‘What do I do?’ Leo shouts. There’s panic in his voice, and Ffion looks up, realising they’re approaching the jetty. Leo drops their speed.
‘Kill the engine!’ Ffion doesn’t want to leave Seren. The sudden silence is a relief, but they’re still coming in too fast. Wind and waves shove them towards the shore, and they overshoot the end of the jetty, where they found the boat. ‘Brace yourself!’ Ffion shouts. The lake bed doesn’t slope gently away from the shore – something which regularly catches out day-trippers, paddling with their trousers rolled up. Instead, the bed falls away, the water depth dropping from knee-height to chest-depth in a single step. The lake has risen, and it’s hard to know exactly where the shelf is, but it must be about—
There’s a violent thud, and Leo lurches forward on to the steering wheel, swearing loudly.
—there.
The boat grinds on to gravel. Leo leaps out, up to his knees in the icy water, dragging the boat until it’s high on the foreshore.
‘She’s not moving.’ Ffion’s trying to be calm, trying to be professional, trying trying trying but— ‘She’s not moving!’ The wind howls, snow snapping at her face, covering Seren in icy flakes as fast as Ffion can wipe them away.
At Dad’s memorial service, Mam soothed a fretful Seren with a bottle.
‘I’ve got no milk,’ she said, truthfully, to friends with shining eyes. Ffion’s breasts ached. She stared at Dad’s photo on the order of service, feeling guilty that the tears she shed were as much for Seren as for him.
‘Be strong, cariad,’ people murmured. ‘Your mam’s going to need help with your baby sister.’
Ffion has been strong for sixteen years. She’s exhausted.
Leo hauls Seren up and over his shoulder as though she weighs nothing. He runs towards the boathouse, looking back to check on Ffion, who is barely able to support her own body, let alone carry another. She stumbles behind Leo, not taking her eyes off the limp girl over his shoulder.
As Seren grew from baby to toddler, Ffion trained herself to forget. She made herself think sister, not daughter. She forced herself to forget the birth, to pretend her belly had never been full, and, slowly, she began to believe it. She pushed Seren away. Told herself Seren was too small, too needy, too immature. Too irritating.
Ffion chokes back a sob. It was survival, that was all. Grief for a baby lost, even though Seren had lived.
At the boathouse, everything is as they left it. Steffan’s comatose at his desk, and Ffion ransacks the cupboards, pulling out fleeces and spare socks, while Leo calls for an ambulance. Swiftly, Ffion removes Seren’s wet clothes, enveloping her in the dry ones she’s found and ignoring her own chattering teeth. Seren murmurs, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Ffion pulls a hat over Seren’s sodden hair. The shock of cold water makes you hyperventilate, reducing the flow of blood to the brain. That’s what makes your head fill with fog; what causes you to pass out. Seren is not out of danger – not by a long way.
‘Did you check for injuries?’ Leo’s examining the drenched lifejacket Seren was wearing. ‘Cuts?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He runs his fingers over the jacket. ‘Check again.’ Panic rises in Ffion’s chest. Has she missed something, in her haste to get Seren warm and dry? She traces a path around Seren’s head, feeling for bumps, checking for blood. Seren moans, and Ffion cups her face, reassuring her help is on its way. She moves her hands down each of Seren’s arms, and around her torso, but there are no marks. If Seren has injuries, they’re hidden. In the distance, Ffion hears the wail of an ambulance siren.
‘I don’t understand.’ Leo frowns, passing the lifejacket to Ffion. It would have been white at some stage, now a dirty grey. An old-fashioned jacket, bulky and square. ‘This is definitely blood on the side, at the back.’
The stain is brown and earthy, ingrained in the fabric, despite immersion in water. Ffion stares at it. If it isn’t Seren’s blood, whose is it?
FIFTY-FIVE
JANUARY 9TH | LEO
Ffion’s waiting for Leo at the lake the next morning, her hands pushed deep into her huge coat and the toes of her boots dark with lake water. Leo gets out of the car and walks towards her, feeling suddenly awkward. Last night was more intense – more intimate, even – than the time he and Ffion had spent together on New Year’s Eve, and everything Leo wants to say seems inadequate.
He stands a few steps behind her. ‘Big night,’ he says quietly. The lake is flat calm, the surface so glassy Leo feels he could step right on to it. Trees stretch their reflections on to the water, without so much as a ripple to shatter the illusion. Overnight the storm has cleared, leaving snow-covered mountains beneath a bright blue sky.