The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(46)

She glanced into the master bedroom, thinking how incredible it would be to wake up to that view – how she would sit and paint on the balcony all day – then she caught sight of the full-length mirror on the wall and screamed.

Rhys was lying in bed, the sheets pushed to one side and one hand resting idly by his naked thigh. ‘That you, Ceri?’ he’d called as she ran down the stairs, as though he hadn’t been watching her, hadn’t just made eye contact with her, hadn’t smiled as if to say You can’t resist me, can you?

Afterwards, Ceri had complained to her boss.

‘You should never have gone in his house,’ he’d said. ‘You went upstairs, Ceri. What did you think was going to happen?’

‘Morning,’ Rhys says now, as he opens the door.

Ceri doesn’t look at him. She hands him the envelope full of fan mail, and stares at her machine while he signs his name with a flourish too big for the screen. She thinks about the names he called her, when she was twelve, and he was old enough to know better. She thinks about the constant drip drip drip of abuse whenever she saw him, the obscene graffiti on her locker. She thinks about turning up full of nerves, to meet the girl she fancied, only to find Rhys and his mates, pissing themselves laughing. All water under the bridge, Ceri always says, if anyone from school ever mentions it.

‘I’ve got something for you, actually.’ Rhys coughs. He’s never mentioned that day she saw him on the bed. Never even referred to it. Ceri wonders if Rhys is one of those all mouth and no trousers type, too scared of humiliation to try anything he can’t explain away as an accident. ‘I’ll go and get it.’

Ceri waits on the doorstep, thinking it might be a tip, although Yasmin already gave her a Christmas card with a gift card for Primark.

Rhys comes back with a pile of creamy cards. ‘We’re having a New Year’s Eve party. Thought we’d invite some people from the village.’ He clears his throat again.

‘Are you . . .’ Ceri is incredulous. ‘Are you inviting me to your party?’

Rhys colours slightly. ‘Well, if you like. But actually, we wondered . . . I mean . . . I’ve written a list. Of people who might like to come.’ He hands her a printed list of around twenty people.

The penny drops. Ceri’s the postwoman, so she can deliver their mail. For free. Rhys Lloyd has got a bloody nerve. She stares at the invites and she wants to tell him where to stick them, only inside she’s still the fourteen-year-old girl who once threw herself into stinging nettles to avoid Rhys’s cruelty; still the teenager made to hate herself so much, she swallowed every paracetamol she could get her hands on.

Ceri takes the invitations.

After she’s dropped the van at work, she walks through the village towards her house. Glynis is cleaning the shop windows. She asks how Ceri is, as she always does, in an intense, insistent way as though checking on Ceri’s welfare now negates what her son did back then.

‘They’re having a party at The Shore.’ Ceri holds up the creamy invitations.

‘It’s nice they’re asking people from the village,’ Glynis says, with a touch of defensiveness.

‘It is indeed.’ Water under the bridge, Ceri thinks, as she moves on. She looks at the list of people Rhys and his friends consider worthy of an invitation. Business owners, Rotary members, the vicar and his wife. A local historian; a television presenter with a family home nearby. Does Rhys even like these people, or is it all just for show? Ceri flicks the invites with her thumb, mentally working out a route to deliver them.

What is she doing?

Ceri feels a surge of anger that she’s once again allowed Rhys Lloyd to fill her time and her head. She pushes open the door of Y Llew Coch. The lunchtime regulars sit in the window seat – old boys with pints of ale and years of memories – and a couple of walkers tuck into sausage and chips. At the bar, Huw Ellis is talking to Steffan Edwards.

Ceri nods to the men. ‘Iawn?’

‘Alright, Ceri?’ Huw says. Out of habit, Ceri glances at Steffan’s drink, but – like Huw’s – it’s just a coffee. Steffan doesn’t notice, he’s intent on his conversation with Huw, and Ceri slaps the pile of invitations on the bar.

‘Can I nab a bit of paper?’ she asks Alun, behind the bar.

He picks up an invitation and reads it. ‘They don’t seriously expect anyone from round here to go, do they?’

‘Glynis Lloyd’s going.’ Ceri scribbles a note on the piece of paper Alun gives her.

‘With instructors,’ Steffan is saying to Huw, beside her.

Alun is shaking his head. ‘Shame on her. When she knows full well Jac wanted T?’r Lan left alone. Even put it in his will. The man must be turning in his grave.’

‘Why didn’t he say anything?’ Steff is saying, but Ceri has had enough of The Shore, enough of broken-record locals and blokes in pubs. She walks out of the pub, leaving the invitations on the bar, topped with her note.

Open invitation, it reads. Free bar.

Ceri tells people it’s all water under the bridge.

It couldn’t be further from the truth.





NINETEEN




JANUARY 5TH | FFION


Just as Ffion and Leo arrive at The Shore, Bobby Stafford jogs towards them.

‘I’ve downloaded the footage from my door-cam,’ he says, as he reaches them. ‘I don’t know if it’s useful, but Rhys passed our place around half-ten on New Year’s Eve.’