‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I miss you.’
‘I miss you, too.’
‘When are you coming down?’
‘Not sure.’ He rubbed his face and yawned. ‘Work’s bonkers. We’re doing a big deal on the Gold Coast so I’m flying up there tomorrow. Maybe Saturday.’
‘Okay. I need you to bring me down some things. I’ll text you a list.’
He leaned closer to the camera. ‘Speaking of the deal, I’ve got a call coming through. I’ve got to take this.’
‘Okay—’
Suddenly he was gone and it was just her own face, taking up the whole screen. She frowned, noticing a dark smudge on her forehead, and leaned closer to the camera. What the hell was that? Dirt? She licked her finger and rubbed at it. Yes, dirt. She closed her eyes, mortified. She’d had dirt on her face throughout the whole phone call.
Chapter 21
‘What were you talking to Mum about?’
Meg spun around to see Georgie leaning against the side of the house, vape in hand. She wore cut-off denim shorts and a cropped bra top, showing off her tanned midriff.
Georgie raised a finger to her lips. ‘Let’s walk.’
Meg followed her across the driveway and onto the road. Heat rose from the bitumen underfoot as cicadas chanted their shrill song.
‘So?’ Georgie asked, as they walked slowly. ‘What was that about?’
‘Someone from her past. Does she talk much about her sister?’
‘The one who died?’ Georgie shook her head. ‘They don’t talk about her at all.’
‘They?’
‘Mum and my grandparents.’ She took a drag on her vape, exhaled a cloud of white smoke. She held it out to Meg, an offer. ‘Blueberry,’ she added.
‘No, thanks.’
Meg looked at the houses as they passed. The front garden of number twenty-seven was wild and unkempt, its letterbox stuffed full of junk mail, its blinds down. The number seven had fallen off, leaving a mark where it once was. Hadn’t they just passed another derelict house? Meg turned to look back up the street where they’d come from. The shack a few blocks back was clearly uninhabited too, with waist-high weeds threatening to engulf the driveway. One of the front windows was broken.
Meg frowned. ‘What’s with all the empty houses?’
‘Dunno,’ Georgie said, bored. ‘A few have sold recently around here, but no one’s moved in.’
‘That’s weird.’
Georgie shrugged, as though she hadn’t given it much thought and didn’t plan to. ‘It worked out well for my nan and pop. Mum couldn’t believe how lucky they were when someone made an offer on their place. They were too old to be living alone. Now they’re living their best lives in a retirement community in Queensland. “Independent living for the over sixties.”’ She made quote marks with her fingers.
‘The house wasn’t on the market?’ Meg asked. ‘They just got an offer? Out of the blue?’
‘Yep.’ Georgie inhaled on the vape.
‘And that was surprising, that they sold so easily?’
Georgie nodded. ‘Our old neighbours took over a year to sell a while back.’
Meg frowned. ‘Isn’t property in Hartwell in high demand? I thought everyone in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney had a country house down here.’ She raised an eyebrow to distance herself from the Sydney elite.
Georgie exhaled. ‘Not on this street. The houses are junk and they all back onto the industrial estate. There’s a dairy factory just behind those back fences.’ She looked in the general direction.
