‘Take her.’
‘You can—’
‘Take her!’
When Ffion’s milk came in, it felt like a betrayal. She sat hunched in the bath, her breasts throbbing and the taps running to block out the sound of her baby – no, her sister – crying downstairs, taking the bottle from Mam. It was better this way.
Wasn’t it?
A flash of lightning illuminates the sky.
‘There!’ Leo points. The silhouette has already vanished, back into the swirling white of the snowstorm, but not before Ffion saw it too. A boat. Buffeted first one way, then the other, wrenching and fighting, its mast snapped in two. She yanks on the wheel, turning west and willing the motorboat to go faster, Leo training the torch on the water.
Slowly, the anchored dinghy takes shape, five hundred metres up ahead.
‘Seren!’ Ffion shouts. She can barely hear it herself above the clap of thunder, telling them the storm is right overhead.
Four hundred metres.
And now Ffion can see a figure on the boat, clinging to what’s left of the mast.
Seren.
They’re going to make it. Ffion lets out a sob of relief. But the wind isn’t done. It swirls around Pen y Ddraig mountain, and roars down the dragon’s back, gathering momentum as it travels across the lake, each wave bigger than the one before. Angharad’s boat tips, teetering on its side as if deciding which way to fall, and Ffion screams at the rescue boat to go faster, but it’s too late.
Angharad’s boat is capsizing.
FIFTY-THREE
JANUARY 8TH | LEO
As they draw closer to the wreckage of Angharad’s boat, Leo sweeps the torch in an arc, searching for a glimpse of Seren. The light bounces back at him, the white of the snow almost blinding. Debris floats in the water: plastic containers, rope, pieces of canvas, ripped from the hold.
‘Take the wheel,’ Ffion shouts.
Take the—？
But Ffion is on her feet, up on the seat with her arms raised, her coat shrugged on to the floor. One moment she’s there, the next she’s gone, entering the water in a shallow dive.
‘Ffion!’ The motorboat lurches to one side, and Leo clutches the wheel, fighting it back to face the spot where he last saw Ffion. Have they drifted already? Angharad’s boat has turned over, her dark red hull the only part visible.
Leo stares at the controls. No different from a car, right? He steers one-handed, trying to circle, all the time knowing the wind is throwing him off course, that he risks losing track of where Ffion went in. The torch light flickers and he shakes it hard – ‘Not now, not now!’ – pointing it at the water.
‘Ffion!’ he calls again, consumed with fear, with anger that he can’t swim, can’t save her. There’s a life ring on the back of the boat, but what good’s that when he can’t see the people who need it? He circles again – and again and again – and thank God the thunder has stopped, and is the snow slowing? His fingers are numb with cold, adrenaline making the beam of the torch shake, casting shadows on the waves, playing tricks with his mind.
Ffion.
Leo stares. Ffion? He slides up the throttle, as carefully as he can, and the boat pitches forward. And there she is, kicking furiously and slicing through the water with one free arm; the other gripping a white lifejacket wrapped around a motionless Seren.
FIFTY-FOUR
JANUARY 8TH | FFION
For a man who’s never been on a powerboat before, let alone driven one, Leo is doing a surprisingly good job. Ffion stays low in the boat, water swilling about her knees as she holds on to her daughter’s inert body. Seren’s barely conscious, her eyes closed and her limbs loose, but she’s breathing. Ffion feels for her pulse, but her own hands are clumsy with cold and what she finds is dangerously slow. Is that Seren’s pulse, or her own?
How long was Seren in the water? Her core temperature will keep dropping; they have nothing to warm her with. Leo’s thrown his sodden coat over her, and Ffion’s, too, and Ffion’s rubbing Seren’s arms hard, trying to get the circulation going.
‘Come on, baby, come on,’ Ffion says, quiet and urgent. Seren was unresponsive when Ffion reached her, the younger girl’s head flopped back against the lifejacket she’d had the presence of mind to put on. Could she have hit her head? Ffion bends over and presses a kiss to Seren’s forehead, a sob rising up from nowhere. Seren was a toddler when she last kissed her like this. Stolen moments when Mam wasn’t around; moments when Ffion allowed herself – just for a second – to acknowledge the tightening around her heart.