Twenty Thousand Saints by Fflur Dafydd

Twenty Thousand Saints by Fflur Dafydd

Author:Fflur Dafydd [Fflur Dafydd]
Language: eng
Format: epub


Mwynwen reasoned with her at the kitchen counter, resuming her kneading of a deflated lump of floury matter as she spoke. The baby sat perched on its high stool, face caked in clumps, its too-blue eyes bullying her.

“It’s that blasted Leri,” Mwynwen said, “looking for a story. I knew there was something funny about that girl. She’s obviously been planning it for months.” Her words were barely audible above the pounding of fists in the soft dough. Viv thought about Leri’s oval-shaped face, so unlike the baby’s perfectly round, ball-shaped stare. She’d liked the earnestness of Leri’s eyes in her dimly-lit kitchen, she’d liked the way she wrote down everything she’d said, and more, in looping cadences so unlike Sister Mary Catherine’s. They’d both sat there one evening watching the sun sinking into the sea, stripping the light from their faces, until they could see nothing but the glimmer of eyes. For one moment, she’d allowed herself to think it was Delyth who was sat there. Nobody had listened to her like that since Delyth had gone. “If it wasn’t for the blasted Sound,” Mwynwen continued, white flakes flying off her wrists, “we could have got them off the island by now. You know, Howard thinks it could be days before we get another boat. Viv. Viv? Say something, Viv, will you?”

“They released him,” she said suddenly, looking up at Mwynwen’s face. “They released him, Mwynwen. That means something, surely?”

“We’ve been over this,” said Mwynwen.

“It’s different now,” she said, sulkily, feeling the weight of her eyes.

“How is it different?” she said, sternly, carving grooves into her unbaked loaf. “Lack of evidence doesn’t mean a thing. They always had a lack of evidence. You and I both know he did it.”

“How do we know?” Viv said. She truly wanted to know how she knew. She’d spent so long on this place that it had become fact, hard and real. Iestyn had killed Delyth. It’s what Mwynwen had told her; it’s what she had told herself over and over as she had testified in court. There had been the cardigan; the blood stain. There had been the eyes of dead birds under Iestyn’s bed. There had been his restlessness when the police had come. There had been his hurdle over Cae Uchaf’s fence. There had been the fact that he was a difficult, violent boy.

But then again there had been very little else. She hadn’t even told them about what she’d seen him do, him and Delyth, over on those rocks on the south side. Maybe she should have. It seemed to incriminate him further, at the time, but now she sees it could have been useful. Essential, even. Then again, she wasn’t even sure what she’d seen now; it was all a blur of limbs and rock.

“What if she’s not even dead, Mwynwen?” Viv said, trying to fine-tune the tremor in her voice. She heard Delyth’s laugh in her head. Enchanting and lilting and sometimes, downright cruel.

“Oh Viv,” Mwynwen had said. “Viv fach.



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