The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(85)

Glynis puts on her glasses and takes the article. ‘I never liked that photo of him. He was exhausted all the time in his late twenties – it was all that touring, you know.’ She stands. ‘Are you not in that photo? You did the camp, didn’t you?’

‘I was in the loo when the photographer came.’ Mia grins. ‘Mam gave me such a row for it.’

Glynis bends down, dragging another box from under the bed. ‘There’s a whole pack of photos somewhere.’

‘Oh, Glynis, don’t worry on my account.’

‘I’ve got young Caleb coming tomorrow to put up some shelves – he’ll put them all back for me.’ She opens the books and starts looking through the contents.

‘Caleb from The Shore?’ Mia’s surprised. The Shore might as well be a hundred miles away, for all the mixing there is with Cwm Coed. Present company excepted, she thinks, with a private smirk.

‘He’s a lovely lad. He’s done a fair few odd jobs for me recently – for pocket money, you know. Here you are.’ Glynis hands her a pile of photographs.

‘Oh, my God, why have I never seen these?’ Mia bursts out laughing. ‘Look at my hair!’ She flicks through the photos, remembering clear as day the freedom of being sixteen, of having nothing to care about but what you looked like and who you were going to hang out with that day.

‘Take some,’ Glynis says. ‘They’ll only go back in the box.’

‘If you’re sure?’ Mia pulls out three or four, still laughing. She’s off to clean Elen’s holiday let later today – she’ll have to show Ffion. ‘That make-up! We thought we were so cool.’ She looks around the room. ‘Now, can I help you find the file you’re after?’

‘Thank you, but I’ll put the radio on later and work through it. It must be here somewhere. If you could hoover the bits you can see, I’d be grateful.’

Later, after she’s finished at Elen’s, her phone rings. She smiles at the screen. ‘Hello, you.’

‘Alright, gorgeous?’ Bobby’s voice is low and gentle, and it flips Mia’s stomach.

‘What are you up to?’

‘I’m on set. I’ve just been reunited with my love child, but I’ve got another two scenes before I find out he needs a kidney transplant and I’m the only match. How about you?’

‘Same.’ She hears him laugh and she misses him so badly she could cry.

Mia hadn’t believed in love at first sight until she’d met Bobby. It’s something they talk about a lot, because Bobby didn’t believe in it either, yet when they remember that first meeting, it was as though the world had stopped.

‘Nothing else mattered,’ Bobby always says.

‘Like a bomb going off, in a film,’ Mia adds. ‘Everyone’s running around screaming, but you’re in slow motion, and all you can hear is your own heartbeat.’

She had been intrigued to meet the Staffords. The Shore’s first celebrity guests – if you didn’t count Rhys Lloyd – and even though Mia didn’t watch Carlton Sands, the soap is famous for its controversial storylines, and Bobby Stafford is often in the gossip mags. His new wife, Ashleigh, is never out of them. Moving from one reality TV show to the next, if she’s not pimping her appearances she’s being papped in nightclubs, always with someone slightly more famous than her.

Mia had given Rhys permission to pass her number on to the lodge-owners, in case any of them wanted to hire her directly. She had been surprised when Bobby had called her personally. She’d assumed people like the Staffords had staff for that sort of thing. Bobby had laughed when she said that.

‘Only wankers have people to book their cleaner.’ He was coming up to look over the lodge, wondered if Mia would give him a bit of a tour. ‘I don’t know anyone else in the area.’

‘You don’t know me.’

‘I will once you’ve shown me around,’ Bobby had said, with a grin Mia could hear down the phone line. The cheek of him.

He had come up a week later, and the second he stepped out of his car, she’d felt as if something had exploded.

‘Fireworks,’ she said, afterwards.

‘Like I’d stuck a knife in the toaster,’ Bobby said.

Mia had taken him for a walk up Pen y Ddraig mountain.

‘My grandmother was Welsh,’ Bobby said. ‘I’ve always loved the place.’ They were standing at the summit, Llyn Drych snaking along the valley below them. ‘It feels like coming home,’ he sighed, and he wasn’t looking at the lake, but at Mia, her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining.

He’d called that evening, on his way home. Mia could hardly hear him over the sound of the McLaren.

‘This is going to sound crazy . . .’ he’d said.

It was all crazy. From the way it began, and the way it is now, to the way it will be, as soon as they’re able to be together.

‘Not much longer,’ Bobby says now. Mia trusts him, and she can wait – she feels as though she’s already waited a lifetime for him – but he feels so far away, right now.

‘I wish you were coming next week.’

‘Me too. But I’ve got a break in filming in a couple of weeks. We’ll go somewhere, yeah? Just me and you.’ There’s a pause, then Bobby clears his throat. ‘Look, I hate to ask, but . . .’