‘We were just leaving,’ Nel said, standing up.
‘Ah yeah.’Jimmy frowned slightly but followed her lead.‘We need to get going.’
Nel hurried to the door and out into the cold night air, crossing her arms tightly.She could hear Jimmy’s footsteps behind her.
‘Slow down!’he called out.When he caught up, he put a hand on her arm.‘What’s wrong?’
‘I don’t trust that guy.’
‘Why not?’
‘Remember the journalist I mentioned?’She stopped and rifled through her bag to find Trent’s business card.‘Your mate Trent ambushed me at work.’
‘Ambushed you?’
‘He pretended he was a patient, then he told me he’s writing a story about Geoff Marshall and what happened to Maddie.He asked me about the ring.I said I had no idea what he was talking about, but how would he know about that?It was never in the papers.’
Jimmy frowned.‘You think someone tipped him off?’
‘I don’t know, maybe.’Nel shook her head, trying to make sense of it.‘But who?And why?’
He shrugged.‘I don’t know.But one thing Idoknow is that if you want to find out what happened to Maddie, you’ll need to stop running away from people who might know something.’There was a long silence, then he smiled.‘And another thing I know is that I’m starving and now we have to find somewhere else to have dinner.’
‘Good point.Sorry.Come back to Mum’s place.Lauren dropped over a lasagne this afternoon.Just promise you won’t mention any of this to Mum.’
Chapter 21
‘Get him!Get him!’
Nel winced as a chubby boy in camouflage crept out from behind a pile of tyres only to be hammered by a barrage of rubber bullets.
Lauren’s backyard had been transformed into a battlefield for Leo’s birthday party.From where Nel sat, in the relative safety of the veranda with a glass of rosé, it was surprisingly exciting to watch.The deaths were particularly spectacular.Once or twice she’d cheered accidentally.
‘Got him!’
‘You’re dead, Zach!’
‘Get the flag!’
A ginger-haired boy lunged for a red flag on the back fence and held it up, triumphant.Leo and his teammates mobbed him, hooting and back-slapping, while the defeated soldiers lay sprawled on the grass.Barely a minute had passed when Leo yelled, his eyes a little crazed, ‘Let’s play again!’They all jumped up and started yelling over each other, renegotiating the teams.
Not sure she had the stamina for another round, Nel wandered back inside the once humble bungalow that Lauren and Steve had spent the last few years renovating.Walls had been knocked down so the previously pokey kitchen now flowed into the living room,and bi-fold doors opened onto a large veranda to create what Lauren called ‘indoor-outdoor flow’ and maximise the jaw-dropping views up Millers Beach.The white walls and high ceilings might have felt cold if it wasn’t for the crackling fire and a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the far wall.Lauren had documented the transformation in a coffee-table book of before-and-after photos that she’d thrust at Nel earlier.
Nel had arrived an hour before the party started, thinking Lauren could probably use some help setting things up, only to find that everything was firmly under control.Instead, her sister had used the opportunity to quiz her about Jimmy.The pink-haired waitress, it turned out, was the daughter of one of her bootcamp clients, so word had already got back to Lauren that her sister was on ‘a date’ with the local cop.Cath had also apparently updated Lauren on the impromptu dinner the night before, when Jimmy had shared some hair-raising policing stories over lasagne.
‘Didn’t you two have a thing at one stage?’Lauren had asked.
Nel had denied it and quickly changed the subject, but therehadbeen a brief period when it seemed like they might be something more.They’d kissed at a party in Year 9, but then Maddie died and everything changed.It had all been so brief and uneventful that Nel wasn’t sure if Jimmy even remembered.It was a relief, she thought, that it never eventuated into anything.What she needed here was a friend, not an ex-boyfriend.
She walked over to peruse the bookcase, which had been meticulously arranged by colour.Resisting the urge to swap a blue spine with an orange one, she picked up a photo of Lauren and Steve on their wedding day.Her sister wore an empire-line dress to accommodate her enormous baby bump.
Nel remembered standing in the dark hallway earlier that year, eavesdropping, while Lauren and Steve told her parents they werehaving a baby.Rob had been stunned.Cath had cried.Lauren was halfway through a Bachelor of Education at Canberra Uni, but the pregnancy had been the end of that.
Nel replaced the photo and went into the kitchen where she refilled her glass and sat down on a bar stool.Voices echoed in the wide hallway.
‘Sorry we’re so late.’
‘Honestly, no problem at all!’
