By the time Ffion manages to extricate herself from Deirdre Huxley’s lodge, her head is spinning. She scans her surroundings for cameras. They’re well hidden, nestled in the trees lining the drive. Ffion rolls a cigarette and walks down toward the edge of the lake to smoke it in private. It’s astonishing how many people feel it’s their God-given right to lecture a complete stranger on their health.
“Every cigarette takes ten minutes off your life, you know,” Leo says, walking up behind her.
“Eleven, actually. Want one?”
“Go on, then.”
Ffion passes the tin to Leo, who rolls the loose cigarillo of a social smoker. “How were your two?”
“I haven’t done the Charltons yet, and Mrs. Huxley is batty. Good tea stop, though.”
“I’m all done,” Leo says. “No one remembers seeing Lloyd at midnight, but Ashleigh Stafford saw him barfing into a bush at some point before that.”
“Classy.” Ffion looks out at the water. The dark clouds that had met them on their arrival have cleared, and the snow tips of Pen y Ddraig are stark against the blue winter sky.
“Clemence Northcote says there was a group pissing about by the water, late in the evening, daring each other to go in, that sort of thing, but she can’t be certain if Lloyd was with them.” Leo turns toward the lodges. Between each deck, ladders run down to floating docks, shared by the lodges on either side. “If he went in the water there, would the current take him across to the other side?”
“Do I look like the Little Mermaid?”
Leo picks up a stone and throws it into the lake, sending a tern flapping into the air.
“Hey!” Ffion glares at Leo. “I’ve dragged kids home by their ears for doing that.”
“I didn’t hit it.”
“I’d have bloody hityouif you had.” She stares out at the lake. Beside her, Leo starts fidgeting. God, it’s worse than taking a kid out.
“Doesn’t it drive you insane?” Leo says. “All this.” He waves an arm at the expanse of water, the harsh rock face of Pen y Ddraig mountain looming over it.
“Yup.”
“You should put in for a transfer. South Wales, maybe?”
“Yeah, I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
Ffion makes the same gesture Leo did. “Because of all this.”
She walks away from him, her leather boots darkening as water splashes across the toes. Leo follows, a few feet farther from the water’s edge. Heaven forbid he should get those brogues wet.
“The lake gets under your skin,” she says. “It’s just always there, you know? When I was growing up, the lake was where we hung out. It’s where our mams dragged us for special photos, where we had to wash our rugby boots when they were too filthy for the sink.”
“You played rugby?”
“Play,” Ffion corrects. “Fly half.”
“Have you ever tried to move away?”
She laughs. “It’s notLittle House on the Prairie,some big homestead folk can’t leave because Mama’s apron strings are too darn tight.” She puts on an American drawl, and Leo looks sheepish. “I did move, actually. I went to university in Cardiff, and then I lived in London for a bit. But my boyfriend was here, and…other stuff, so I came home,” she finishes weakly.
The boyfriend bit isn’t true. They saw each other on and off during university holidays, but they were never exclusive. No question of him trekking down to Cardiff or meeting her friends. It was only afterward that they had become a proper couple, when Ffion came back home.
Mam had been forty-four when Seren (not an accident, she told people firmly, asurprise) arrived, the pregnancy having been overshadowed by Dad’s illness. He’d missed the birth by two weeks.
Seren was four when Ffion finished school. “If I apply to Manchester,” Ffion told Mam, “I could carry on living here. Drive in for lectures.”
“Don’t stay home for us.”