Chapter 37
The sun was orange in the western sky as Meg pulled into the driveway of thirty-seven Barton Drive. Georgie sat in the passenger seat, looking pensive.
‘You okay?’ Meg asked, the conversation with Issy still front of mind. Issy had listened quietly as Georgie recounted the events surrounding her father’s accident. The pitiful workers’ compensation. His ongoing pain. The addiction that followed.
‘Yeah, fine.’ Georgie rubbed her face. She stared through the windscreen at the garage door. ‘Did I tell you Mum and Dad got an offer for the house?’
Meg frowned. ‘They did? Who from?’
Georgie shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
‘I didn’t know it was on the market.’
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Are they going to take it?’
‘Nah, they won’t be able to afford anything else in Hartwell and Mum’s business is here so …’
‘How much was the offer?’
‘Two hundred and fifty thousand. Mum reckons that’s low.’
‘Interesting.’ Meg made a mental note to tell Pete when she called him later.
Something was still bothering Meg about their conversation with Issy at the pub. There’d been a coldness in her demeanour at first when she’d asked Georgie about Hugh. Did Issy suspect he was cheating with Georgie? The sight of Georgie creeping away from that hotel room flashed in Meg’s mind.
She cleared her throat. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘Is there something going on between you and Hugh Thorburn?’
Georgie looked at her, eyes narrow. ‘What?’
Meg chose her words carefully. ‘It’s just … I think maybe Issy, you know, maybe that’s what Issy thinks.’
Georgie scoffed. ‘As if I would go anywhere near her sleazy boyfriend. He’s older than my dad!’
Meg remained silent, feeling like there was something Georgie wasn’t saying.
‘Don’t you believe me?’ Georgie asked.
‘I want to.’ Meg’s voice was gentle. ‘But I saw something, Georgie, which left me wondering if there is something going on with you and Hugh. I wasn’t going to mention it …’
‘What?’
‘I think you were with Hugh at the Red Lion—’
‘I work there! Of course I’ve seen him there!’
‘But you were upstairs where the hotel rooms are.’
Georgie glared at her.
‘Georgie?’
She shook her head.
‘What were you doing there?’
‘I don’t want to get in the middle of this.’
‘In the middle of what?’
Georgie ran her hand through her hair. ‘Look, Hugh is cheating on Issy, but not with me.’
Meg frowned. ‘Who with then?’
Georgie shook her head again and reached for her bag. ‘I can’t say.’
‘What? How am I meant to believe you if you won’t tell me anything?’
‘Okay.’ Georgie sighed heavily. She stared out the windscreen as she spoke. ‘I’m not having sex with him, Meg. I’m blackmailing him.’
‘Blackmailing him? What the hell?’
‘I … found out he’s been sleeping with someone. Someone he definitely shouldn’t be sleeping with. I saw them go upstairs at the pub, that night when you saw me, so I confronted them. He offered me money to keep quiet. That’s how it started.’
‘How it started? So it’s still going on? You’re still blackmailing him?’
‘I figured if he paid up once, he’d pay again,’ Georgie said quietly. ‘Georgie! What the—’
‘I knew I shouldn’t tell you!’ Georgie opened the car door. ‘Just pretend you don’t know.’
What the hell was she thinking, Meg wondered, as she watched Georgie disappear inside the house. Blackmailing the General Counsel of Ashworth Property! She closed her eyes as her mind raced, thinking of all the ways it could backfire.
A wave of tiredness washed over her. After the break-in and her fight with Jenny and finding out now about Georgie’s blackmail situation, she felt utterly exhausted.
What a relief that there was a deluxe king room waiting for her just down the road at the Ashworth Park Hotel.
Issy had booked it earlier after Meg told her about the break-in.
She would order room service for dinner, she decided, followed by a long hot bath.
As she drove up Barton Drive, she studied the houses on her left.
Most of them were empty now. It was easy to tell which ones had sold first, their front gardens were overrun by waist-high weeds.
The houses which had sold more recently looked like they might still be occupied, but the junk-filled letterboxes and cobwebs around the eaves suggested otherwise.
And now the Baxters had an offer too. What were the Ashworths planning?
Georgie had mentioned a dairy factory. Noticing a pathway running between two houses, Meg pulled over to have a look around.
As she passed through the narrow corridor, a chill ran through her, despite the heat of the day—the strange sensation that someone was watching her.
She rubbed her bare arms and looked around to see a bony, ginger cat crouching on top of the graffitied fence, eyeing her suspiciously.
She laughed at her paranoia as she emerged into the large concrete space that separated the residential area from two rows of towering steel tanks behind a tall wire fence. Heat radiated off the concrete beneath her feet. She wiped sweat from her forehead.
So, this was the factory. She turned back to face the way she’d come, looking at the row of mostly empty houses. What could the Ashworths possibly want with these properties? It was hardly an ideal site for a new housing development.
She followed the fence until she reached the Highland Dairy sign at the entrance, where imposing boom gates blocked the driveway. Red signs warned there was no unauthorised access. Just as she was about to turn away, she noticed a man sitting in a small booth.
‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I think I’m lost.’
He looked at her quizzically.
‘Can you point me towards Barton Drive? I left my phone in the car and my sense of direction is terrible!’
‘You want to go that way,’ he said, pointing. ‘You’ll see an alley between two houses, follow the path and you’ll end up on the street.’
‘Great, thanks. What is this place? A factory of some sort?’
‘Yep, dairy. Not for much longer though.’
‘Is it closing?’
‘Decommissioned from December thirty-first. We just got the email this morning,’ he said. ‘Nice of them to let us know. Put me out of a job.’
Meg looked towards the towering tanks and warehouses beyond the boom gate.
What were the Ashworths up to? Did they own the industrial estate?
That would explain why they were buying up undesirable houses on the south side of Barton Drive.
Were they planning to bulldoze them, along with the factory, to make way for a flashy new development?
Could they do that? The land would be zoned as industrial. The rezoning process was arduous: applications to local council, community consultation. Unless … She thought of Tony Skelton, Hartwell Mayor and Malcolm Ashworth’s mate. What had Tony done to fund his twenty-five acres?
When she reached her car, she called Pete. It rang once, twice, three times.
‘Come on, Pete,’ she muttered. Voicemail.
‘Pete, it’s Meg. I’ve just thought of something. Call me back ASAP.’ She hung up.
She was still standing by the car, trying to decide what to do, when her phone rang. She was expecting Pete, but it was Rosedale. Her stomach churned with guilt. She hadn’t seen her mum since Christmas Day.
‘Is that Meg Hunter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Meg, my name’s Michelle. I’m the new manager at Rosedale.
I’m calling about your mum, Jenny.’
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘Look, she’s fine. She’s just been very agitated since your brother visited this morning. She’s trying to tell us something but we’re not sure what it is. She got quite upset—’
‘Sorry, did you say brother? I don’t have a brother.’
There was a pause. ‘Yes, I’m sure that’s—’
Meg felt a surge of irritation. ‘Well, I don’t have a brother.’
Michelle started back-pedalling. ‘Right, sorry, I must have my wires crossed. He was here earlier today, before I started my shift. I thought Brooke said he was Jenny’s son, but—’
‘So someone visited her today and pretended to be her son?’ Meg’s voice trembled. ‘Can you please find out who it was?’
‘Of course, I’ll call Brooke and check. Are you able to come, though? She’s very upset.’
Ninety minutes later, Meg stood at the door of Jenny’s room. Jenny had been sedated.
‘What happened?’ Meg asked Michelle, who stood by her side.
‘She was trying to tell Brooke something.’ Michelle’s voice was a low monotone. ‘When Brooke didn’t understand, Jenny got angry and hit her.’
‘Oh my God. I’m sorry,’ Meg said. ‘Is Brooke okay?’
‘She’s fine. Occupational hazard, I’m afraid. It’s not uncommon in dementia patients. Has she been violent before?’
Meg nodded, recalling the visceral jolt of her mother’s hands hitting her chest on Christmas Day.
‘I haven’t seen you here before,’ Michelle said. ‘Do you not visit often?’
‘I’ve been away.’ Meg prickled at the judgment in the woman’s tone. ‘Have you spoken to Brooke yet? We need to know who came to see her.’
‘I left her a message.’ The nurse checked her phone, shook her head. ‘I’ll try her again.’ She slipped into the corridor.
Meg stepped closer to the bed. Jenny’s face was loose, her pale lips slightly open, her soft breathing gently rhythmic. She seemed like a different person altogether from the one who had knocked Meg to the ground on Christmas Day.
A moment later, Michelle returned, brow furrowed. ‘Ah, I’m not sure what’s going on here. Brooke is absolutely certain that he introduced himself as Jenny’s son.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘She said he was a tall, skinny guy with tattoos. Late thirties.’
Meg’s frustration gave way to confusion. She shook her head. ‘I can’t think of anyone it could be. It’s just me and Mum. We don’t have any other family.’
Michelle shrugged. ‘A cousin perhaps? Someone she knew before you were born? All sorts of people come out of the woodwork when people get sick.’
‘Was Brooke in the room when this man was here? Does she know what they talked about?’
‘She was finishing her round when he appeared at the door. She left them to it. We like to give families privacy.’
‘Did Brooke tell you what Mum was saying to her, before she hit her?’
‘Yes, it was something about money. “I took the money.” Something like that. Brooke said she wrote it down. That can help sometimes, when patients are confused or agitated, it makes them feel like we’re really listening.
’ Michelle went over to the side table by the armchair at the window and picked up a notepad.
‘“I should never have taken their money”,’ she read.
She tore off the page and passed it to Meg.
‘I should never have taken their money …’ Meg repeated the words, trying to make sense of them. Had Jenny stolen money? Was that what all this was about? Was that what she’d been running from, all this time?
‘It probably means nothing, love,’ Michelle said. ‘Dementia patients get very confused.’
Meg nodded, but something told her the nurse was wrong about that. She remembered the cameras at the front entrance. ‘You have security cameras, don’t you? CCTV? Out the front?’
Michelle nodded.
‘I need to see the footage.’