Glynis lets out a sob. ‘I can’t—’
‘You have to.’ Clemmie speaks harshly, but she has no choice. They have to get rid of Rhys, and they have to act fast. Who knows if Yasmin will come back to freshen up, or the twins will tire of hanging out with Caleb. At the thought of her son her heart clenches. I’m doing this for you, she tells him.
Down on the Lloyds’ deck, she doesn’t stop long enough to let the doubts creep in. She drags Lloyd’s body across the wood, grateful for the muscles she’s built up swimming, and lets it fall down the ladder on to the pontoon between the Lloyds’ deck and her own. Only once it’s out of sight of the lodges does she breathe; only then does she stoop to check again for Rhys’s pulse. She thinks at first he’s dead, but there’s a faint flutter against her fingertips – a barely there reminder that she hasn’t – yet – gone too far. His skin looks waxy in the thin moonlight, a dark tinge around his lips. Even if she called an ambulance now, would they be able to save him? And what would happen to her? The police would be called, for certain, and how would she explain how Rhys got outside, what she was doing with him? Clemmie is committed. She hasn’t yet gone too far, but she has gone far enough.
Several guests arrived at the party in motorboats. Clemmie crosses to the next pontoon, but all three of the boats bobbing in the water need keys. ‘Fuck!’ She’s close to tears. Above her, a shadow crosses the Lloyds’ bedroom window and she hopes to God it’s Glynis, that the woman’s doing what Clemmie told her to do. She looks frantically around, as though a boat might materialise from the depths of the lake. Moonlight glints on the water, and, as the dark clouds scud across the mountain, Clemmie has an idea. She shivers.
She couldn’t.
Could she?
Clemmie’s wetsuit is hanging over a chair outside her lodge. She skulks in the shadows, her breath catching when she sees Caleb and the twins inside. The table’s littered with bottles of beer and wine, and the mother in Clemmie wants to rap on the window and lecture them. Instead, she grabs her swimming things and returns to the pontoon.
She’s swum at night before, a torch in her tow-float like a firefly on the water, but never alone, never with her blood fizzing with alcohol and fear. Her breathing’s already too fast, too shallow, and when she slips silently into the water it abandons her entirely. She keeps moving, trusting her body, fighting the side of her brain which tells her she’s drowning. She surfaces, and slowly her lungs expand, and she can breathe again.
Clemmie swims breaststroke so she can better keep watch, although she knows she’s hidden in the darkness. The water is inky black, its choppy surface accustomed to hiding what lies beneath. Ahead of her, the mast on Angharad’s boat glints in the moonlight. The water plays tricks on her sense of distance. The boat seems to stay out of reach until suddenly it’s just thirty metres away, and then twenty . . . ten.
Clemmie hauls herself up, her limbs like jelly. She’s praying there’s fuel in the outboard motor, because in spite of the lessons Angharad gave her and Caleb, she isn’t capable of sailing – especially not in the dark. She remembers to push the centreboard down through the slot in the bottom of the boat, locking it into place, then she releases the hinge on the motor and drops it into the water. She turns it on, grips the starter rope and tugs it hard.
There’s a splutter and a cough, then silence.
‘Oh, come on, come on . . .’ Clemmie tries again, and again. Tears of frustration spring to her eyes, her teeth chattering as the cold seeps into her bones. She pulls again, and the splutter becomes a roar. She fiddles with the choke, finds the tiller, and points the boat towards The Shore.
As Clemmie draws near to the lodges she kills the engine, slotting the oars into their housings and rowing silently through the water towards the pontoons. She makes out the lumpen outline of Rhys’s body and for a second she thinks he’s alone. She curses Glynis, but then she realises there are two shapes, one cradling the other. Clemmie is at once torn apart by Glynis’s grief, and terrified Rhys has made a recovery – is, even now, telling his mother what Clemmie has done. But as she brings the boat inexpertly alongside the pontoon she sees that he’s in the same position she left him in, his mouth open and blood obscuring his features. Foam flecks his mouth. She reaches for his wrist, ostensibly to pull him closer to the boat, but really to see if—
Clemmie lets out a breath. He’s dead. And she can’t let herself wonder whether she killed him, or Glynis did, and, now that it’s done, does it even matter? Rhys is dead.