The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(104)

Mia’s abandoned her trays and is talking to Bobby Stafford; she breaks off when she sees Seren. ‘You alright, chick?’ She looks down, checking to see what Seren’s drinking, and Seren’s sick of being treated like a kid, so she takes the half-drunk champagne from Mia’s hand and knocks it back.

‘Cheers,’ she says, handing it back.

‘Is Huw taking you home later, love?’ Mia’s face is full of concern.

‘I’m paying you to waitress, not socialise.’ Jonty pushes into their space.

‘Technically, you’re paying me to hand canapés around,’ Mia says. ‘And they’re all gone, so . . .’ She turns back to Seren. ‘Don’t walk home on your own, will you? I know you girls think you can handle anything, but . . .’ She doesn’t finish, but she doesn’t need to; Seren’s heard it all before. Don’t walk home on your own, stick to main roads, don’t wear short skirts . . . Old people – Mia, Ffion, Mam – don’t get that things are different now. They’ve spent their whole lives covering up and changing their routes, but women are reclaiming the streets. Wearing what they want, doing what they please.

Seren pulls herself tall. The drink is blurring her edges; she walks away from Mia with a careful steadiness, the movement feeling as though it belongs to someone else. Rhys is in the kitchen. He’s eating a sandwich and talking to Jonty, and Seren hovers, wanting Rhys on his own before she loses her nerve. Jonty leans close to say something over the music, clapping Rhys on the back before walking away.

Now.

Seren’s heart races. Rhys is walking through the party now. In a minute she’ll lose him to someone else, and then it might be ages till he’s on his own again.

‘Hey.’ She goes for soft and casual. Still sexy, she hopes, although her make-up’s rubbed off, and the heat of the room has flattened her hair. She pushes her lips into a pout and looks up at him from beneath her lashes.

Rhys stops. He stares at her, but it’s not the way she imagined him looking. He’s frowning, his eyes taking in her dress, her boots, her make-up; his mouth turning down in what looks like disgust. He finds her revolting. She teeters on the edge of tears, drunk and emotional.

Rhys pushes past her and goes in search of someone different, someone less repulsive. Tears roll down Seren’s cheeks.

Wear the dress, he said. And she did, but now . . .

Seren takes a deep breath and scrubs angrily at her face. She will not cry over a man; will not let him make her feel so humiliated, so worthless. Anger starts to simmer inside her, and it hurts less than the alternative, so she lets it swell until it’s boiling. She stares after Rhys as he leaves the party. Bastard, she thinks. It makes her feel better, so she says it out loud. ‘Bastard, bastard, bastard.’ She stands tall. Rhys Lloyd doesn’t deserve her.

He doesn’t deserve anyone.





FIFTY-TWO




JANUARY 8TH | FFION


For months into her pregnancy, Ffion didn’t look at her stomach. She closed her eyes in the shower, pulling baggy clothes over still-damp skin to avoid catching sight of herself in the mirror. The waistband of her school skirt was forced a little higher each day, until the hem was indecent enough for her form teacher to pass comment. After that, Ffion left the zip undone, extending the button with a hairband and letting her oversized jumper fall over the top.

Dad didn’t look at her stomach, either. In fact, he rarely looked at Ffion at all, and her heart ached with unhappiness. She wished they could talk about it, but she’d agreed with Dad’s insistence that if the baby was to be brought up as his and Elen’s, it would be best for them all to behave from the outset as if that really were the case. The three of them moved around the house in an uneasy silence, Ffion’s belly the elephant in the room. As Ffion’s clothes grew baggier, so did Elen’s, hidden beneath big coats on her rare forays to the shops.

‘We’re just spending time as a family,’ she said, explaining away her sudden retreat from village life. No one questioned it. Her husband was dying – why wouldn’t they hide themselves away?

When Ffion was twenty weeks pregnant, she felt a tremor beneath her jumper, like a moth trapped between cupped fingers. She gasped, instinctively putting her hands to her stomach, and Elen looked up in alarm. ‘Do you have a pain?’

‘No, I . . .’ It happened again. Like the flip of your tummy on a rollercoaster. Realisation spread a smile across Elen’s face. ‘The baby’s moving, isn’t it?’

Ffion’s eyes were wide with wonder, her hands creeping across her bump. She splayed her fingers wide, realising for the first time how taut her skin was, how heavy and solid the bump was beneath. ‘Shhh,’ she murmured, and the moth fell quiet. Elen crouched beside her, slotting her own hands around Ffion’s, and the two of them waited for more signs of life.

‘Does it really hurt?’ Ffion asked her mam. She’d read the books Elen had bought, even watched that awful video in school, but she still found it hard to comprehend that – in a matter of weeks – there would be an actual baby coming out of her. ‘Like, really?’

Elen stood, kissing her daughter fiercely on the forehead. ‘You know the best antidote to pain?’

Ffion remembered the woman on the video. ‘Is it an epidural?’