He took another beer from the fridge, popped the top and took a long swig, then looked blankly at Issy, who was still waiting for an answer.
‘Hugh?’
‘I never said they’d broken up,’ he said, but he was frowning slightly, as though he suspected he’d been caught in a lie.
Issy frowned. ‘Yes, you did.’ Didn’t he?
‘I just said they had an argument.’
Issy rifled back through her memory of the night she’d arrived home from the fundraiser, when Hugh had said he was on the phone to Marshall. She knew he’d lied. It wasn’t Marshall on the phone when Issy arrived home, but hehadspoken to his brother earlier that night. The dialled numbers log had confirmed that. She’d assumed the relationship dramas were legit.
‘When I asked Carmen about it, she denied it.’
‘Why the hell were you talking to Carmen about it?’
‘Sorry, I was just trying to have a proper conversation!’
‘Don’t go telling Carmen stuff Marshall says to me.’ He held her gaze for a moment too long, then shook his head, as though she’d disappointed him. ‘I’m going to take a shower.’
She rubbed her face. Was anything Hugh said true? He was constantly slipping out of rooms to take calls. Like earlier: one minute he’d been sitting on a barstool at the island bench making a Spotify playlist, the next his phone rang and he’d disappeared.
Her head was throbbing now. This was why she hated day drinking—it always left her feeling groggy and slightly depressed. She needed to rehydrate.
As she filled a glass with water, she noticed Hugh’s phone sitting on the bench and considered checking it again.
And then it lit up, flashing silently.
George Mobile.
Her heart raced as she swiped to answer. She said nothing.
‘Hugh?’ a husky voice said.
Issy’s heart pounded. George was a woman. A very young woman, from the inflection in her voice.
‘Hello?’ the voice said. ‘Hugh?’
Something stirred in Issy’s subconscious. Thinking of the waitress at Kilmore yesterday, she closed her eyes, summoning the scene in the lounge room right before they sat down for lunch. Her mother’s words echoed in her mind:‘Tell the caterers we’re ready for lunch. Thank you, Georgie.’
Issy inhaled sharply, stunned by the clarity of the revelation. ‘George’ was the waitress.
‘Are you there, Hugh?’ the voice on the phone said, as the sound of running water in the bathroom stopped.
Issy hung up, carefully placing the phone back where it was, then she spun around and opened the fridge, pretending to search for something.
Hugh appeared, his hair wet from the shower, a towel around his waist. ‘Have you seen my phone anywhere?’
‘I saw it on the bench,’ she said, without turning around.
‘Thanks.’ He left the room again, phone in hand.
Chapter 35
‘I didn’t think you were coming back,’ Georgie said, a Coke in each hand. She put them on the table and sat down opposite Meg in a dark corner of the Red Lion. Georgie was on her lunch break.
Meg shrugged. ‘Just have a few loose ends I need to follow up,’ she said vaguely. She didn’t want to tell Georgie what Pete had discovered about the houses on Barton Drive. Instead, Meg told her about the confrontation with Jenny on Christmas Day as Georgie sipped her Coke through a paper straw.
‘So, we’re cousins?’
