AllFreeNovel
Share Us
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 Ty’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.Ty’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.
Doesn’t Jac’s cabinet look lovely in Rhys’s office?Yasmin had said when she was showing off the lodge to her mother-in-law for the umpteenth time. Glynis touched the bashed metal, remembering it in Ty’r Lan, thinking of the mess of papers inside it.
“Safe and sound,” Jac used to say as he locked the drawers and pulled his mother’s tablecloth back over it.
Jac had wanted Glynis to have Ty’r Lan and the land around it, wanted her to continue protecting it. What if the original will he made is in Rhys’s filing cabinet? Finding it would prove Jac’s intentions for the land.
Glynis has spent weeks hunting for the key, turning her spare room upside down as she trawled through old photographs and papers. She found it in an old tackle tin, along with a handful of floats and some rusted fishhooks.
Now, it hangs on a long chain around Glynis’s neck.
She looks around the room. Rhys is in the kitchen talking to Jonty, the twins offering him a sandwich. Yasmin is pouring champagne in the corner. There will be no one at the Lloyds’ lodge.
Nobody notices Glynis as she slips outside: one of the few perks of old age. She walks along the lodges, perfectly calm, because what is she doing wrong? She’s Rhys’s mother and the girls’nain—why shouldn’t she nip out of a party to rest at their place for a while?
The front door is unlocked. Inside, the lights are low, and Glynis goes straight upstairs to the study to open the filing cabinet, the key turning as easily as if it had been used yesterday. Inside, manila folders form a muted rainbow, packed tightly together, Jac’s loopy handwriting on the flap of each one. She pulls out each in turn, flicking through the papers with a practiced eye, knowing Jac’s filing system as well as her own. Not alphabetical, not grouped by subject or correspondent’s name. Electricity bills were always filed underGethin Jones, because old Gethin had done the original wiring job in the cabin. Maps of footpaths in the area weren’t filed together but under the names of farms they passed through. Jac had his quirks, Glynis thinks fondly, even before he lost his marbles.
She pulls out a folder markedAnti Nesta, and her heart skips a beat. Nesta—not a real aunt but a much-loved friend of Jac’s mother—had worked in a funeral parlor. Glynis opens the folder and knows instantly that if Jac’s will is anywhere, it will be here. There are leaflets for headstones, careful notes considering the merits of various coffins.
And the will.
Glynis feels grief swelling inside her all over again, so many years after she lost Jac. She reads his writing, the clear capitals spelling out what should happen to the shop, the flat, the land on the lakeshore. Rhys had known that was what his dad had wanted, yet he had taken advantage of Jac’s illness—and his refusal to see a doctor about it—and deliberately gone against his wishes. Jac would be devastated.
There’s a sound downstairs.
Someone bangs the door shut, then thuds against the stairs. It sounds violent, out of control. Glynis is panicking. What if it’s a burglar, here to take advantage of an empty house? What if he attacks her? She looks around wildly for some kind of weapon as the intruder’s steps come heavily up the stairs. Putting down the folder, she takes a trophy from the shelf above the desk. It’s so heavy, she almost drops it, but she grips it tightly, so far out of her depth, she can hardly breathe.
And then the door opens and Rhys comes in, and the rush of relief is overwhelmed by anger, the way a mother snatches at a child’s arm when she had thought him lost. He staggers against the wall, too drunk to notice his own mother—although would he even care, she thinks, if he did? Rhys has always done exactly what he wanted.Takenexactly what he wanted. She pictures Rhys telling Jac what to say, where to sign—convincing him he was doing the right thing—and before she knows what she’s doing, she’s using all her strength to lift the trophy and hurl it at her son.
Only when he falls to the floor like an axed tree does Glynis come to her senses.
She claps her hand over a scream, every limb trembling.
What has she done?
Fifty-Seven
New Year’s Eve
Clemmie
Clemmie Northcote is having a wonderful evening. She has tried her Welsh on all the local guests (and a few of the English ones), has drunk way more than she should have, and doesn’t give two figs because it’s New Year’s Eve! It’s a party! Hurrah for free champagne and stunning surroundings!
Clemmie does some more Irish dancing, which she’s discovered she’s amazingly good at for someone who has never tried it before. Everyone is cheering, or possibly laughing, it’s hard to tell, but Clemmie doesn’t care either way—it’s all such a hoot.
She takes a breather, bequeathing the dance floor to some of the youngsters, who don’t dance at all really, just shift their weight from side to side and shout at each other over their drinks. On the other side of the room, Bobby Stafford has his hand on the cleaner’s bottom.
“Doing his bit for cross-border relations,” Clemmie says, giggling to herself. Ashleigh’s seen too and is glaring at Bobby from the sofa so hard, he must feel her eyes on him, because he turns around. Clemmie mentally reaches for the popcorn, but Bobby gives a sort of shrug and doesn’t take so much as a finger off Mia. Mind you, Clemmie’s seen Ashleigh coming out of the loo with Jonty twice tonight, so maybe they’re both at it. People have the oddest relationships; Yasmin and Rhys haven’t said a word to each other all night. Those poor twins, having parents argue like that, so publicly.
She looks around, but Tabby and Felicia must have gone back to Clemmie’s place. Clemmie hasn’t given up hope of one of them falling madly in love with Caleb, and she spends a fair proportion of her lake swims contemplating a Northcote-Lloyd wedding. Sadly, Caleb seems to be more interested in Seren, who is a very sweet girl but who has turned up to tonight’s party dressed—there’s no way to put this nicely—like a prostitute. If Clemmie gets a chance, she’ll have a word with the girl. Woman to woman. Vet her for Caleb at the same time, just in case the Tabby-or-Felicia thing doesn’t come off.
