She’ll be fine, she keeps telling herself. She’ll have moored up somewhere. She might even be off the boat by now, sheltering in the woods.
Leo catches up with her on the jetty. A fierce gust almost throws him off balance, and he braces himself – knees bent – against another attempt. ‘This is crazy – we have to wait for a specialist team.’
‘She might die!’ Ffion jumps into the motorboat, and it rocks precariously. The cockpit’s open, a low windscreen the only protection from the elements, and water sloshes around the bottom of the boat. A wave breaks over the bow, crashing inside. Leo is ashen, his feet still stubbornly planted on the jetty.
‘I can’t . . .’ His eyes close briefly, a look of intense shame on his face. ‘I can’t swim.’
Ffion thinks of Seren, out there in the blizzard, in an unsafe boat. She looks at Leo, fear and panic combusting into anger. ‘Then don’t fucking fall in.’
Leo doesn’t move.
When they find Angharad’s dinghy they’ll need one of them in Steffan’s motorboat, while the other gets Seren to safety. Ffion can’t do this on her own.
She might have to.
She starts the engine, and the boat fights against the mooring lines.
Leo takes a step forward, then two back. ‘I – I don’t think I can.’
Just then, a sound rings out: the pop of a firework, audible even over the wind. Above the water, shooting high and bright into the whiteout, comes a streak of vibrant red.
Not a firework.
A distress flare.
FORTY-NINE
NEW YEAR’S EVE | 11.45 A.M. | RHYS
‘I want a divorce.’ Yasmin says this as she’s making the bed, as casually as though she’s asking for a cup of tea. Rhys looks at her in the reflection of the dressing table mirror, where he’s assessing the level of grey in his hair. Divorce? He knew this wasn’t going to blow over as easily as their usual spats – they’ve barely spoken since Christmas Eve – but divorce?
‘Don’t you think that’s a little extreme?’
‘No, Rhys.’ Yasmin pummels a pillow with unnecessary force, before placing it on the bed. ‘Poisoning our daughter is extreme.’
‘For the hundredth time, I did not poison her!’ There is an art to shouting in a whisper, and Rhys and Yasmin are experts at it. They might not agree on many things, but they have always tried to keep their arguments from the twins.
‘You will agree to a divorce,’ Yasmin says. ‘You’ll give me the house – it wouldn’t be fair to expect the girls to move – and fifty per cent of your share of The Shore. Plus maintenance, of course.’
‘And if I don’t?’
Yasmin smooths the bedspread and contemplates it as she answers. ‘I’ll tell the papers what you did.’ She turns to leave the room. ‘I imagine that would rather undermine the good work your expensive publicity campaign’s been doing.’
‘Over my dead body,’ Rhys hisses.
‘Don’t tempt me.’
When she’s left the room, Rhys looks at himself in the mirror. If Yasmin goes to the papers, just as he’s starting to claw back a profile, it’ll finish him. He’s done two adverts in the last three months, and there are murmurings of a West End audition. Things are finally on the up.
And what does Yasmin expect him to live on? Rhys owns fifty-one per cent of The Shore; Jonty the remaining forty-nine per cent. If Rhys signs half over to Yasmin, Jonty will become the controlling partner and Rhys’ll be left with just twenty-five and a half per cent.
Over my dead body, he thinks again.
His phone pings with a message – another chivvy from Blythe on The Shore’s message group. Lots to do, chaps!!!! Last night, she had sent a spreadsheet with everyone’s allocated jobs, from sweeping the decks and putting up decorations, to unloading the wine and laying out the canapés. Disaster! she’d messaged, at gone midnight. The ice sculptor has let me down. Is there someone local we could use?
Rhys walks from the bedroom on to the balcony. Beneath him, the row of decking ends abruptly at the Charltons’ lodge, where a vast marquee hides the organised chaos Blythe is orchestrating within.
Rhys should show his face before Corporal Blythe comes looking for him. He’s had another text from Seren, and he feels the heady rush which accompanies the promise of something exciting. Their flirting’s been careful. Contained. The sort of flirting you can explain away as a joke – to yourself, as much as to anyone else. The sort of flirting which could be nothing, or could be something.