The lake’s loads nicer on this side. People always go straight to the jetty side, where the loos are, and the van selling cold drinks, but over here you can swim from the coves under the trees and never see another person.
There’s laughter coming from the lake. Seren can’t see through the trees, but she knows it’s the twins. She doesn’t know which is which, but she knows they’re called Tabby and Felicia, because they shriek it at each other whenever one of them gets splashed.
Right? Felicia and Tabby. And people say Welsh names are weird.
Seren pulls her top over her bikini, and skirts through the trees to come out further up the lake. Seren’s been at The Shore every day since it opened.
Watching.
It’s like something you’d see on Instagram. There are five lodges, and right now they’ve all got their doors open on to their decks. On the one nearest Seren there’s a yoga lesson going on: the instructor’s facing the cabin, and the two women she’s teaching are looking out on to the lake. One of them’s super-skinny and, like, pretzel-bendy, and the other one’s Clemmie. Seren is slowly working out who everyone is. Clemmie’s been here five minutes and she knows more people in Cwm Coed than Seren does. She’s trying to start a book club, and she swims in the lake every day. Mam calls her a ‘joiner’。
She watches them for a bit. Clemmie is not bendy. Seren sympathises. They did yoga in PE and Seren spent the whole time trying not to fart.
God, it’s hot. She looks longingly at the clear blue lake. It’s flat calm, and she can almost feel the cool water on her skin. The lake is always freezing. It could be thirty degrees and the water will still take your breath away. You have to stay in, have to keep swimming, until your arms and legs tingle and then as if by magic it starts to feel warm. When Seren was little Mam used to say that was the draig, breathing fire down the mountain, and Ffion used to roar and chase Seren through the water. Seren thought Ffi was the coolest big sister ever. Still thinks that, to be honest, even if she’d never admit it.
Rhys Lloyd is singing. At least, Seren assumes it’s him, because who else has the balls to belt out ‘Calon Lan’ except at a rugby match? The man’s like a God around these parts. The corridor in the music department at school is literally full of photos of him.
Wow. It makes the hair on the back of Seren’s neck stand up. She wonders if the twins put him off, shouting to each other from their massive flamingos. They’re always either on those things, or on their sun loungers. Seren’s never seen them actually in the water, and she can tell from the way they’ve done their hair all swishy, and how their make-up is, that they don’t plan on getting wet. One of them shrieks with laughter and tosses her head. She keeps spinning her flamingo back round so she’s facing one of the lodges a bit further down, and Seren moves through the trees to see what she’s looking at.
It’s the boy from number four. Clemmie’s son. He’s in baggy tracksuit bottoms, as he always is, in spite of the heat, and he’s more interested in his phone than in the twins showing off. They’re being massive try-hards and he’s totally ignoring them. Hilarious.
He stands, chucks his phone on the deck and stretches. His T-shirt rides up a bit, and his stomach’s all tanned. He’s skinny, rather than toned, and he doesn’t seem as if he’d be the twins’ type, but then it’s not like there’s much choice around here. Seren’s had a few snogs with boys in her year, but there’s no one she’d actually go out with. Shudder.
The boy jumps from his deck to the next, then saunters across number two, where the old lady with the stick lives. When he gets to the other side of the deck he swings himself down the ladder on to the jetty. For a second Seren can’t see him, but then she hears running feet and he leaps in the air and tucks himself into a bomb.
He lands smack bang between the twins, sending a massive wave over each flamingo. Seren ducks behind a tree to hide her laughter – not that anyone could hear her over the squawks the twins are making. She walks further down the shore, finding a spot to swim where she won’t be seen by the residents of The Shore.
Afterwards, Seren’s making her way back through the forest towards town, when she hears a crack behind her, like someone standing on a twig. She carries on walking, then stops short and spins around, and, sure enough, he’s there.
‘Why are you following me?’
The boy holds up his hands as if Seren’s got a gun. ‘Why were you watching us?’ His clothes are soaked through, dark grey where they had been light.