“I’d be keeping my head down if I were you, young lady. You know full well you weren’t to go to that bloody party.”
Ffion looks at Seren. “You were at The Shore last night?”
The girl’s chin juts out defensively. “Everyone was there.”
“I don’t give a monkey’s if the queen of Sheba was there. I told you to stay away from that place!” Mam’s voice rises, and Seren looks as if she might cry.
“Someone drowned?” Ffion says quickly.
Mam drags her attention away from Seren and gives a curt nod of confirmation.
“God. Who?”
Elen dishes up the porridge, mixed with stewed apple and with a swirl of cream on top. “A man, that’s all we know. Facedown, so…”
Ffion’s phone chirrups into life, the screen flooding with texts and missed calls. She scrolls past theHappy New Yearmessages until she reaches that morning’s texts.
Did you hear about the body in the lake?
Do you know who it is?
Where were you last night???
She presses the blinking icon to listen to her voicemail. At any other time of year, she’d put money on it being a visitor who drowned. Someone not used to the cold or to swimming outdoors, someone who didn’t grow up around water. Cwm Coed sees them every year, pouring out of the campsites and onto the lakeshore as though it’s Bournemouth beach, throwing themselves off the jetty and letting their kids loose on cheap inflatables.
But the New Year’s Day swim is strictly for locals. No one wants incomers, driving an hour or more in anticipation of the smug status update they can post on Facebook afterward. There’s no advert, no T-shirts, no sponsorship. No official organizer.
No safety measures, Ffion thinks grimly. She knows there’s a faction of the community who will say they’ve been proved right by today’s tragedy, people who refuse to attend the swim because it’s dangerous.All that running and laughing and falling over, the water so cold it’ll freeze your lungs. And all with drink inside from the night before. It’s only a matter of time before someone drowns.
Ffion’s phone is full of drunken voicemails from Mia and Ceri, shouted over a backdrop of fireworks, and one from Mam that morning—We’re leaving for the swim—lle wyt ti?
“I heard it was old Dilwyn Jones,” Seren says.
“In a tuxedo?” Mam says. “In forty years, I’ve never seen that man out of a cardigan.” She lowers her voice as she turns toward Ffion. “They moved everyone away from the body as soon as they could. He was—” She breaks off. “He was in a bad way.”
“Someone said his face was all smashed in.” Seren rises, eyes wide, deliberately ghoulish. Her hair is even redder than Ffion’s, with the same frizzy curls you can’t do a thing with. Ffion mostly fights hers into a messy bun, while Seren leaves hers loose to settle on her shoulders like a big ginger cloud. She’s pale, smudges of last night’s makeup around her eyes.
“Stop your gossip, Seren, and eat your porridge. Your bones’ll be cold till lunchtime.”
“I only got in as far as my knees.”
“You’ve bones in your legs, haven’t you?”
“Someone will have been reported missing, though, surely…” Ffion starts to say, but then she reaches the final message in her voicemail and her pulse quickens. She unplugs her phone. “I have to go.”
“You just got home!”
“I know, but…” Ffion jumps up to pull a clean top off the drying rack, wondering if she can swipe a bra without Mam seeing. Half a dozen socks fall off the rack, one landing neatly in the porridge pot.
“Ffion Morgan!”
Thirty years old, with a marriage and a mortgage behind her, yet Mam’s tea towel is still a force to be reckoned with. For the second time in as many hours, Ffion beats a hasty retreat.
As she pulls away, the car’s exhaust coughing in protest, she dials one-handed, balancing her phone on the passenger seat. Leaving the village, she pulls out in front of a car: a Sunday-best couple on their way to visit family, three bored kids in the back. The driver leans on the horn, staying on Ffion’s tail, making a point.
“Mia?” Ffion says when the voicemail kicks in. She puts her foot flat on the accelerator. “It’s Ffi.” Her pulse buzzes in her temples. “If Mam asks you where I was last night, tell her I was with you.”
Two