‘So go back to Liverpool,’ Allie had said, when Leo mentioned it.
‘I’d never get to see Harris.’
Allie had shrugged, as though he’d made his own bed, when Leo wasn’t even allowed to sleep in it any more. Allie was the one who made the choices. Choices like where they lived, where and when they went out. Choices like fucking her friend’s husband, then ending her marriage to Leo.
‘I might as well be in Liverpool,’ Leo mutters now, pulling over as a trailer full of hay bales clatters perilously close to the low barrier between the road and the sheer drop on the other side. He’d envisaged having Harris every other weekend, and maybe one night in the week. But, after Dominic moved in, Allie decided it was disruptive for Harris to sleep anywhere but home. Leo had to pick him up at nine, waiting by the front door of a house he had once paid the mortgage on, and have him back by six. If Leo was rostered to work the weekend, he lost that Saturday with Harris: it was disruptive to switch weekends around, apparently. How Allie loves that word. Slowly, it became disruptive to collect Harris before eleven, or to return him after two. Leo finally understands why there are so many single dads in McDonald’s on a Saturday lunchtime. Where else do you go when you’re only allowed three hours with your kid, every other weekend?
Then, of course, Leo had fucked up. Lost his mind, just once, just for a moment. And Allie won’t ever let him forget it.
Having climbed steadily – and slowly – for the previous ten miles, the road begins to fall away in front of them, and the Triumph picks up pace, racing down the winding path at a speed Leo isn’t inclined to follow. He drags his mind away from Allie and Harris, and back to Rhys Lloyd, and the message he’s about to deliver to the man’s family. There was little online about them. The twin daughters are fifteen; Lloyd’s wife, Yasmin, is forty-six, the same age as her husband. She’s a space consultant, whatever that is. Something to do with NASA?
The road bends sharply to the left, before dropping steeply away. As the view opens up, Leo finds his mouth dropping open. The lake is a lazy letter ‘S’ in the bottom of the valley, its border of forest dense and dark. Around it, woodland covers steep hills, making it look as though the trees in the distance are a hundred feet tall, towering over the lake.
Mirror Lake itself is a shimmer of silver beneath the day’s thin sunlight. At the far end looms a vast mountain, snow-capped peaks half-hidden in a swirl of cloud. The English–Welsh border runs directly through the middle of the lake, and it feels odd that it should be so invisible; that the water bears no sign of where one country ends and another begins.
Leo’s ears pop as the road descends still further, until he can’t see the lake any more, only the trees closing in either side of him. Ffion brakes hard, taking a left-hand fork so fast that the Triumph skids on to the opposite side of the road. Leo follows. This is the English side of the lake, an unmarked road which gradually narrows to become a single track. Every now and then the trees thin around shallow coves, the lake glinting in the winter sun.
It would make a nice walk on a sunny day, Leo supposes. If you liked that sort of thing. Maybe by next summer Allie might have forgiven him; might let him take Harris for a whole day – for a weekend, even. They could paddle, or buy one of those fishing nets on sticks and see what they could catch.
Leo is brought up short by a wide turning, flanked by enormous pillars. Vast wooden letters are positioned along the first twenty metres of the driveway.
THE SHORE.
Leo takes his foot off the accelerator. You can’t see the resort from the main road, and a sign to Leo’s left makes it clear the site is private property. Clipped hedging runs either side of the drive, and every few metres rustic posts suspend discreet bulbs to light up the route when dusk falls. This is more like it, thinks Leo, as he follows Ffion’s Triumph into the complex. Stylish, luxurious, and not a sheep in sight.
As he nears the end of the drive, the space widens into parking. On the right, nestled into the trees, are several visitor bays, and Leo pulls in next to Ffion.
‘Hideous, isn’t it?’ Ffion says, as he gets out. Leo is too busy staring at the lodges to answer. They’re built directly on the lakeshore, each with a narrow path leading from the front door to a private parking space marked by more discreet lighting. The lodges are clad in wood, the grain left to weather naturally, and with the pine trees as a backdrop Leo thinks they could be in Switzerland, not north Wales. It feels a few degrees colder here than in Chester, and Leo pulls up the collar of his overcoat.