The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(121)

Leo raises his beer in a toast. ‘Good on you, mate.’ He remembered how sorry he’d felt for the hapless Elijah, stuck working with someone who gave Crouch a run for his money in the bad boss stakes. And now look at them both: Elijah with his – what even was a post-doctoral research fellowship? – and Leo with his sergeant’s stripes. In fact, there was only one thing left for Leo to summon up the courage to do.

Ffion’s last message is still on the screen of his phone: Pretty boring here without you, tbh, Brady.

Leo taps a response. Remember that time you said we should forget the way we met?

Ffion’s response comes straight away: Er . . . yes.

He takes a deep breath and a swig of his beer.


I can’t. Will you have dinner with me?





SIXTY-FOUR




JUNE | FFION


Ffion takes a box of books from Huw’s van and carries them up the drive. There are another three boxes by the front door.

‘That’s everything.’ Ffion feels light-headed, impetuous. She has questioned her decision over and over, and she still doesn’t know if she’s doing the right thing. She laces her fingers through Huw’s, and leans into him, feeling his strong arm pull her close. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.

‘Yeah. Me too.’ It’s curt enough to make Ffion wince, but still kinder than she deserves. ‘See you around.’

Ffion waits on the drive as Huw drives away, then puts the box of books in the hall with the others, despite Mam’s protests. ‘I’ll put it away later,’ she promises, although where, God only knows. Mam’s house is bursting at the seams.

‘That’s what you said when you moved the first lot of boxes back,’ Elen says. ‘Three months later, and we were still stepping over bin bags of clothes to get to the loo.’ She pulls a towel from the kitchen airer. ‘I’m going for a swim – I don’t want to see those boxes when I get back.’

‘Sir, yes sir,’ Ffion mutters, because even when you’re thirty, mams make you feel thirteen again.

Elen scrutinises her daughter’s face. ‘I hope you know what you’re doing.’

‘Don’t start, Mam.’

‘He’s a good man.’

‘Too good.’

‘Oh, Ffi.’ Elen sighs, then she puts her hands either side of Ffion’s face and drops a kiss on her forehead. ‘Now’ – she stuffs her towel into a tote bag – ‘move those bloody boxes.’

Once the front door is closed, Ffion gets out her phone and looks at the message from Leo.


Will you have dinner with me?


She stares at the screen for the longest time, then puts the phone back in her pocket. Later. When she’s worked out what to say.

The house is quiet without Mam and Seren, who is almost certainly at The Shore with Caleb. Ffion wanders upstairs to find somewhere to store her books, but she’s already used every cupboard in the house. From her bedroom window, you can just see the lake – a shimmer of silver beyond the treetops – and Ffion stands and watches the sun dip towards the mountain range. A scattering of fairy lights, like fallen stars, marks out the decks of The Shore.

Dee Huxley is sticking around, and Bobby Stafford is still smitten enough by Mia to do the same, but Yasmin Lloyd has accepted an offer on what the papers are calling the murder lodge. The Charltons have separated, Blythe keeping number one as a holiday let and yoga retreat, and the second phase of the development is now under way, with lodges springing up seemingly overnight. Ffion wonders who will buy them; how the new owners will fit in with the people of Cwm Coed.

Back downstairs, Ffion eyes up the boxes. They’ll have to go in the shed. She’ll need to move them before the winter, or the damp will get them, but at least it’ll get them out of Mam’s way. Elen Morgan might be houseproud, but she’s not green-fingered. Since Ffion’s dad died, the Morgans’ overgrown garden has been loved more by wildlife than by the neighbours on either side, who each boast neat strips of begonia-edged lawn.

Ffion pushes through swathes of ox-eye daisies, sticky goosegrass clinging to her shorts. The shed is side-on to the house, the door warped so badly it only closes with a kick. Ffion puts down the box and yanks it open. Inside is a muddle of tools and bags of dried-up compost; of stacked plastic pots and fertiliser long past its use-by date. She begins moving everything to one side, to make space for the boxes.

A moment later, Ffion is wishing she’d never started. She contemplates how, if she had said yes to Huw, she would never have needed to set foot in this shed. That, really, she’s only here, among the rusty tools and the bags of compost, because she can’t stop thinking about Leo. She pulls out a bag and the contents spill on to the floor in front of her. ‘This is all your bloody fault, Leo Brady,’ she mutters. But, as she bends down to pick them up, she realises what she’s seeing. She sits down among the dirt and the spiders, suddenly light-headed.

This changes everything.





SIXTY-FIVE




JUNE | FFION


Pen y Ddraig mountain looms high above Llyn Drych, the water shimmering in the last of the evening light. A tiny boat tacks slowly from one side of the lake to the other. On the shore, a handful of day-trippers are barbecuing on piled stones; smoke, and the smell of sausages, drifting hazily into the warm air. Ffion looks for her mother.