‘Who?’
‘Samuel Avery. Is he with you now?’
‘Of course he isn’t.’
Steadying herself against the worktop, Gina gazed down at her feet. He wasn’t with her; that meant he was out there somewhere but not at his pub, where he also lived. The images of Hannah and Avery’s wedding were vanishing. Maybe she’d jumped to the worst possible conclusion. Hannah was having a little bad patch in her relationship and maybe she had been seeking a little comfort in Avery, the expert manipulator, but he wasn’t with her now.
‘Where are you?’
‘At Nanny Hetty’s. Gracie wasn’t feeling too well so I came over a couple of hours ago and said I’d stay for a bit. I fell asleep on the couch.’
‘Is she okay?’
‘It’s nothing, just a bit of a sniffle. Apart from that, she’s having a lovely time catching up with family and they love her being here.’
Gina’s shoulders dropped. ‘Hannah, it’s really important that you answer my next question as honestly as possible. Were you with Samuel Avery this evening?’
There was a long pause. ‘He came over to the bed and breakfast about ten. He said he was checking that I was okay. It was a bit random.’
‘Why would he be checking that you were okay? Is something the matter?’
There was a tap at the front door. She crept across the dark lounge and peered out of her front window. Briggs’s car was parked next to hers. She unlocked the door and pointed to her phone. He smiled, came in and sat on the sofa in front of the log burner. Gina hurried back into the kitchen, closing the door behind her. Whatever Hannah had to say, she didn’t want Briggs to hear for the time being.
‘Hannah. What’s going on with you and Greg?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it but I will tell you something, Sam hasn’t done anything wrong.’
Gina wondered why he’d turned up to see Hannah at ten in the evening. What had he been doing before? ‘How did Sam seem when he turned up?’
‘A little distant, if I’m honest. Don’t freak out, Mum. He seemed a bit lost so I walked outside with him for a while. Then he went on with this stupid little spiel about how beautiful I was as he stroked my hair.’
Stomach tightening, Gina waited patiently for Hannah to continue. One wrong word could lead to Hannah dropping the call and turning her phone off.
‘It’s not that I can’t handle that type of thing. It’s just—’
Gina felt her teeth clenching together. After the accusation from Francesca about the assault, her mind flashed to an image of Hannah fighting him off, getting in her car and hurrying over to Gina’s dead ex-husband’s mother’s house to be with Gracie.
‘His hands were getting a bit spaghetti man. That’s all. I told him to go home and said we’d talk in the morning.’
‘And?’ Had that one word ended Hannah’s flow?
‘And what? That was it. He held his hands up, smiled and said sorry. He said he’d call in the morning and went on about how he shouldn’t have come to see me. He seemed a bit, I don’t know, depressed, then he said he had to get back to the pub. You know, Mum, he’s not that bad, I think he’s just a little lost.’
A little lost – Gina hoped that her daughter wasn’t falling for that act. Samuel Avery had just changed his strategy. Gina knew he hadn’t been at the Angel all night and he hadn’t gone back to the Angel later either, so where had he been and who had he been with? Or had he been stalking Francesca, waiting for her to come home before seizing his opportunity to kill her. So far, her theory didn’t contain enough evidence to arrest him, not after already questioning him. She needed to dig deeper or, she knew for sure, he’d kick up a huge stink.
‘Mum, I can hear stirring in the other rooms. I think I’ve woken the others up. I could do without Gracie waking up too. Can we speak tomorrow?’
‘Did he assault you?’
‘No! For heaven’s sake, he fancies me, Mum, that’s all. Look, it was nothing. It’s not like some guy hasn’t got all spaghetti hands on me before. He stopped. He left me alone when I asked him to. It was nothing so let’s leave it at that. Goodnight, Mum.’
Hannah ended the call. Gina opened the fridge door and slammed it hard, rattling the two old bottles of tonic in the fridge. Thoughts of Avery turning up to see Hannah, his hands snaking around her daughter’s body while she pushed him off, filled her mind. What also angered her was that Hannah’s acceptance of his behaviour had normalised it to the point she’d even talk to him the next day as if nothing had happened. Her mind whirled with thoughts of Hannah and Greg and the many possibilities of what might be going wrong between them.
The kitchen door creaked open and Briggs peered through. ‘Everything alright?’
‘I’ll fill you in over a drink. Gin and tonic?’
‘I won’t be able to drive home if I say yes.’ His gaze met hers.
