll pluck up enough courage to ask her out for that drink.
Sixty-Two
June
Ffion
The summer brings with it the sort of heat that makes Ffion long for rain. She’s spent the day in a stuffy courtroom with a lad from down south who came to North Wales on a climbing holiday and went home on bail. With the hearing over, Ffion drives across the mountains to the small village of Bethfelin, not far from home, to tell Mr. and Mrs. Roberts that the man who put their son in the hospital has been found guilty.
“I know it doesn’t change anything,” Ffion says. Twenty-six-year-old Bryn Roberts was an instructor. His group had been boisterous and arrogant, reluctant to listen to the leaders. What began as messing around had ended in permanent brain damage for one man and an assault conviction for the other.
“Diolch, Ffion,” Mrs. Roberts says. “For keeping us updated…for everything.”
Her husband shows her out. “I knew your dad, you know,” he says gruffly. “He’d be proud of you.”
Ffion’s eyes sting as she drives the Triumph back toward Cwm Coed. She remembers the disappointment on her dad’s face when he’d learned she was pregnant. “For God’s sake, Ffi, sort yourself out.”
Ffion had tried. She’d tried relationships, jobs, friendships… They’d all seemed to end in chaos, and Ffion had begun to think that was justher. Just the way she is.
But now she thinks that perhaps Dadwouldbe proud of her.
And maybe—just maybe—she’s beginning to sort herself out.
The sun’s still warm when Ffion draws level with Llyn Drych, and the Triumph turns toward the lake almost of its own accord. She has no swimming things, but her underwear is serviceable, and she’ll use her jumper to dry off.
Two minutes later, she’s in the water, gasping as the cold tickles her stomach. Ffion holds her breath and plunges under the surface, the grime of the day gone in a second, pulling herself through the water in long, even strokes. Beneath her, she sees the silver dart of a fish before it’s lost in the murky weeds far below. Every third stroke, Ffion takes a breath, and the shore passes in a series of snapshots, a flip-book of trees and birds and boats. High above her, Pen y Ddraig mountain keeps watch.
As Ffion swims back toward the jetty, she sees a figure standing next to the Triumph.
Seren.
Ffion makes herself carry on at the same steady rate. Every time she lifts her head, she expects the shore to be empty, and she wills Seren to stay.Give her time, Elen keeps saying. But how much time?
“Has she said anything to you, Mam?” Ffion asked recently, and Elen sighed.
“I’m sorry,cariad. It’s a lot to take in. She needs someone to blame, and…” Hesitation hid Rhys’s name. “He’snot here, so I’m afraid you’re taking the brunt.”
Ffion faltered before saying what was in her head, and when she spoke, she couldn’t look at Elen. “It wasn’t my idea to say Seren was my sister.”
There was a heavy silence.
“No.” Elen turned away, staring out the window, her voice small and uncertain. “And every day I’ve wondered, did we do the right thing?”
Did they?
It’s felt right, Ffion supposes, for much of the past sixteen years, when Seren was free from the stigma attached to the children of young single mothers. It felt right when Ffion was able to stay on at school, get A-levels, go to university. Seren was happy, well-adjusted—until she learned the truth.
Ffion senses rather than feels the moment the lake meets the shore. She takes a final dip beneath the surface, her eyes wide in the clear, cold water, then surfaces and wades the few meters to dry land. Seren looks on the verge of flight, and Ffion’s pulse races. She mustn’t mess this up.
“Hey.” Ffion towels herself off with her jumper and pulls on her trousers. She pulls her buttoned shirt over her head, taking off her wet bra and dropping it on the ground in one fluid movement.