Georgie smirked. ‘I reckon you’re onto something there. I do know one of those guys actually, the ones who got arrested at the jail.’
‘You do? Would you introduce me? I’d love to ask him a few questions.’
Georgie pulled a pen out of her apron and wrote a name on the back of a coaster. ‘You’ll find him on Instagram. I can’t guarantee he’ll be willing to talk, but send him a DM and say you met me.’
Her eyes flicked over to a lanky guy standing at the bar, wearing an AC/DC T-shirt.
‘I got a customer,’ she said.
Meg watched Georgie greet him and pull a beer, a silent pantomime which she knew well from her own bar days. Georgie twirled a lock of her hair as they spoke. He tossed his change into her tip jar.
Meg looked at the name on the coaster. Dan James. At least she had a lead. He’d been arrested in the early stages of the redevelopment, but the charges had been dropped abruptly, according to what she’d read online. She was intrigued to know why. She pulled out her phone and searched the name but there were dozens, so she searched for Georgie instead.
Georgie’s profile was public, thankfully. Meg barely looked at it, instead tapping on the list of people Georgie was following and typing in the name she’d given her. Bingo. Dan James had a goatee and a topknot. In his profile picture, he was holding a complicated yoga pose in front of an orange sunset. His bio read,Be the change. She typed a quick message, then flicked back to Georgie’s grid.
Meg glanced up to check Georgie wasn’t nearby—she was behind the bar, chatting to the regulars—then looked back at her phone. The profile was mostly bikini shots, coquettish poses with intense eye contact. There was no one else pictured. No friends, no family.
She clicked on one of Georgie laughing, tousled dirty-blonde hair falling over a tanned shoulder. In another she sat back, pensive, staring into the lens with a serious intensity, T-shirt tied at her midriff, a smattering of tiny freckles across her nose. It was as though she was balanced precariously on the cliff’s edge between childhood and adulthood. A sexy girl or a girlish woman. Take your pick.
As she scrolled back up, Meg’s eye was drawn to the follower tally at the top of the screen:32.2K, it said. Thirty-two thousand? She frowned and looked back over at Georgie. That seemed like a lot for a small-town barmaid.Get to know me better, her bio read. It included a link. Meg clicked on it and a new window opened an OnlyFans profile. In a banner photo, Georgie lay on her side, one hand suggestively close to her crotch, the other on her breast. She was braless, her nipples clearly visible through the thin fabric of her white T-shirt.
Poor Georgie. Why was she doing this?
Meg frowned, wondering why her default response was pity. It wasn’t very progressive of her to assume that sex workers were victims. Maybe Georgie liked it. Maybe she found it empowering. How would Meg know?
Still. She couldn’t help thinking it was a shame. A subscription was five dollars a month. Five! Five bucks was nothing. You could barely buy a coffee for five bucks. It made it even worse, somehow, although Meg was unsure what logic she was using to reach that conclusion.
Meg searched Georgie’s friends list for Chrissy’s Instagram profile. Christina Baxter. Her profile was sparse. Six posts, the first dating back to Georgie’s first day of school. Tiny Georgie wore an enormous uniform that came down to her mid-shin, one parent on either side. Meg studied Georgie’s father, wondering if he was still around. He was salt-of-the-earth handsome, with sandy hair and pride in his glassy-eyed smile. Chrissy looked the same as she did now, but younger and less weathered. Meg chided herself for focusing on how much the woman had aged. What did she expect? The photo was taken, what, fifteen years ago? Georgie was now working behind a bar. And selling naked photos of herself online—
Meg inhaled sharply as a thought struck her.
Chrissy was Christina.
Christina.
Meg’s heart raced. Was Chrissy Jenny’s Tina?
She took a deep breath, trying to slow her racing thoughts. In her mind, she replayed the moment when she’d asked Chrissy about Tina. At the mention of the name, Chrissy’s walls had gone up. She’d become fixated on the coaster, avoiding eye contact. And then she was gone.
Chrissy. Christina. Tina.
Meg was right. She was sure of it. She was bloody right. Chrissy was Tina.
But whowasTina?
Frenetic adrenalin pulsed through her. She stood up, pacing. A balding man at a nearby table gave her a curious look, so she pretended to study a family tree on the wall. That feeling she’d had when she first saw Chrissy in the café—and again at the pub—it was the feeling of knowing, the sense that she knew her. Not that she’dmether, but that sheknewher. Somehow.
Could Chrissy be her mother’s … sister? Meg’s aunt? She could hardly bear to let the question form in her mind. She’d been here before, giddy with hope, and it had only ever led to disappointment.
Families belonged to other people. It was just how things were. She’d learnt that time and time again, when well-meaning people asked simple questions she struggled to answer. School was a minefield. Even something as simple as Grandparents’ Day had stirred up a feeling of being somehow deficient. Inadequate. As though she was missing something simple yet wonderful, that everyone else took for granted, like eyelashes.
It was always just Meg and her mum. No father. No brothers or sisters. No aunts or uncles or grandparents or cousins. It was just the two of them, eating chops and mashed potato, at their Formica table, which they moved from one thin-walled, two-bedroom rental house to another, up and down the east coast. Meg had been to eight schools by the time she finished year six. It felt like the moment she made a friend, a real friend, they would be packing boxes into their station wagon and leaving town.
She looked back at the long-dead family tree. They were all Ashworths, she realised, as she looked more closely. A sepia-toned photo sat alongside each name. The men bore bushy moustaches. The women wore elaborate hats. They all had the blank facial expression common in old photos: a creepy, empty glare. It felt like they were mocking her.Families belong to other people,they seemed to say.Not to you.
She’d made a family tree once. When was that? She could picture the classroom. It had green carpet and low ceilings. Bangalow Primary School? She must have been in year two.
‘We’re going to start working on a new project!’ Mrs Holly had said, with the sparkle-eyed excitement of an entertainer at a children’s birthday party. It was early in term one and Meg had only been there since the start of that year, but she was already a little bit in love with Mrs Holly, a plump, motherly type with a warm smile and a laugh that sounded like honey. ‘We’re going to make family trees!’
