Ffion rubs at her arms, pink from the cold. She drags the straps of her swimsuit down over her shoulders, her fingers refusing to comply, then pulls her T-shirt over still-damp skin. If Leo gets a flash of breast, he doesn’t react to it. Doesn’t care, Ffion supposes, now that he knows who she is. She puts on her jumper before drying her legs, half sitting, half falling onto the ground, where she tugs her jeans over clumsy feet. She’s shaking, but whether from cold or fear, she doesn’t know.
The truth? The truth has been buried so long ago, she sometimes doubts it herself.
“Ffion.” He holds out a hand. Ffion hesitates, then allows him to pull her up. She can’t stop shaking, the cold in her bones, in her veins, and she feels the pricking of tears at the backs of her eyes, hot and scared.
Leo takes off his overcoat, then wraps it around her and pulls it tight across her chest. Ffion’s legs buckle and she forces herself to stay upright, not to fall against him. She’s crying now, ashamed of herself, but then, what’s new?
“I know, Ffion,” Leo says gently, his eyes locked on hers. He holds her shoulders, firm and solid. “I know.”
The words hang between them and Ffion begins to weep. She’s glad of the cold now, of the numbness she wishes she could have felt all those years ago. She thinks of the way Leo opened up to her yesterday and wonders how it would feel to do the same.
“I gave Elijah a call last night. Figured I owed him an apology.” Leo gives a wry smile. “Turns out he’s not the only student in his course with a homemade lab: a mate of his has a side hustle doing private forensic tests.”
Out on the lake, a bird calls.
“There had to be a reason you stopped your sister from giving an elimination sample, so I took a hair sample from the pirate hat your mum gave me for Harris.”
Ffion holds her breath.
“It’s come back as a familial match for Lloyd.” The first flakes of snow begin to fall, softening the pebble shore. “Your sister is Rhys Lloyd’s daughter, isn’t she?”
Ffion has nowhere to go now but the truth. It’s always been so frightening, but here in Leo’s arms, numbed by the cold, sharing her secret feels more like relief.
“Yes.” The lake shines like polished glass, The Shore reflected so cleanly, it’s impossible to say where the building ends and the mirror image begins. “But Seren isn’t my sister.” In the center of the lake, a heron dives for a fish, and the glass shatters. If she tells him, there’s no going back.
Ffion takes a breath.
“She’s my daughter.”
Part Two
The sky is a vivid blue. The sun is high above the summit of Pen y Ddraig, the morning mist burned away, and boats tack lazily from one side of the lake to the other. The breeze is light, and when it drops completely, the boats drift, their sails empty, waiting for their next chance.
On the edge of the lake—by the jetty, by the ice-cream van—the air is thick with heat and the water peppered with paddleboards and kayaks. Families play in the shallows, beach balls flung high over heads. Day-trippers fling open motor homes, pop van roofs, light fires, and leave charred rings on the grass. They look across the lake and wonder who lives in the beautiful log cabins with their decks above the water and their private jetties. They imagine what it must be like to be so rich, so lucky, to live in such a place.
The stillness of the air and the warmth of the shimmering shallows are deceptive. Beneath the surface, strong currents seize rocks and fallen branches, stir up the lake bed, and uncover the dropped watches, the lone shoes. Shoals of minnows dart this way and that, their dance pulling in perch and pike, causing a sudden flurry on the surface, as though rain were falling. Deep in the middle of the lake, the water is still treacherously cold.
The breeze carries the bark of laughter and the timbre of male voices, although not their words. A sharppop!cuts through the air. Two men stand on the deck of one of the new lodges. One dangles a champagne bottle carelessly by his side, the cork now bobbing in the water. Rhys Lloyd. He’s excited to be here: on the shore of his childhood lake, where it all began. He’s proud to call Jonty Charlton his business partner, to carry cards with The Shore’s elegant green-and-off-white logo. He knows that this—the official opening of the resort—is the start of something exciting.
Yasmin and Blythe walk out of the lodge to join their husbands, and the four of them raise their glasses in a toast.
“To The Shore!” Rhys says. “To where it all begins.”
Thirty-Two
Late July
Rhys
Rhys takes a sip of his champagne. The summer heat gives a haze to the water, making the boats indistinct, like mirages in a desert. On the opposite side of the lake, holidaymakers jump off the jetty, diving underwater and surfacing with bursting lungs out by the moored boats. And above it all, reflected in the glistening surface of the lake, is Pen y Ddraig mountain.
“I’ve got to hand it to you, old man,” Jonty says. “That’s not a bad view. Not bad at all.”
“Who needs the Mediterranean when you’ve got this?” Blythe tips up her face, eyes closed, toasting the sun. Her glass wobbles, champagne splashing onto her bare arm, and she gives a girlish giggle.
“Steady on,” Rhys says. “That stuff’s not cheap.”
Blythe licks her tanned skin with a pink, pointed tongue.