Yvonne rubbed her forehead as if it ached. ‘Thanks, Jordy.’

Aaron echoed the thanks and said his goodnights, giving his mum the kind of hug that he hoped told her he loved her, then took Nelson for ten minutes on the clifftops, breathing a sigh of relief that the awkward moment with Jordy had passed. For a horrible moment there, he’d thought he’d outed Harry.

Chapter Twenty-One

Over the next couple of weeks, Clancy began to wonder whether someone had messed with the clocks. The August days seemed to pass so slowly – especially any time she spent in the vicinity of Hugo, who seemed glued to the Roundhouse sofa, his chief activities there being TV-watching, snoring and farting.

Alice seemed to be quite liking life back in Nelson’s Bar, a situation Clancy would not have anticipated when Alice fled her own wedding day, or at any point in the intervening six years, though she had lived in the village for three years before that, as she reminded Clancy. Now, Alice skipped from the house regularly, walking the cliffs, she said, or driving the motorhome somewhere with Genevieve, with whom Alice seemed to have easily renewed her old friendship. The majority of these outings seemed not to involve Hugo.

When Clancy mentioned these expeditions to Aaron he furrowed his brow and responded, ‘Hell. I hope Lee isn’t missing at the same time,’ which made Clancy wish she hadn’t said anything. It was annoying that the Alice–Lee situation was a spectre between Clancy and Aaron, and she once again wished Alice hadn’t come back to upset things. Should she feel guilty about that?

Her own relationship with her cousin was hard to categorise. At times they chatted with the affection she remembered, but they were unfortunately overshadowed by longer periods where Clancy’s chief emotion was exasperation. Had Alice always been quite so blithe about the needs of others? Though she routinely stigmatised her husband as ‘a pain in the arse’, Alice dealt with his selfish, parasitical ways by pretending there was no problem. She certainly didn’t seem prepared to remonstrate with him when he continued to help himself to Clancy’s food and drink.

In the end, repressing a desire to ask Alice what on earth she’d ever seen in Hugo, Clancy gave up any hope of that boundary being respected and suggested an arrangement whereby Clancy ordered grocery deliveries for them all using Aaron’s broadband and Alice gave Clancy money to cover their share.

Aaron had invited Clancy to use his broadband whenever she wished, so, to give her an excuse to be out of the Roundhouse as much as possible, and to Megan’s delight, Clancy took on the creation of the Nelson’s Bar website as well as to make good Friday’s promise to Kaz and Oli to do some research about funding. August had turned wet, raining off Aaron’s gardening for almost a week, so he helped with information and ideas for the website. Sometimes he worked on a telecaster-style guitar he was making in his workshop and she moved her laptop in there to chat while they both worked.