Next to her, Felicia rolls on to her stomach and props herself on her elbows. ‘It’s true. Isn’t it, Blythe? It’s bad juju.’
Rhys clears his throat. ‘Please raise your glasses to two people without whom The Shore would never have happened.’ Realising they’ve lost, the twins flop back on to their loungers. ‘Our beautiful, talented wives.’
‘Oh, now this is a toast I fully agree with!’ Blythe clinks her glass against Yasmin’s. ‘To us!’ The two women embrace. Yasmin’s wearing a floaty wraparound number over her swimsuit, and for a second Blythe all but disappears in it.
‘To the little women,’ Jonty says.
‘I’m owning this one.’ Yasmin holds up her glass. ‘If I hadn’t gone to one of Blythe’s yoga sessions—’
‘If I’d never mentioned Jonty was looking for investment opportunities—’
‘And I’d never told you Rhys was trying to get a development off the ground—’
‘We, of course,’ Jonty says archly, ‘did nothing.’ He looks at Rhys for solidarity, his eyes flicking to what he insists on calling Rhys’s ‘dad shorts’。 Despite the heat, Jonty has opted for an open-necked shirt, with washed-out blue jeans and designer flip-flops, and Rhys wonders if he should change before anyone arrives. The new owners are expected at one p.m. and it is already past noon.
‘I must show you what I’ve done in our bedroom,’ Yasmin says, draining her champagne.
Jonty gives a dirty laugh. ‘Ding dong.’
‘The lodges are identical, darling,’ Rhys says. ‘I hardly think the Charltons need to see—’
‘Identical?’ Blythe laughs. ‘They couldn’t be more different!’
Yasmin shakes her head, exasperated. ‘We went for Shadow White in our bedroom, darling. Jonty and Blythe have School House White.’
‘And our accent colour is lemon,’ Blythe says, as though explaining to a small child.
‘And ours is citron.’
The men traipse after their wives; through the Charltons’ lodge, to admire Blythe’s scatter cushions, and down the drive towards the Lloyds’。
‘Is that someone arriving already?’ Jonty says.
Through the trees, Rhys catches a glimpse of a dirty white Fiat with pink lettering, bouncing across the drive leading up to The Shore. ‘It’s just Mia, the cleaner.’ Once The Shore is finished, it will have its own housekeeping team – smartly dressed and properly trained – but for now they’re making do with the local girl. ‘I’ll have a quick word.’
The others continue walking to number five. Music plays loudly through the open windows of the Fiat, as Mia the cleaner reverses into a visitor space. She waits for the track to finish, before getting out and taking a long, flirtatious look at Rhys. ‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t Ysgol Crafnant’s head boy.’
Rhys was never head boy – he doesn’t even think the school went in for that sort of thing – but he dips his head in acknowledgment of what he supposes is a compliment, of sorts. Schools like to claim ownership of alumni successes. One summer, fifteen or sixteen years ago, the teachers had persuaded Rhys back to run a music camp at the school. By that time he already had six albums and a tour under his belt, but the guilt-trip – and the fee from the Welsh Arts Council – had dragged him back.
‘And it was thanks to the Urdd Eisteddfod and our very own music teacher, Mrs Hughes, that Rhys Lloyd was discovered!’ the headteacher had said, in her introduction. It’d rankled a bit, the suggestion that without the youth competition – without the rehearsals at school – Rhys would be nobody.
‘We didn’t book you for today, did we?’ he says now to Mia. ‘You were supposed to do all the lodges before everyone arrived.’
‘Chill, they’re all done. The Staffords have got a Waitrose shop coming and they want me to unpack.’ The list of supermarkets which deliver to The Shore is on the FAQs section of the website, along with whether Deliveroo covers the area （it doesn’t） and how far owners are from a Marks & Spencer （an hour and a half）。 All the essentials.
Mia walks up the path to number three. She’s wearing denim shorts and a vest top, under a pink cleaning tabard a centimetre or two longer than the shorts. Long brown legs end in scruffy white trainers. She turns around, catching him looking.
‘Was there something else?’
He could suggest a few things, Rhys thinks, with a private smile. He goes to join the others at number one, stopping to take a picture of the row of lodges, the lake glistening behind them, so he can ‘check in’ to The Shore on Facebook. Almost instantly there are two likes, and Rhys glows inside. He switches to Twitter and posts the same photo. Arrived at #TheShore for a much-needed break before my next recording session. There is no recording session, but no one on Twitter knows that. It’s all about generating the right impression. Creating a brand.