Ffion says nothing. She moves backwards, just a step, and Leo moves forward, so that when she tips her head back to lean against him, he’s already there. They stand watching the lake, Leo’s chin grazing Ffion’s hair, and after a moment he slides his arms around hers. He thinks of her at the wheel of Steffan’s boat, fear channelled into grit, and knows he’ll never meet another woman quite like her.
‘Pretty big,’ Ffion says eventually.
‘You take me to all the best places.’
Ffion laughs and turns around, and for a second they’re so close it feels as though they might—
‘Don’t suppose you stopped for coffee?’ Ffion walks towards the car, the moment lost.
‘Flat white, one sugar.’
‘You’re going to make someone a lovely wife.’
As they drive towards Angharad’s, Leo casts surreptitious glances at Ffion, whose eyes are swollen and bloodshot. She cradles her coffee in both hands, steam warming her face.
‘Did you get any sleep at all?’
‘Not really.’
‘You should be at the hospital, with Seren.’
‘She doesn’t want to see me.’ Ffion turns away, the subject closed.
Angharad stands in the centre of the clearing, as though she knew they were coming. As though she was alerted by the wind, by the animals in the forest, Leo thinks, then chides himself for the sentimentality. In rapid Welsh, Ffion arrests Angharad, who wears the same dark overalls she had on when Leo first met her; laced boots and a blood-red scarf holding back her hair.
Later, when they’re sitting in an interview room, Angharad having declined the offer of legal representation, Leo repeats the caution in English. He turns his notepad to a fresh page.
‘How did you know Rhys Lloyd?’
‘The same way everyone in Wales did. The child star.’ Angharad’s tone is mocking.
‘You didn’t like him?’
‘I didn’t like what he did to the lake. To the shore. All those trees, ripped up to give the English more holiday homes.’
‘Ah, you don’t like the English?’
‘You’re putting words in my mouth, detective. I have no objections to English people—’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘—when they’re in England.’ Angharad’s expression is misleadingly neutral. ‘But when a young family in our community can’t afford a two-bedroom house and across the lake Londoners think nothing of spending half a million pounds on a holiday home . . .’ She pauses. ‘Then, yes. I object to English people.’
‘You don’t mix with the residents of The Shore, then?’ Leo says.
‘No one does. They keep to their side of the lake; we keep to ours.’ Angharad looks at Ffion. ‘I didn’t see you in the water on New Year’s Day morning.’
‘I was busy.’ Ffion gives a tight smile. ‘But we’re here to talk about your movements, not mine.’
‘It’s not like you to miss the swim.’
‘I hear there were a lot of people there,’ Leo says, realising Ffion would have been leaving his flat just as the village was congregating on the lakeshore.
‘Almost everyone. It’s been that way since I was a girl. Not everyone swims, of course.’
‘Did many come across from The Shore?’ Leo says.
Angharad narrows her eyes. ‘No one. As I said: they have their side, we have ours. They wouldn’t have been welcome.’
‘Yet there was an open invitation issued to The Shore’s New Year’s Eve party. Dozens of people from the village went.’ Leo tries to keep his focus on the interview. Something Angharad just said has triggered a memory – something which feels significant, if he could only grasp hold of it.
‘More fool them.’ Angharad looks at Ffion. ‘You know the strength of feeling there is. You know how the Welsh feel about the English.’
‘Some Welsh people,’ Ffion says.
‘England has always viewed Wales as a colony. Theirs to be controlled. They stole our coal, our water, our steel. They try to take our language.’
‘The Shore is built on the English side of the lake.’ Leo is trying very hard not to take this personally.
‘Only because the English took the land.’
‘Shall we move on?’ Leo has lost patience. ‘This isn’t about relations between England and Wales.’
‘Oh, but it is,’ Angharad says darkly. ‘It always is, under the surface.’