‘Alright,’ he says. It isn’t really a question.
Ceri hands him the mail. The boy smells of cannabis and sleep, but he’s still preferable to Call-me-Clemmie, whose insistence on limping through a conversation in Welsh has made Ceri late to clock off on more than one occasion. She wonders if Clemmie knows that her son smokes weed, or that he’s been seen on the hillside, gathering the psychedelic mushrooms that have grown there ever since Ceri was at school.
There’s only a postcard for number two. Ceri could pop it through the letterbox, but she has a soft spot for Dee Huxley, and likes to check in on her.
‘Ceri, dear, it’s minus one.’ As always, Mrs Huxley is in her slippers, with several layers beneath her cardigan. Ceri looks down at her bare knees and grins. They have a variation on this exchange most mornings, but it’ll take more than the threat of snow to get Ceri out of her shorts.
‘How are you, Mrs Huxley?’
‘Still alive, which is a good starting point for any day, I always think.’
‘I thought I told you to use this?’ Ceri rattles the door chain, which hangs uselessly on the frame. ‘I might be someone after your money.’
‘I’d give you short shrift if you tried.’ She lifts her stick and bangs it on the floor, then laughs at Ceri’s expression.
At number five, Ceri takes out the package marked for the Lloyds. She’d leave it on the doorstep, if she could, but the big padded envelope marked with his agency address has to be signed for. Signed for! A bunch of stamped addressed envelopes, waiting for Rhys’s autograph. Ceri’s never known anything so ridiculous.
Hopefully one of the twins will open the door. Or Yasmin. Ceri doesn’t much like Yasmin, but she’s undoubtedly the lesser of two evils. The Lloyds have one of those doorbells with a camera attached, so if they’re lazing on the deck they can see if whoever is at the door is worth getting up for. Early last summer, Ceri had rung the bell and been greeted by Rhys’s disembodied voice.
‘Parcel for you.’
‘Could you stick it upstairs in the office? Door’s open. It’s a surprise for Yasmin – I don’t want her to see it.’
‘Fucksake,’ Ceri had muttered, pushing open the front door. ‘What did your last servant die of?’ She’d noted the shoes by the mat and kept her own on, wishing they were muddier. The stairs turned halfway up, and she saw the office at the top. All the bedroom doors were open, the heat stifling. A pile of sheet music, pinned to the desk by an empty mug, wafted in the breeze coming from the balcony in the main bedroom. Ceri put the parcel on the armchair, covering it with a throw so soft it was all she could do not to hold it to her face. She ran a hand over the polished mahogany desk and thought of the crappy furniture in her own house. On the wall, generic framed prints hung in a perfect quartet. Ceri took it all in, moving silently around the small space, her fingers trailing lightly over artfully placed ornaments.
She glanced into the master bedroom, thinking how incredible it would be to wake up to that view – how she would sit and paint on the balcony all day – then she caught sight of the full-length mirror on the wall and screamed.
Rhys was lying in bed, the sheets pushed to one side and one hand resting idly by his naked thigh. ‘That you, Ceri?’ he’d called as she ran down the stairs, as though he hadn’t been watching her, hadn’t just made eye contact with her, hadn’t smiled as if to say You can’t resist me, can you?
Afterwards, Ceri had complained to her boss.
‘You should never have gone in his house,’ he’d said. ‘You went upstairs, Ceri. What did you think was going to happen?’
‘Morning,’ Rhys says now, as he opens the door.
Ceri doesn’t look at him. She hands him the envelope full of fan mail, and stares at her machine while he signs his name with a flourish too big for the screen. She thinks about the names he called her, when she was twelve, and he was old enough to know better. She thinks about the constant drip drip drip of abuse whenever she saw him, the obscene graffiti on her locker. She thinks about turning up full of nerves, to meet the girl she fancied, only to find Rhys and his mates, pissing themselves laughing. All water under the bridge, Ceri always says, if anyone from school ever mentions it.
‘I’ve got something for you, actually.’ Rhys coughs. He’s never mentioned that day she saw him on the bed. Never even referred to it. Ceri wonders if Rhys is one of those all mouth and no trousers type, too scared of humiliation to try anything he can’t explain away as an accident. ‘I’ll go and get it.’