“Some of the others are.” Clemmie sighs. “Well, all of them, I suppose. The Staffords have staff and a swimming pool, and the Charltons live in Kensington and have a place in the Cotswolds. And of course the Lloyds’ family home is beautiful.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“In magazines.”
“So where do you and your son live?”
“London.” Clemmie colors. “A one-bedroom flat in zone five, where I sleep on the sofa and have the bad back to prove it.”
“But how—” Leo breaks off, not wanting to be rude.
“How did I afford this?” Clemmie flushes again. “It’s on a private repayment plan. Although the others don’t know I didn’t buy it outright, so I’d be grateful if you’d keep that to yourself.”
“Of course.” Leo glances around the room. “I assumed the lodges were all decorated the same.”
“You pay extra for furnished. Quite a lot extra. They really push you into it. I suppose they want a certainlookin photos. I do understand how it works, but it wasn’t an option for us.”
“Rhys Lloyd owned the resort, I understand?”
“That’s right.”
“What was he like?”
Clemmie looks at her soup with more concentration than it requires. “He was a wonderful singer. I remember hearing him at—”
“As a person.” Leo keeps his eyes on Clemmie.
There’s a long silence before she speaks. “He was very different from the way he’d been portrayed in the press.”
“In what way?”
“The interviews always show him as down-to-earth. They talk about how he walked to school with newspaper in his shoes because they leaked and how he spent his first West End paycheck on a holiday for his mum.”
“And he wasn’t like that?”
“He looked down on us,” Clemmie says. “Me and Caleb. Because I don’t wear the right clothes or drink the right wine. I didn’t fit with his vision of The Shore.” She speaks calmly, but there’s a hint of bitterness beneath her words.
“That must have been hard to take,” Leo says neutrally.
“Not so hard that it would give me a motive for murder, if that’s what you’re suggesting?”
“This isn’t a murder inquiry,” Leo says.Yet, he adds silently.
Clemmie gives a half laugh. “If it were, I think you’d have your hands full.”
“Why’s that?”
Clemmie looks at him, her expression unguarded and resigned. “Because I’ve been at The Shore for six months, and I’ve yet to meet a single person who liked him.”
As Leo leaves Clemence Northcote’s lodge, he feels the familiar fizz of adrenaline. He looks at the lodges, thinking of the cinder block walls under the wooden cladding, of the secrets they house. Leo doesn’t know how Rhys Lloyd died, but he knows this: beneath the glossy surface of The Shore is another story entirely.
Six
New Year’s Day
Ffion
Judging by the look on Leo’s face, he’d obviously expected to pair up for the house-to-house, but Ffion prefers to fly solo. Besides, regardless of what she’d said to Leo about forgetting last night’s escapade, it was easier said than done.Never dip your pen in company ink, a sergeant once told her. Patriarchal but nevertheless sound advice. Ffion finds herself distracted by flashbacks entirely inappropriate for a potential murder inquiry.