Ffion has nowhere to go now, but the truth. It’s always been so frightening, but here in Leo’s arms, numbed by the cold, sharing her secret feels more like relief.
‘Yes.’ The lake shines like polished glass, The Shore reflected so cleanly it’s impossible to say where the building ends and the mirror image begins. ‘But Seren isn’t my sister.’ In the centre of the lake, a heron dives for a fish, and the glass shatters. If she tells him, there’s no going back.
Ffion takes a breath.
‘She’s my daughter.’
PART TWO
The sky is a vivid blue. The sun is high above the summit of Pen y Ddraig, the morning mist burned away, and boats tack lazily from one side of the lake to the other. The breeze is light, and when it drops completely the boats drift, their sails empty, waiting for their next chance.
On the edge of the lake – by the jetty, by the ice-cream van – the air is thick with heat and the water peppered with paddleboards and kayaks. Families play in the shallows, beach balls flung high over heads. Day-trippers fling open motor homes, pop van roofs, light fires and leave charred rings on the grass. They look across the lake and wonder who lives in the beautiful log cabins, with their decks above the water and their private jetties. They imagine what it must be like, to be so rich, so lucky, to live in such a place.
The stillness of the air, and the warmth of the shimmering shallows, is deceptive. Beneath the surface, strong currents seize rocks and fallen branches; stir up the lake bed and uncover the dropped watches, the lone shoes. Shoals of minnows dart this way and that, their dance pulling in perch and pike, causing a sudden flurry on the surface, as though rain were falling. Deep in the middle of the lake, the water is still treacherously cold.
The breeze carries the bark of laughter, and the timbre of male voices, although not their words. A sharp pop! cuts through the air. Two men stand on the deck of one of the new lodges. One dangles a champagne bottle carelessly by his side, the cork now bobbing in the water. Rhys Lloyd. He’s excited to be here; on the shore of his childhood lake, where it all began. He’s proud to call Jonty Charlton his business partner, to carry cards with The Shore’s elegant green and off-white logo. He knows that this – the official opening of the resort – is the start of something exciting.
Yasmin and Blythe walk out of the lodge to join their husbands, and the four of them raise their glasses in a toast.
‘To The Shore!’ Rhys says. ‘To where it all begins.’
THIRTY-TWO
LATE JULY | RHYS
Rhys takes a sip of his champagne. The summer heat gives a haze to the water, making the boats indistinct, like mirages in a desert. On the opposite side of the lake, holidaymakers jump off the jetty, diving underwater and surfacing with bursting lungs out by the moored boats. And above it all, reflected in the glistening surface of the lake, is Pen y Ddraig mountain.
‘I’ve got to hand it to you, old man,’ Jonty says. ‘That’s not a bad view. Not bad at all.’
‘Who needs the Mediterranean when you’ve got this?’ Blythe tips up her face, eyes closed, toasting the sun. Her glass wobbles, champagne splashing on to her bare arm, and she gives a girlish giggle.
‘Steady on,’ Rhys says. ‘That stuff’s not cheap.’
Blythe licks her tanned skin with a pink, pointed tongue.
‘Don’t get used to it.’ Yasmin laughs.
Blythe raises an eyebrow. ‘The champagne? Darling, I never drink anything else, you know that.’
‘I meant the weather.’ Yasmin puts a proprietorial arm through Rhys’s, her bracelets pinching his skin. ‘When we were first married, Rhys dragged me to North Wales each summer and it rained every bloody time.’
‘It didn’t.’
‘It did!’
‘Another toast!’ Rhys says.
Blythe laughs. ‘What’s left to toast? We’ve done The Shore, and “us”， and you boys have done each other—’
‘God, darling!’ Jonty says. ‘There must be a better way of putting it than that.’
‘We should be toasting too,’ Tabby calls. ‘It’s bad luck otherwise.’ The twins are on the sun loungers, their lime-green bikinis contrasting sharply with the tans they presumably stole from Yasmin’s bathroom, judging by the shouting match that took place before they left London. Rhys feels the familiar combination of pride and fear peculiar to fathers of teenage girls.
‘Nice try, Tabitha Lloyd,’ Yasmin says. ‘You’re not having champagne.’