Read Music and Lies (George and Finn Book 1) for Free Online Page A

everywhere. Here twice in one day, they were.’
    ‘What happened?’
    ‘Dunno. Some guy fell, I think.’ I knew that wasn’t the truth. Marcus said his brother Cami had found the injured guy – so he must know more than that, mustn’t he?
    ‘Was he badly hurt? Is he okay?’
    Cami shrugged. ‘They took him to hospital.’
    ‘Who was he?’
    ‘Dunno. One of Marcus’s helpers. There are always people like that hanging around.’ He pushed the long dark hair back from his face and looked at me properly for the first time. ‘Where were you, anyway, yesterday evening? Didn’t see you around.’
    ‘I went for a walk, to get reception on my mobile. Then I went to bed.’
    Fortunately he didn’t ask any more. For some reason I didn’t want him to know Finn and I had been eavesdropping. My questions hadn’t actually helped me learn anything more, but I decided to leave them for now.
    He led me up a path to the place where Dex had stopped the previous day. It was a small stone building, rather cute with its low slate roof and green-painted door and windows. ‘Marcus’s using this bothy as kind of his HQ. He should be around.’
    I hesitated. Wondering, a bit too late, whether some of the men from Marcus’s eight o’clock meeting would still be about. They hadn’t sounded like the kind of people I wanted to bump in to.
    The door opened onto one large room furnished with three desks and some plastic chairs. Thankfully, it was empty except for a tall, dark-haired man, presumably Marcus, and a girl who was talking volubly on a landline phone. ‘No, tomorrow isn’t soon enough, we were promised them for today so you’d better bloody get them here … No, I said six hundred, not four, Jesus …’
    Cami gave me a nudge in his brother’s direction. ‘Go on then,’ he said.
    It would have been nice if he’d introduced me, but as he wasn’t going to I walked on my own to the desk where Marcus was sitting. He’d looked up when we entered but said nothing.
    ‘I’m George Wray,’ I said, trying to sound confident, cocky even. ‘Dex said I could work as a volunteer. I wondered if I should, er, sign in with you?’
    ‘You’re keen,’ he said, looking me up and down. I didn’t exactly warm to him, but at least he didn’t make me feel uncomfortable the way Dex did.
    Cami sniggered.
    The girl put down the phone with a bang and lit a cigarette. ‘Bloody fencing suppliers. How many times have they let us down?’
    ‘You’ll get them sorted,’ said Marcus. He turned back to me, seeming slightly less hostile. ‘You’re Beck’s sister, aren’t you? How come we haven’t seen you around before?’
    ‘Er ...’ I didn’t think he’d want to know my parents thought I was too young to come to things like this. Here I was, and I was doing just fine.
    Fortunately he didn’t wait for me to say anything. ‘Apart from manning the main entrance, there’s nothing much doing till the fencing arrives. Why don’t you have a look around, familiarise yourself with the place? I suppose Dex’ll tell you when he needs you.’
    And that seemed to be it. He didn’t want to take down my details or ask questions or get me to sign anything. I don’t know why I’d thought he would. Nothing else about this place was organised.
    I followed Cami back out into the misty morning. ‘You want me to show you around?’ he said, offhand.
    ‘Yeah, okay.’ This was exactly what I wanted.
    He took me down a gravel path that ran from the bothy towards the river. It led to a small field with what looked like a much nicer mobile toilet block but no tents or vans. ‘This is for performers only. Bit smarter than our side, hey? They can’t slum it with your normal portaloo, oh no.’
    ‘There are some fairly big name bands coming, aren’t there?’ I was wracking my brains to remember exactly who. I’d heard people going on and on about the festival but I hadn’t paid attention since I never thought I’d have the chance to come. Oh