‘I don’t give a monkey’s if the Queen of Sheba was there – I told you to stay away from that place!’ Mam’s voice rises, and Seren looks as if she might cry.
‘Someone drowned?’ Ffion says quickly.
Mam drags her attention away from Seren and gives a curt nod of confirmation.
‘God. Who?’
Elen dishes up the porridge, mixed with stewed apple and with a swirl of cream on top. ‘A man, that’s all we know. Face-down, so . . .’
Ffion’s phone chirrups into life, the screen flooding with texts and missed calls. She scrolls past the Happy New Year messages, until she reaches that morning’s.
Did you hear about the body in the lake?
Do you know who it is?
Where were you last night???
She presses the blinking icon to listen to her voicemail. At any other time of year she’d put money on it being a visitor who drowned. Someone not used to the cold, or to swimming outdoors; someone who didn’t grow up around water. Cwm Coed sees them every year, pouring out of the campsites and on to the lakeshore as though it’s Bournemouth beach, throwing themselves off the jetty and letting their kids loose on cheap inflatables.
But the New Year’s Day swim is strictly for locals. No one wants incomers, driving an hour or more in anticipation of the smug status update they can post on Facebook afterwards. There’s no advert, no T-shirts, no sponsorship. No official organiser.
No safety measures, Ffion thinks grimly. She knows there’s a faction of the community who will say they’ve been proved right by today’s tragedy; people who refuse to attend the swim because it’s dangerous. All that running and laughing and falling over; the water so cold it’ll freeze your lungs. And all with drink inside from the night before. It’s only a matter of time before someone drowns.
Ffion’s phone is full of drunken voicemails from Mia and Ceri, shouted over a backdrop of fireworks, and one from Mam that morning – We’re leaving for the swim – lle wyt ti?
‘I heard it was old Dilwyn Jones,’ Seren says.
‘In a tuxedo?’ Mam says. ‘In forty years, I’ve never seen that man out of a cardigan.’ She lowers her voice as she turns towards Ffion. ‘They moved everyone away from the body as soon as they could. He was—’ She breaks off. ‘He was in a bad way.’
‘Someone said his face was all smashed in.’ Seren rises, eyes wide, deliberately ghoulish. Her hair is even redder than Ffion’s, with the same frizzy curls you can’t do a thing with. Ffion mostly fights hers into a messy bun, while Seren leaves hers loose, to settle on her shoulders like a big ginger cloud. She’s pale, smudges of last night’s make-up around her eyes.
‘Stop your gossip, Seren, and eat your porridge. Your bones’ll be cold till lunchtime.’
‘I only got in as far as my knees.’
‘You’ve bones in your legs, haven’t you?’
‘Someone will have been reported missing, though, surely . . .’ Ffion starts to say, but then she reaches the final message in her voicemail and her pulse quickens. She unplugs her phone. ‘I have to go.’
‘You just got home!’
‘I know, but . . .’ Ffion jumps up to pull a clean top off the airer, wondering if she can swipe a bra without Mam seeing. Half a dozen socks fall off the rack, one landing neatly in the porridge pot.
‘Ffion Morgan!’
Thirty years old, with a marriage and a mortgage behind her, yet Mam’s tea towel is still a force to be reckoned with. For the second time in as many hours, Ffion beats a hasty retreat.
As she pulls away, the car’s exhaust coughing in protest, she dials one-handed, balancing her phone on the passenger seat. Leaving the village, she pulls out in front of a car: a Sunday-best couple on their way to visit family, three bored kids in the back. The driver leans on the horn, staying on Ffion’s tail, making a point.
‘Mia?’ Ffion says, when the voicemail kicks in. She puts her foot flat on the accelerator. ‘It’s Ffi.’ Her pulse buzzes in her temples. ‘If Mam asks you where I was last night, tell her I was with you.’
TWO
NEW YEAR’S DAY | LEO
‘Keep your coat on!’
The shout comes as Leo Brady reaches his desk at Cheshire Major Crime Unit, at precisely nine a.m. Reluctantly he buttons his heavy wool overcoat back up and heads to the boss’s office, where Detective Inspector Simon Crouch is standing by his chair. Leo has only walked from the car park to the police station – a few hundred metres at most – but his feet are like ice cubes. He wiggles his toes inside his brogues. Too cold to snow, people keep saying, which has never made sense to Leo.