“So if the tech team pulls the metadata on all these posts, we can cross-reference them with the data from Rhys’s Apple Watch to see what he was doing when his heart rate went loopy.”
“Hoping to see Professor Plum in the drawing room with the candlestick?”
“You never know.”
Leo scrolls through the Instagram feed on his own phone, looking for more pictures of the mystery woman in black. There are a couple of Yasmin and Rhys Lloyd on their own deck, presumably taken before the party—Lloyd looks significantly less disheveled. Behind them, the lake is a dark mass, the outline of black clouds heavy overhead. Perhaps it’s only because Leo knows that by the end of the evening, Rhys will be in the water behind him that even the twinkly lights strung along the balustrade seem full of foreboding.
Rhys’s twin daughters are both on Instagram, their grids carefully curated and heavily edited. Tabby Lloyd’s most recent post is a poignant photo of her father’s empty study, his chair at an angle as though he’s just left the room for a moment. Leo stares at the image, remembering the glossy photographs he looked at this morning and trying to pinpoint what looks different. He wishes he hadn’t left the magazine at home. “Are there any photos of Lloyd’s office from before he died?”
“Yasmin showcased the whole place on her grid, back in the summer. Hang on.” Ffion scrolls through the images, and the Lloyds’ life spools backward in tiny filtered squares. New Year’s Eve, then Christmas, then London life. Half-term holiday at The Shore, then London again, then summer at The Shore. Ffion stops. “Here.”
Leo holds his phone next to Ffion’s, and they bend over the near-identical images of Rhys Lloyd’s study. The room is small—essentially a wide landing between the master bedroom overlooking the lake and the two smaller rooms at the front of the lodge. In addition to the desk—tidier in Yasmin’s photo than in her daughter’s—there’s a small armchair, a music stand, and a potted plant. Above the desk is a shelf on which stand a number of trophies and awards.
Leo counts the awards visible in Yasmin’s photograph, then does the same for Tabby’s. He looks at Ffion, and the first piece of the puzzle falls neatly into place.
“There’s one missing.”
Twelve
New Year’s Eve: 7 p.m.
Mia
Mia walks back to The Shore barely an hour after she left. She’s been there all day, setting out canapés and being bossed about by Blythe. Who has a project plan for a party, for fuck’s sake? A few bowls of crisps, some banging tunes, bring your own booze, and job’s a good ’un.
Not at The Shore. At The Shore, it’s trays of sushi and tiny Yorkshire puddings hiding a curl of rare roast beef. It’s row after row of foil-topped bottles and one of those pyramids of glasses Mia’s only ever seen in films. It’s a tent—the sort you find at posh hotel weddings—with deck chairs and parasols and a sand-colored carpet because Jonty drew the line at actual sand. Crazy money. Crazy people.
Mostly.
Mia didn’t take the job as cleaner (and now, apparently, waitress) because of a man, but that’s why she’s stayed. That’s why she’s put up with the condescension and the casual insults and the feeling that she’s invisible unless she’s done something wrong. And she knows how insane it is and what people would say, and God, doesn’t she know how wildly unsuitable he is…
But.
Her heart soars as she picks her way over the rocks in trainers she’ll change out of before she reaches The Shore. In her hand, she swings a pair of six-inch heels, and okay, they’re not the Loubo-whatsits Blythe bangs on about, but they make Mia’s legs look as though they go on forever. The cheek of that woman, suggesting Mia might wear a waitress uniform! Mia has spent six months wearing a cleaning apron for stolen trysts with her lover, and tonight she intends to wow him. They managed the briefest of encounters earlier today, and she’s hopeful that tonight, when everyone is distracted by the party, they will be able to sneak off.
He’s not everyone’s cup of tea, she knows that. A bit full of himself maybe, a bit flash. But underneath all that, away from hisset, he’s lovely. Mia smiles to herself. After the party, he’s going to leave. He’s promised her. He’s going to walk away from all these trappings of success and be with her. “Who needs money when you’ve got love?” he always says, and Mia knows he means it.
Why would he lie?
There’s an atmosphere in Jonty and Blythe’s lodge—an undertow to the conversation—and Mia immediately thinks (as she always does, when she gets to work and discovers something isoff) that peopleknow. It’s self-centered of her, of course, but people in love are often self-centered.
“…sneaking around, up to no good,” Blythe is saying. Mia freezes in the doorway, her heart pounding.
“They’re just kids,” Jonty says. “Didn’t you sneak around when you were a teenager?”
Mia relaxes. Sashays into the room with as much poise as she can muster in vertiginous heels, pretending she doesn’t know the effect she’s having.
“Ding dong!”
Blythe glares at her husband. “I do wish you wouldn’t say that all the time. It’s so disgusting.” She bears down on Mia with her bloody spreadsheet, and Mia grits her teeth. It’ll all be worth it in the end.
The local guests aren’t due for another half hour, but Rhys and Yasmin are here talking to Bobby and Ashleigh. Mia tops up their champagne, and there it is again—that weird atmosphere, like something tugging beneath the surface.
“…said I was a natural, didn’t they, babe?” Ashleigh is saying. “Even though Bobby’s the actor.”
“Can we call someone anactorwhen they’re essentially just playing themselves?” Rhys says. He grins as if it’s a joke, but his eyes are stony, and although Bobby laughs, there’s a hardness to it.
“Can we call someone asinger,” he says, “when they’re essentially just an arsehole with a microphone?”