Ffion locks the door behind him. The last thing she needs is the victim’s business partner breathing down her neck while she’s trying to do her job.
There’s no chair in the office, but under the desk, she finds two empty crates of champagne—how the other half live—and she balances one on top of the other and perches gingerly on top. She scrolls through the dates until she finds New Year’s Eve, then spins the digital clock forward. Midday, one p.m., two p.m., three…
There.
Ffion glances over her shoulder at the locked door, blood singing in her ears. Drifting through the dusk from the Lloyds’ lodge comes the sound of Rhys singing. Ffion imagines Yasmin—or the girls—torturing themselves over his recordings. She stares at the screen, her fingers poised above the keyboard.
Then she presses Delete.
Seven
New Year’s Eve: 10 p.m.
Rhys
Rhys wants the party to be over. The room is swaying, his vision blurred. He feels a hiss in his ear.
“If I were you, I’d be checking over my shoulder.”
Rhys lurches away, hot and unsteady. He feels sick. In his mouth, his tongue feels twice the size, no longer capable of speech. He makes his way unsteadily through the room, a strained smile bolted to his face. His shirt pulls at the back of his neck as he moves, sweat soaking into the collar, and he feels the burn of brandy move dangerously up his throat. He swallows it back down.
“Amazing place, Rhys!”
“Great party.”
“Oops! Easy there!” A steadying hand catches Rhys before he falls, good-natured laughter rippling around the room. “You’ve peaked too soon, old man. It’s not midnight yet.”
Rhys manages a laugh, as is expected, but his forehead prickles with sweat, and his skin feels clammy and cold. The tent is empty and the party has retreated inside. There are too many people, standing too close to each other, and Rhys feels crowded. Trapped. He hates this place. He should never have built it, never have come back to the lake. Nothing has turned out the way he intended.
Rhys’s vision for The Shore had been a place for artists. A place for singers, actors, creatives. He’d imagined a fusion of English and Welsh culture.
“Slight problem with that, old man,” Jonty had said when Rhys had finished his impassioned pitch. “Creatives don’t have money.”
The windows of the lodge have steamed up, the dark expanse of the lake filtered by fogged glass. Out on the deck, the inside of the tent runs with condensation, Blythe’s disco ball sending silent fireworks across the swaths of draped fabric that make up the walls and ceiling. The noise has reached fever pitch, and Rhys feels it vibrate through the floor, through his bones, as he moves toward the front door. All around him, people are dancing in tight knots, alcohol giving them loose limbs and lazy gazes. Faces appear in blurry snapshots, like photographs floating in developing fluid. He stares at the faces as they swim in and out.Yasmin. Ashleigh. Jonty. Dee. Huw. Seren.
He can’t stay here. He pushes on, pushes past. He knows most, but not all, of the people at the party, but in this alcohol-glazed fug, they could all be strangers. He feels disconnected from them, from himself, as though he’s viewing the party through thick glass. So many people. They were curious to see inside The Shore—to see what Rhys had made of himself since he’d left Cwm Coed. Or perhaps they simply wanted more fuel for the fire that had started the day the planning application went in.
A shout rings out. “Give us a song, Rhys!”
The request prompts a chorus of pleas from around the piano, but Rhys waves them away, pointing vaguely across the room as though he is on his way to see someone, to do something. A pianist begins thumping out “Yellow Submarine,” and Rhys stumbles toward the door. He thinks it’s likely he will throw up, and he would prefer to do so outside. In fact, he’d prefer to do it in his own bathroom. Suddenly, he wants nothing more than to be in his own lodge, slipping between cool sheets, within dashing distance of the en suite. His heart is racing, and he wishes he could stop the images in his head—memories he thought he’d forgotten.
It isn’t too late to be a better person, he tells himself.
As he reaches the front door, he hears the opening bars of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” and he’s grateful he didn’t stay. Outside, the icy air brings a moment’s relief, but the clarity is short-lived. His stomach heaves and he lurches from the path, vomiting violently into the bushes. He thinks of his cool sheets, of the bottled water in the bedroom minibar.
The driveway is pooled with lights from the lodges. Despite the cold, there are shapes huddled in the trees—teenagers, perhaps, skulking out of sight with the cider they think they stole unseen.
As he staggers toward his own lodge, Rhys sees movement upstairs in Dee’s place; at number three, the Staffords’ door is wide open. He stumbles on, past Clemmie’s lodge, to number five. He’s glad to find the front door unlocked—he can’t remember where his keys are—and he pauses only to throw up again beside the ornamental grasses.
He doesn’t take off his shoes. He doesn’t turn on the light. He grips the banister and grits his teeth as his guts churn. He reminds himself he is seconds away from privacy, a clean loo, crisp white sheets. Seconds away from the oblivion he craves, and tomorrow will be a new start, a chance to make good the mistakes he’s made. When he wakes up, everything will feel better. He willbebetter.
Eight
January 2
Ffion
“Did he kill himself, then?”