“So you’re not on it.”
“We wouldn’t be. We went across the decks and came in through the sliding doors.”
“Did anyone see you?” Ffion says. “Anyone who could confirm your story?”
Ashleigh chews her lip, then brightens. “Alexa! We were pissing about with her, asking stupid questions.” She gets out her phone and opens an app, tapping deftly across the screen before pressing play. “See? Eleven fifty-two.”
The recording plays.Alexa, why is water wet?
Ashleigh laughs. “I was so fucked.” She presses the next recording, and Jonty Charlton’s voice rings out.Alexa, what’s Welsh for shove a leek up your—Ashleigh stops the recording. “He was even more fucked.” She frowns at the memory. “Two grams of coke gone, just like that. I’ll have to get Caleb on the—” She wrinkles her nose. “Forget I said that.”
Caleb Northcote is Ashleigh’s dealer? Leo looks toward Clemmie’s lodge and pictures Caleb chucking stones by the lakeside this morning. Leo had felt sorry for him; he truly believed the lad wanted to go straight.
Isanyoneat The Shore who they appear to be?
Twenty-Four
Christmas Eve
Blythe
As it’s Christmas Eve, Blythe has let Woody and Hester stay up late to eat with the grown-ups. They’ve been delightful, but it’s long past bedtime and Blythe senses Yasmin and Rhys are not entirely charmed by the youngest members of the Charlton family. Apparently, it’s perfectly acceptable for Felicia and Tabby to be glued to their phones during what was (even if Blythe says so herself) a truly superb meal, but Hester’s rendition of “Jingle Bells” is intolerable.
“If you don’t go to sleep,” Yasmin says, “Father Christmas won’t come.”
“A.k.a.fuck off,” Rhys says under his breath to Jonty, who roars with laughter.
“I’ll say!”
Blythe glares at her husband. She used to think Jonty was an excellent father: he plays with the children, takes them to the cinema and to the zoo, and has even been known to do the nursery run, where he is fawned over by the coven of mothers. At home, they have a live-in nanny, who also accompanies them to their house in the Cotswolds and on holiday to Tuscany.
It has become very apparent to Blythe that Jonty is only an excellent father on his terms. Here at The Shore, where the configuration of rooms doesn’t allow for a nanny (there’s no second sitting room—where would she go in the evenings?), Jonty has been distinctly reluctant.
“The Shore needs day care,” he said in the summer. They’d been there for three days. “I’ll tell Rhys to factor it into the budget.”
There is, in fact, only one element of parenting in which Jonty excels. Blythe supposes she should be grateful for small mercies.
“Jonty, darling,” she says now, “could you put the children down? You’re so much better at it than I am.”
“But we’re not tired!” Woody sprints circles around the dining table, and Hester races after him, tripping on the rug and face-planting on the floor. She lets out an air-raid-siren scream.
Jonty gets up. “Come on, you horrors.”
Bedtime has become Jonty’s domain. Woody and Hester, who have always been a nightmare to settle, now go meekly up to bed with a cup of warm milk and a story and are asleep in ten minutes. Blythe has tried to emulate the same routine, but she lacks Jonty’s magic touch.
“Will the children be staying up on New Year’s Eve?” Yasmin’s seemingly casual tone has a tightness beneath it.
“Don’t worry,” Blythe says. “We’re planning a grown-up affair, aren’t we, Jonty?”
“Too right. Smalls in bed by seven, and I gather Clemmie’s offered her pad for the not-so-smalls.”
“Why can’t we be at the party?” Tabby complains.
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d want to hang out with us old people.” Jonty grins, and Tabby doesn’t contradict him.
“And you’re sure you’re okay to host it?” Yasmin says.
Blythe smiles sweetly. “Honestly, we don’t mind.” Ever since the party was mooted, Yasmin has angled to host, desperate to showcase her interior design skills, even though the villagers probably think Anthropologie is a course option at the local college.