‘Sure.’ Georgie smiled. ‘Pull the door down when you go. Dad will just think it’s me.’
‘What if he comes out?’
‘He won’t come out. Sorry it wasn’t …’ Georgie shrugged.
Better? Useful? The answer? It all hung in the air between them.
‘Thanks.’ She was a sweet girl. Even if she was an extortionist.
Once Georgie was gone, Meg lay the locket flat on her palm and studied it. The scales of justice were embossed on the yellow gold. She ran her finger over them. Libra. What month was Libra? Jenny’s birthday was in June, June seventeenth, although it struck her now that if Jenny was once Anna, even the date of her birthday was probably a lie. Meg shook her head. Even the little she knew about her mother was likely to be wrong.
But this, this locket, was real. Was it Jenny’s once? On an impulse, she put the chain around her neck, fumbling with the delicate clasp a few times before she fastened it. Once she’d done it, she placed a flat hand on her décolletage, pressing the locket to her skin, waiting to feel something. Some sense of clarity or connection, as though, if it had belonged to her mother, she should feel it. But there was nothing. It just felt cold on her skin.
She looked into the box again. At first glance she thought it was empty, but something caught her eye. A pen, lying against the side of the box where the cardboard folded. She reached for it. There was something written on it in an old-fashioned, curly script.
The Ashworth Park Hotel.
Heart racing, Meg slipped it into her pocket, then flicked back through the notebook to check she hadn’t missed anything. She hadn’t. She took a photo of each page of the notebook. Once she’d put everything back, she climbed up and placed it on the highest shelf, exactly where it was before.
She thought she heard something then, a call from inside the house perhaps, but she wasn’t sure. After a moment it came again, louder.
‘Georgie!’
Meg grabbed her bag and rushed out, heaving the heavy door down behind her.
She was heading up Barton Drive when Pete rang.
‘The same buyer’s agent has bought six houses on that street in the last twelve months,’ he said, without bothering with a greeting, ‘but he’s signed an NDA so he won’t talk. There’s definitely something going on there, and all my spidey senses say the Ashworths are involved.’
‘Interesting,’ Meg said, her mind still on the pen.
‘I’ll keep digging,’ Pete said. ‘See what you can find out down there.’
A few minutes later, she reached Chrissy’s café. The bells tinkled as she entered, announcing her arrival. Chrissy looked over from where she stood taking an order from a young family. She narrowed her eyes and picked up the menus, ignoring Meg as she walked to the counter.
‘Sorry to bother you again.’ Meg felt like a broken record. ‘I just have one last question.’
‘I really don’t want to talk about this again.’
‘You said Anna was working while she studied nursing,’ Meg said. ‘Was she working for the Ashworths?’
She saw a flicker of something on Chrissy’s face. ‘She was, wasn’t she? She worked at the hotel.’
Chrissy shook her head. ‘Not at the hotel. She was working as a baby nurse at their home.’
Meg’s mind raced. ‘When Isobel was a baby?’
Chrissy nodded. ‘Heather was sick. Anna was employed to look after the baby overnight.’
There was a tinkle from the door and Chrissy smiled at a customer.
‘She was living with them?’ Meg asked.
‘She spent most nights there, if that’s what you mean.’ Chrissy reached for a menu. ‘I’m not sure how relevant this is, though. I told you about the boyfriend.’
‘I guess so,’ Meg said. ‘Thanks.’
She sat in her car outside the café, pen in hand, studying the ornate writing.
