“Everything?” I asked. “They took everything?”
He nodded. We had each used his phone throughout the day to phone through to the banks, driver’s license, even the gym to cancel cards and identification. I had found out very quickly that they had emptied my two main bank accounts at ATMs, but thankfully couldn’t get access to the thirty thousand or so that I had in savings. It had been a big loss, but not as big as what Owen had just revealed.
Sometime before the police had gotten to my flat, the thieves had stolen everything - TV, games consoles, jewellery. They had even managed to get away with some of the smaller items of clothing. I had almost nothing to my name and no way to buy anything new for myself. I had five figures tucked away in savings accounts but with no ID, no bank cards and no way of proving I was who I said I was no bank would give me access. If only they had been so scrupulous before letting thieves get away with taking so much of my other money…
Owen’s room was messy, filled with so many ideas and posters from his job in marketing. He’d recently been co-ordinating between the tourism boards across the UK.
“I’d go and lie low in the Cayman Islands for a week,” I joked weakly, “If I was a sensible enough financier to have kept all mymoney locked away there. Not only am I broke, but it proves I’m shit at my job.”
“Hey, don’t say that now,” Owen said. He put one hand on my good shoulder. “I can give you a little bit of money ‘til you have access to your savings accounts. I can’t quite afford to send you to the Cayman Islands…”
“Oh don’t worry about that,” I said quietly. I had looked behind him and realised there was somewhere I could go for very little money if I played my cards right. On the wall, in amongst adverts for holidays to Tuvalu and Egypt, was a big bright poster.Visit Wales.
2
Chapter Two
Llywelyn
I couldn’t tell you how many times old Beca Price’s cat got stuck on the roof. What I could tell you is that she should have bought a lock long ago, and the cat should have learned that it was afraid of heights almost as immediately as it got up there the first time, not the umpteenth.
“Come on now, puss. Don’t make this too difficult for Uncle Llywelyn,” I said. “Just come to my arms and I can get you back down.” The ladder wobbled precariously under me as the cat inched slowly closer toward me. “Come on now, just a few inches closer…”
The cat eventually crept close enough over the old thatched roof for me to grab her, and I took her under one arm. She growled angrily at me.
“Well, Tibs, if you wouldn’t get yourself into so many silly situations we wouldn’t have to be angry at each other, nowwould we.” The ladder was a shaky one at the best of times but shuffling down it with a cat in one hand and using the other to grip on felt even more dangerous.
When we reached the ground, I breathed a sigh of relief and let Tibs go. She immediately ran in through Beca’s back door. I folded my ladders down, leaned them against the van and followed her.
Beca was sat at the dining table, holding Tibs and looking her over for damage or injury. They both looked up at me when I came in; Beca with a smile and Tibs with a typical glare.
“Thank you,cariad,” she said. “I don’t know what we’d do without you sometimes, do we Tibs?”
“Call the firemen?” I suggested, knowing she would never.
“And have them tell me off? No thank you, you’ll do just fine.” Beca reached into the purse sat on the table and took out a 20 pound note. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.”
“No, no.” I waved the note away as it was offered. Beca stood up and hobbled the couple of steps to me, then stuffed the note in my pocket.
“I will not take no for an answer,” she said. For a woman five feet tall - a good one and a half feet shorter than me - she cut an intimidating figure. I nodded, and resisted the urge to take the note and put it on the kitchen counter.
Beca’s house was one of the oldest in the village - almost as old as mine, with a thatched roof, dark wooden beams and an old gas-fired stove. A kettle sat on the stove, obviously recently boiled. “You’ll have a cuppa, love?” she asked. She popped teabags into 3 separate mugs before I could answer. “Glynis Ifans is coming round soon, and she has some favours she wants to ask you anyway.”
I nodded and took my seat at the old wooden table as Beca fussed around with the mugs. It wasn’t all that strange for me to be at the beck and call of the old ladies of the village. Asif summoned, Glynis popped her head through the back door. Beca kept the door unlocked and open even in the cold winter months, always ready to entertain or summon someone for a telling off…or make me a cuppa after I’d saved her cat or changed a lightbulb again.
Beca plonked three chipped mugs on the table and then hobbled back to grab the biscuit bowl.
“Hiya, love,” said Glynis. “You having a good day?”
“Not the worst start to my Sunday, seeing you lovely ladies,” I smiled. Glynis giggled and took her seat. She was taller, fitter and more imposing than Beca - but everyone knew that Beca was the matriarch of the town. There was no question about that. Glynis was like a henchman on the Community Council, and if there was gossip she didn’t know it wasn’t worth knowing.
“I think you were right about Sally Griffiths,” Glynis muttered to Beca. She grabbed a biscuit and dunked it before continuing. “She is showing a bit of a bump, so she’s either pregnant or Glyn the baker has been feeding her.”
“Or both,” said Beca. They both shared significant looks with each other. They would find out which of those was true. Sally wasn’t married or seeing anyone seriously, so a pregnancy was always going to make her the subject of gossip. I prayed for her sake that she was just getting fat, though that would be just as much cause for talk in the little village of Hiraeth.
“Beca says you had a favour to ask of me?” I asked, cutting them off before they could get any bitchier.
“Ah, yes,” said Glynis. “My grandson is visiting from London, he’s coming in on the train later today and I need you to pick him up…that is, if you’re not too busy of course.”
