Leo scans the texts. Lots from the twins, asking for money orCan we have chips tonight? Mum says it’s okay. On New Year’s Eve, Lloyd had a quick-fire conversation with someone about the party’s dress code.It’s a bit short, reads the message from an unknown number.Wear the dresswas Lloyd’s reply. Leo looks at the list of calls made to and from Lloyd’s phone, but the number doesn’t appear there.
In fact, Lloyd hardly made calls on his phone at all, and Leo works his way through the list, knowing he’ll be able to square away that job at least this evening. Then his gaze lands on a number Lloyd called around lunchtime on December 31. Leo doesn’t have a great recall for numbers—he hates parking meters requiring him to enter his car registration—but there’s something about this particular number that triggers a memory. He unlocks his phone and scrolls through the contacts, not wanting to be right yet at the same time knowing he is. He stops and stares at the screen.
The number Rhys Lloyd called on New Year’s Eve belongs to Ffion.
Thirty
Mid-August
Seren
Seren is definitely getting a tan, even though Cwm Coed is literally the hardest place in the world to get one. It rains for, like, three hundred days a year, and even in the summer—if there’s a heat wave, as there is now—you come down to the lake and the beaches are all in shade from the trees.Andshe’s a redhead, with the sort of skin that looks like she’s actually dead. Except when she goes for a run, when she goes so red, she’s basically purple.
But her arms are definitely a tiny bit browner than at the start of the summer. She found a sunbathing spot on the other side of the lake, where they’ve cleared the trees, ready for more lodges, and every chance she’s had, she’s been catching some rays. Let’s face it, there’s fuck all else to do. Most of her “friends”—if you can call them that—are away, and Ffion’s always working. Seren can’t wait till her birthday, when she can learn to drive and get the fuck out of this place. She literally doesn’t know how Ffion stands it. The only thing that makes Seren put any effort in at school—and she knows it’s uncool to brag, but her grades are shit-hot—is the thought of getting a job far away from Cwm Coed.
The lake’s loads nicer on this side. People always go straight to the jetty side, where the loos are and the van selling cold drinks, but over here, you can swim around the coves under the trees and never see another person.
There’s laughter coming from the lake. Seren can’t see through the trees, but she knows it’s the twins. She doesn’t know which is which, but she knows they’re called Tabby and Felicia because they shriek it at each other whenever one of them gets splashed.
Right?Felicia and Tabby.And people say Welsh names are weird.
Seren pulls her top over her bikini and skirts through the trees to come out farther up the lake. Seren’s been at The Shore every day since it opened.
Watching.
It’s like something you’d see on Instagram. There are five lodges, and right now they’ve all got their doors open on their decks. On the one nearest Seren, there’s a yoga lesson going on: the instructor’s facing the cabin, and the two women she’s teaching are looking out onto the lake. One of them’s super skinny and, like, pretzel bendy, and the other one’s Clemmie. Seren is slowly working out who everyone is. Clemmie’s been here five minutes and she knows more people in Cwm Coed than Seren does. She’s trying to start a book club, and she swims in the lake every day. Mam calls her a “joiner.”
She watches them for a bit. Clemmie is not bendy. Seren sympathizes. They did yoga in PE, and Seren spent the whole time trying not to fart.
God, it’s hot. She looks longingly at the clear blue lake. It’s flat calm, and she can almost feel the cool water on her skin. The lake is always freezing. It could be boiling hot on the shore and the water will still take your breath away. You have to stay in, have to keep swimming, until your arms and legs tingle, and then as if by magic, it starts to feel warm. When Seren was little, Mam used to say that was thedraig, breathing fire down the mountain, and Ffion used to roar and chase Seren through the water. Seren thought Ffi was the coolest big sister ever. Still thinks that, to be honest, even if she’d never admit it.
Rhys Lloyd is singing. At least Seren assumes it’s him, because who else has the balls to belt out “Calon Lân” except at a rugby match? The man’s like a god around these parts. The corridor in the music department at school is literally full of photos of him.
Wow. It makes the hair on the back of Seren’s neck stand up. She wonders if the twins distract him, shouting to each other from their massive flamingos. They’re always either on those things or on their sun loungers. Seren’s never seen them actuallyinthe water, and she can tell from the way they’ve done their hair all swishy and how their makeup is that they don’t plan on getting wet. One of them shrieks with laughter and tosses her head. She keeps spinning her flamingo back around so she’s facing one of the lodges a bit farther down, and Seren moves through the trees to see what she’s looking at.
It’s the boy from number four. Clemmie’s son. He’s in baggy-tracksuit bottoms, as he always is, in spite of the heat, and he’s more interested in his phone than in the twins showing off. They’re being massive try-hards and he’s totally ignoring them. Hilarious.
He stands, chucks his phone on the deck, and stretches. His T-shirt rides up a bit, and his stomach’s all tanned. He’s skinny, rather than toned, and he doesn’t seem as if he’d be the twins’ type, but then it’s not like there’s much choice around here. Seren’s had a few snogs with boys in her year, but there’s no one she’d actually go out with. Shudder.
The boy jumps from his deck to the next, then saunters across number two, where the old lady with the stick lives. When he gets to the other side of the deck, he swings himself down the ladder onto the jetty. For a second, Seren can’t see him, but then she hears running feet and he leaps in the air and tucks himself into a bomb.
He lands smack bang between the twins, sending a massive wave over each flamingo. Seren ducks behind a tree to hide her laughter—not that anyone could hear her over the squawks the twins are making. She walks farther down the shore, finding a spot to swim where she won’t be seen by the residents of The Shore.
Afterward, Seren’s making her way back through the forest toward town when she hears a crack behind her, like someone standing on a twig. She carries on walking, then stops short and spins around, and sure enough, he’s there.
“Why are you following me?”
The boy holds up his hands as if Seren’s got a gun. “Why were you watching us?” His clothes are soaked through, dark gray where they had been light.
“I was bored,” Seren says dismissively.
“Same. I’m Caleb.”
“Seren.”
“Seren?”
“It means star.”