The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(109)

Glynis looks for Steffan Edwards – a far cry, now, from the boy-next-door runner-up who should, by rights, have won that competition. He’s gone home already, or perhaps someone has had the sense to throw him out, before he disgraces himself any more.

‘There aren’t any male, working-class Welsh singers out there right now,’ Fleur Brockman – Rhys’s newly acquired agent – had said, all those years ago. ‘It’s rich territory.’

Glynis had found this casual branding of their family abhorrent, but she’d bitten her tongue, for Rhys’s sake. ‘You really think he’s got the talent to make it?’ she said, wanting more of the flattery which justified her cheating.

‘Talent?’ Fleur shrugged. ‘Sure, he’s talented. But what it’s really about is building a brand.’ She winked. ‘Put the right marketing in place and I could send a guinea pig to number one.’

Rhys had had the right marketing, for a long time, but over the years the budget was slowly cut, and the team changed, until it was unrecognisable. Now, despite all the money her son is throwing at a publicity campaign, Glynis knows it’s only a matter of time before his career is over. She wonders if Yasmin knows it, too.

Her daughter-in-law was in the middle of one of her tours when Glynis arrived at the party. Yasmin kissed her on both cheeks and introduced her as the twins’ granny. Glynis winced. She was Nain to Tabby and Felicia, despite Yasmin’s reticence when they were born.

‘No one will know what it means,’ Yasmin had complained. Glynis had stood firm. If Tabby’s and Felicia’s NCT contemporaries could have grandparents called Oompa, Glammy, Loli and Pop, Glynis could be Nain.

The noise at the party is giving her a headache. All around her, people are shouting, the decibels slowly increasing, as everyone fights to be heard. She hears snatches of conversation, almost all English, even though half the room is Welsh. Rhys’s father would have been devastated.

Jac Lloyd had been a staunch nationalist. A railwayman by profession, he could turn his hand to most trades, fitting out the hardware shop which had once belonged to Glynis’s parents. The wooden cabin on this side of the lake was set back to allow for the rise of the water, a tall row of pine trees just hiding it from view. Glynis and Jac would meet at T?’r Lan cabin when they were courting, away from village gossip. Jac would fish, and Glynis would read her book, and then . . . Glynis smiles at the memory.

The plot itself extended to less than an acre, part of the woodland which had once been Welsh. In 1972, the Local Government Act had defined the UK’s counties, and the strip of land to the east of Llyn Drych had become English.

Glynis had never seen her husband so enraged. The very idea of owning a property on English soil was unthinkable – the butt of so many jokes at Y Llew Coch that Jac took to drinking elsewhere – until a journalist planted a seed which changed Jac’s outlook.

Wales’s Last Bastion, read the headline, above a photograph of T?’r Lan, its red dragon flag flying. The article had presented Jac as a warrior, protector of his language and culture, guarding the soil which remained morally – if not legally – Welsh.

‘Cymru am byth,’ Jac had said proudly, showing Glynis the article. Wales forever.

How he would despair at what his son has done. Glynis feels a pain in her chest as she imagines the emotion in her late husband’s eyes. No longer T?’r Lan, but The Shore. No longer a bastion for the Welsh but a playground for the English, running roughshod over traditions, and not as much as a diolch from any of them except that Clemmie, who – Glynis had to concede – makes an attempt to fit in.

When Jac died, Glynis had spoken to their solicitor. ‘I’ve got his will somewhere,’ she’d told him. Jac had organised it a few years before – one of those kits you could buy from the newsagent. Properly witnessed, all legal and proper. Jac was the belt-and-braces sort – at least, he had been, before the dementia set in. T?’r Lan would pass to Glynis, who would keep the Welsh flag flying, in honour of her husband.

Only then Glynis had received a call from a different solicitor. One in the next town, who didn’t know the Lloyd family from Adam, and whose brusque tone made Glynis want to cry.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ the woman said. Glynis heard the snap of a rubber band. ‘Now, your late husband came in six months ago with your son. I have a copy of his will here—’

‘I think there’s been some mistake,’ Glynis said.

But there was no mistake.

Jac Lloyd – who, in the year before his death, all too often tipped orange juice on his cereal and put his shoes in the fridge – had made a replacement will, leaving T?’r Lan and its surrounding land to Rhys.

‘This can’t be right,’ Glynis said. For years, Rhys had been trying to persuade his father to develop the land, and Jac had always said the same thing. Over my dead body. T?’r Lan was a Welshman’s cabin; it was part of the landscape. The land might be English, but those trees were as Welsh as Jac.

‘It’s all watertight, I assure you,’ the solicitor said. ‘Although if you bring me your late husband’s DIY will, I’ll double-check the dates.’

But the original will was nowhere to be found.

Glynis stands by the window in the Charltons’ lodge and looks at the view that hasn’t changed in the seventy-odd years she’s known it.