Felicia goes back to her phone, till Blythe claps her hands and announces some mad plan for a Christmas Day swim. ‘What do you think, girls? Caleb’s doing it.’ Like that makes a difference.
‘Yeah, whatevs,’ Felicia says, as rudely as she dares.
It takes forever till Yasmin says they’re allowed to leave – and no more than half a cider! – and it’s pissing with rain as they totter the mile to the village on their stupid shoes. Seren’s already in the pub, a round of Cheeky Vimtos squashed on the windowsill, where she’s carved out a space. Felicia’s coat steams in the warmth of the pub.
‘Happy Christmas!’ Seren’s eyes are shining. ‘How is everyone? How’s your dad?’
God. Felicia can’t even. She downs her drink and slams it down on the windowsill. ‘Catch up, lightweights. I want to get fucked.’
They can’t get fucked, because the barman lets them have two drinks each, then leans over and says, Don’t push your luck, kids. Seren shrugs and says she’s knackered anyway, so Tabby and Felicia wind up walking home even before last orders.
‘What a shit Christmas,’ Felicia says, as they reach the drive leading to The Shore.
Tabby takes off her shoes and walks barefoot on the icy tarmac. ‘I tore a corner of wrapping paper off those square boxes under the tree – they’ve got us AirPods.’
‘Cool.’ Felicia sighs.
As they reach the front door of number five, they hear raised voices. Felicia feels her stomach pitch. Dad’s found out. She opens the front door and, in tacit agreement, they creep into the hall and listen.
‘I can’t believe you would do that!’ Yasmin is saying. Felicia frowns. This is all wrong. Dad’s the one who should be saying that. ‘And to brag about it to me, as though I’d be impressed!’
‘You were impressed enough when you thought Jonty had “the magic touch”。’
Felicia thinks she might be sick.
‘Because I had no idea what he was really doing – what you’ve been doing. It’s – it’s criminal!’
‘You’re overreacting,’ Rhys snaps. ‘It didn’t do her any harm.’
‘How do you know? It could be in her system – a build-up, over the years, and one day it’ll come out—’
Rhys gives a bark of laughter. ‘Sixteen years later?’
Felicia claps her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.
‘They’re talking about us,’ Tabby whispers.
‘One of us,’ Felicia adds, darkly.
‘And now you’re risking the life of those two precious babies – it’s beyond awful. I shall tell Blythe, I can’t keep it from her.’
Felicia is lost. What has Dad done, and what does it have to do with Woody and Hester?
‘Oh, no – you’re not pinning that on me,’ Rhys says. ‘That’s all Jonty’s doing.’
‘You gave him the sleeping pills! You gave him the idea!’
‘I simply told him it had worked for us when Felicia was a nightmare going down—’
‘For you, Rhys! You drugged my baby for three years without my knowledge. You could have killed her!’
Tabby turns to Felicia in horror, but Felicia’s eyes have filled with tears and she runs up the stairs. Her mother’s affair with Jonty is the least of her worries, now that she knows what Rhys has done. It’s child abuse, that’s what it is.
Her dad is a monster.
FORTY-FOUR
JANUARY 8TH | FFION
‘Still think she did it?’ Ffion turns to Leo as they pull out of Ceri’s street.
‘I don’t know what to think any more.’ Leo manoeuvres slowly through the snow. The weather’s worsening, and, as they drove into Cwm Coed earlier, flurries of white had whirled against the windscreen, bright white against the darkening sky.
Burned from Yasmin Lloyd’s fruitless hours in custody, Crouch had refused to allow them to hold Ceri a minute longer than they had to.
‘Stick bail conditions on her and let her go,’ he said, and Leo and Ffion had had no choice but to comply. Ceri had arrived at the party at eight and was gone at ten-thirty, when – she said – she’d had enough of all the bullshit. They’d bailed her for two weeks; enough time to seek advice from the Crown Prosecution Service, and to follow up the lines of enquiry generated by Ceri’s interview – including the conversation she’d overheard between Huw and Steffan.
‘She could have gone back to the party,’ Leo says now. ‘She says she was tucked up in bed by eleven, but there’s no partner to corroborate that.’