He knows who dumped Rhys Lloyd’s body in the lake.
FIFTY-SIX
NEW YEAR’S EVE | GLYNIS
Glynis Lloyd is not enjoying the party. Parties are for young people, and Glynis is feeling her age. There is nowhere to sit down, and, even though she is surrounded by familiar faces, she feels lonely.
It was Yasmin who persuaded her to come.
‘You’ll have a nice time,’ she said, before following it up with: ‘And what will people think, if Rhys’s own mother isn’t there?’ which was so obviously the primary motive that Glynis almost refused on the spot. Her daughter-in-law cares a great deal about appearances.
‘I tried to get OK! to cover it,’ Yasmin went on. ‘But they said it wasn’t the “right fit” for them.’ She tutted. ‘Heaven knows what would fit better. The Staffords alone are surely a draw, even if Rhys is no longer—’ She swallowed her words, remembering who she was talking to.
Glynis is under no illusions about her son’s failing career. Oh, he has talent, no one ever doubted that, but she – more than anyone – knows how duplicitous this business is. On the surface, all success and smiles, but dip below and the truth is a murky affair.
She feels a pang of guilt whenever she thinks about Rhys’s career. About the favour she’d done one of the Eisteddfod judges, which meant they owed her a little favour, and it wasn’t all the world to mark Rhys the tiniest bit higher, was it? So, there he was, on the main National stage, in the right place at the right time to be spotted for success.
Glynis looks for Steffan Edwards – a far cry, now, from the boy-next-door runner-up who should, by rights, have won that competition. He’s gone home already, or perhaps someone has had the sense to throw him out, before he disgraces himself any more.
‘There aren’t any male, working-class Welsh singers out there right now,’ Fleur Brockman – Rhys’s newly acquired agent – had said, all those years ago. ‘It’s rich territory.’
Glynis had found this casual branding of their family abhorrent, but she’d bitten her tongue, for Rhys’s sake. ‘You really think he’s got the talent to make it?’ she said, wanting more of the flattery which justified her cheating.
‘Talent?’ Fleur shrugged. ‘Sure, he’s talented. But what it’s really about is building a brand.’ She winked. ‘Put the right marketing in place and I could send a guinea pig to number one.’
Rhys had had the right marketing, for a long time, but over the years the budget was slowly cut, and the team changed, until it was unrecognisable. Now, despite all the money her son is throwing at a publicity campaign, Glynis knows it’s only a matter of time before his career is over. She wonders if Yasmin knows it, too.
Her daughter-in-law was in the middle of one of her tours when Glynis arrived at the party. Yasmin kissed her on both cheeks and introduced her as the twins’ granny. Glynis winced. She was Nain to Tabby and Felicia, despite Yasmin’s reticence when they were born.
‘No one will know what it means,’ Yasmin had complained. Glynis had stood firm. If Tabby’s and Felicia’s NCT contemporaries could have grandparents called Oompa, Glammy, Loli and Pop, Glynis could be Nain.
The noise at the party is giving her a headache. All around her, people are shouting, the decibels slowly increasing, as everyone fights to be heard. She hears snatches of conversation, almost all English, even though half the room is Welsh. Rhys’s father would have been devastated.
Jac Lloyd had been a staunch nationalist. A railwayman by profession, he could turn his hand to most trades, fitting out the hardware shop which had once belonged to Glynis’s parents. The wooden cabin on this side of the lake was set back to allow for the rise of the water, a tall row of pine trees just hiding it from view. Glynis and Jac would meet at T?’r Lan cabin when they were courting, away from village gossip. Jac would fish, and Glynis would read her book, and then . . . Glynis smiles at the memory.
The plot itself extended to less than an acre, part of the woodland which had once been Welsh. In 1972, the Local Government Act had defined the UK’s counties, and the strip of land to the east of Llyn Drych had become English.
Glynis had never seen her husband so enraged. The very idea of owning a property on English soil was unthinkable – the butt of so many jokes at Y Llew Coch that Jac took to drinking elsewhere – until a journalist planted a seed which changed Jac’s outlook.
Wales’s Last Bastion, read the headline, above a photograph of T?’r Lan, its red dragon flag flying. The article had presented Jac as a warrior, protector of his language and culture, guarding the soil which remained morally – if not legally – Welsh.