The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(73)

On the edge of the lake – by the jetty, by the ice-cream van – the air is thick with heat and the water peppered with paddleboards and kayaks. Families play in the shallows, beach balls flung high over heads. Day-trippers fling open motor homes, pop van roofs, light fires and leave charred rings on the grass. They look across the lake and wonder who lives in the beautiful log cabins, with their decks above the water and their private jetties. They imagine what it must be like, to be so rich, so lucky, to live in such a place.

The stillness of the air, and the warmth of the shimmering shallows, is deceptive. Beneath the surface, strong currents seize rocks and fallen branches; stir up the lake bed and uncover the dropped watches, the lone shoes. Shoals of minnows dart this way and that, their dance pulling in perch and pike, causing a sudden flurry on the surface, as though rain were falling. Deep in the middle of the lake, the water is still treacherously cold.

The breeze carries the bark of laughter, and the timbre of male voices, although not their words. A sharp pop! cuts through the air. Two men stand on the deck of one of the new lodges. One dangles a champagne bottle carelessly by his side, the cork now bobbing in the water. Rhys Lloyd. He’s excited to be here; on the shore of his childhood lake, where it all began. He’s proud to call Jonty Charlton his business partner, to carry cards with The Shore’s elegant green and off-white logo. He knows that this – the official opening of the resort – is the start of something exciting.

Yasmin and Blythe walk out of the lodge to join their husbands, and the four of them raise their glasses in a toast.

‘To The Shore!’ Rhys says. ‘To where it all begins.’





THIRTY-TWO




LATE JULY | RHYS


Rhys takes a sip of his champagne. The summer heat gives a haze to the water, making the boats indistinct, like mirages in a desert. On the opposite side of the lake, holidaymakers jump off the jetty, diving underwater and surfacing with bursting lungs out by the moored boats. And above it all, reflected in the glistening surface of the lake, is Pen y Ddraig mountain.

‘I’ve got to hand it to you, old man,’ Jonty says. ‘That’s not a bad view. Not bad at all.’

‘Who needs the Mediterranean when you’ve got this?’ Blythe tips up her face, eyes closed, toasting the sun. Her glass wobbles, champagne splashing on to her bare arm, and she gives a girlish giggle.

‘Steady on,’ Rhys says. ‘That stuff’s not cheap.’

Blythe licks her tanned skin with a pink, pointed tongue.

‘Don’t get used to it.’ Yasmin laughs.

Blythe raises an eyebrow. ‘The champagne? Darling, I never drink anything else, you know that.’

‘I meant the weather.’ Yasmin puts a proprietorial arm through Rhys’s, her bracelets pinching his skin. ‘When we were first married, Rhys dragged me to North Wales each summer and it rained every bloody time.’

‘It didn’t.’

‘It did!’

‘Another toast!’ Rhys says.

Blythe laughs. ‘What’s left to toast? We’ve done The Shore, and “us”, and you boys have done each other—’

‘God, darling!’ Jonty says. ‘There must be a better way of putting it than that.’

‘We should be toasting too,’ Tabby calls. ‘It’s bad luck otherwise.’ The twins are on the sun loungers, their lime-green bikinis contrasting sharply with the tans they presumably stole from Yasmin’s bathroom, judging by the shouting match that took place before they left London. Rhys feels the familiar combination of pride and fear peculiar to fathers of teenage girls.

‘Nice try, Tabitha Lloyd,’ Yasmin says. ‘You’re not having champagne.’

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.’