“I’m sorry, that’s impossible.” Yasmin blinks. “I’ve taken everyone up there. I’m an interior designer. The Shore is a very important part of my portfolio.”
“When you sayeveryone…” Leo says.
“Jonty and Blythe, obviously. Clemmie, Dee, the Staffords—Ashleigh wanted my advice on lighting, although can you believe it, they’ve put spotlights in the—”
“Who else?” Leo interrupts.
“The builder, Huw Ellis. There have been a few snags, and he has a set of keys. He’s been in all the lodges. Same goes for Mia, the cleaner. And then, of course, I did tours at the party.”
“You did tours?” Ffion imagines giving tours of Mam’s place.This is the bathroom, where you have to whack the pipe with a hammer to make the shower come on. This is my bedroom, which still has a poster of the Backstreet Boys on the wall…
“People were curious.” Upstairs, the sound of music grows louder, and Ffion realizes it’s Rhys singing. She pictures the twins up there, listening to their father’s voice, and she swallows hard. She hands a sheet of paper to Yasmin.
“This is a list of medication found in your husband’s bedside drawers. Do you know which of them he was taking?”
Yasmin scans the list of tablets. “He took ibuprofen for a bad back sometimes. These are multivitamins—I take the same ones. Oh, and these sleeping tablets were for jet lag.” She hands back the list. Upstairs, the girls’ music goes up another few decibels, Rhys’s soaring voice making the hairs on the back of Ffion’s neck stand up.
Yasmin stands. “I can’t bear it.”
“Let them be,” Glynis says, but Yasmin’s already leaving the room. Convenient, Ffion thinks. She isn’t interested in what Yasmin said about the drugs—all run-of-the-mill stuff—but sheisinterested in the way the woman’s hand shook as she read the list and in the intentionally offhand manner with which she rattled through her explanations. Something on that list is significant. Ffion looks at Leo and knows he’s thinking the same.
Upstairs, Rhys’s voice cuts off mid-note.
“I keep forgetting,” Glynis says quietly. “Then it all comes back and…” Tears brim over her eyelashes.
“It must be very difficult for you,” Leo says. “I’m sorry if we’re making it harder, asking all these questions. We just want to find out what happened to your son. Did he ever talk to you about his harassment case?”
“Yes, I was very worried for Yasmin and the girls.”
“Not for your son?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You saidYasmin and the girls. Were you worried about Rhys?”
“Of course I was worried about him!”
“He received a number of abusive messages online,” Ffion says. “Do you have any idea who could have been sending them?”
“None at all.”
“Had Rhys fallen out with anyone?”
Glynis’s hands are shaking. She looks nervously at the ceiling. There’s no sign of Yasmin.
“Mrs. Lloyd?” Leo prompts.
“People locally were very upset when The Shore was built,” she says eventually. “With Rhys, and with me too. There’s been a lot of ill feeling.”
“You’ve been stuck in the middle,” Ffion says. It’s a statement, not a question, but Glynis answers it anyway.
“Yes. It’s been very unpleasant.” Her voice cracks.
“So why do it?” Leo says. “Why let Rhys develop the land if there was so much resistance to it locally?”
“The land was passed to Rhys in my husband’s will.” Glynis shrugs helplessly, then drops her eyes to her lap. “And besides, my son could be very persuasive.”
Ffion looks out the window. They’ve been forecasting snow for days, and a tiny flake tests the waters, drifting down onto the high street.