There’s only a postcard for number two. Ceri could pop it through the letter box, but she has a soft spot for Dee Huxley and likes to check in on her.
“Ceri, dear, it’s freezing.” As always, Mrs. Huxley is in her slippers, with several layers beneath her cardigan. Ceri looks down at her bare knees and grins. They have a variation on this exchange most mornings, but it’ll take more than the threat of snow to get Ceri out of her shorts.
“How are you, Mrs. Huxley?”
“Still alive, which is a good starting point for any day, I always think.”
“I thought I told you to use this?” Ceri rattles the door chain, which hangs uselessly on the frame. “I might be someone after your money.”
“I’d give you short shrift if you tried.” She lifts her stick and bangs it on the floor, then laughs at Ceri’s expression.
At number five, Ceri takes out the package marked for the Lloyds. She’d leave it on the doorstep if she could, but the big padded envelope marked with his agency address has to be signed for. Signed for! A bunch of stamped, addressed envelopes, waiting for Rhys’s autograph. Ceri’s never known anything so ridiculous.
Hopefully one of the twins will open the door. Or Yasmin. Ceri doesn’t much like Yasmin, but she’s undoubtedly the lesser of two evils. The Lloyds have one of those doorbells with a camera attached, so if they’re lazing on the deck, they can see if whoever is at the door is worth getting up for. Early last summer, Ceri had rung the bell and been greeted by Rhys’s disembodied voice.
“Parcel for you.”
“Could you stick it upstairs in the office? Door’s open. It’s a surprise for Yasmin. I don’t want her to see it.”
“Fuck sake,” Ceri had muttered, pushing open the front door. “What did your last servant die of?” She’d noted the shoes by the mat and kept her own on, wishing they were muddier. The stairs turned halfway up, and she saw the office at the top. All the bedroom doors were open, the heat stifling. A pile of sheet music, pinned to the desk by an empty mug, wafted in the breeze coming from the balcony in the main bedroom. Ceri put the parcel on the armchair, covering it with a throw so soft, it was all she could do not to hold it to her face. She ran a hand over the polished mahogany desk and thought of the crappy furniture in her own house. On the wall, generic framed prints hung in a perfect quartet. Ceri took it all in, moving silently around the small space, her fingers trailing lightly over artfully placed ornaments.
She glanced into the master bedroom, thinking how incredible it would be to wake up to that view—how she would sit and paint on the balcony all day—then she caught sight of the full-length mirror on the wall and screamed.
Rhys was lying in bed, the sheets pushed to one side and one hand resting idly by his naked thigh. “That you, Ceri?” he’d called as she ran down the stairs, as though he hadn’t been watching her, hadn’t just made eye contact with her, hadn’t smiled as if to sayYou can’t resist me, can you?
Afterward, Ceri had complained to her boss.
“You should never have gone in his house,” he’d said. “You wentupstairs, Ceri. What did you think was going to happen?”
“Morning,” Rhys says now as he opens the door.
Ceri doesn’t look at him. She hands him the envelope full of fan mail and stares at her machine while he signs his name with a flourish too big for the screen. She thinks about the names he called her when she was twelve and he was old enough to know better. She thinks about the constant drip drip drip of abuse whenever she saw him, the obscene graffiti on her locker. She thinks about turning up full of nerves to meet the girl she fancied, only to find Rhys and his mates, pissing themselves laughing.All water under the bridge, Ceri always says if anyone from school ever mentions it.
“I’ve got something for you, actually.” Rhys coughs. He’s never mentioned that day she saw him on the bed. Never even referred to it. Ceri wonders if Rhys is one of thoseall mouth and no trouserstypes, too scared of humiliation to try anything he can’t explain away as an accident. “I’ll go and get it.”
Ceri waits on the doorstep, thinking it might be a tip, although Yasmin already gave her a Christmas card with a gift card for Primark.
Rhys comes back with a pile of creamy cards. “We’re having a New Year’s Eve party. Thought we’d invite some people from the village.” He clears his throat again.
“Are you…” Ceri is incredulous. “Are you inviting me to your party?”
Rhys colors slightly. “Well, if you like. But actually, we wondered… I mean… I’ve written a list. Of people who might like to come.” He hands her a printed list of around twenty people.
The penny drops. Ceri’s the postwoman, so she can deliver their mail. For free. Rhys Lloyd has got a bloody nerve. She stares at the invites, and she wants to tell him where to stick them, only inside, she’s still the fourteen-year-old girl who once threw herself into stinging nettles to avoid Rhys’s cruelty, still the teenager made to hate herself so much, she swallowed every paracetamol she could get her hands on.
Ceri takes the invitations.
After she’s dropped the van at work, she walks through the village toward her house. Glynis is cleaning the shop windows. She asks how Ceri is, as she always does, in an intense, insistent way, as though checking on Ceri’s welfare now negates what her son did back then.
“They’re having a party at The Shore.” Ceri holds up the creamy invitations.
“It’s nice they’re asking people from the village,” Glynis says with a touch of defensiveness.
“It is indeed.”Water under the bridge, Ceri thinks as she moves on. She looks at the list of people Rhys and his friends consider worthy of an invitation. Business owners, Rotary members, the vicar and his wife. A local historian, a news anchor with a family home nearby. Does Rhys even like these people, or is it all just for show? Ceri flicks the invites with her thumb, mentally working out a route to deliver them.
What is she doing?
Ceri feels a surge of anger that she’s once again allowed Rhys Lloyd to fill her time and her head. She pushes open the door of Y Llew Coch. The lunchtime regulars sit in the window seat—old boys with pints of ale and years of memories—and a couple of walkers tuck into sausage and chips. At the bar, Huw Ellis is talking to Steffan Edwards.