Girl hugged by boy after relative recovered expenses (5,4)
I believe the answer is:
broke even
'recovered expenses' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both to do with ownership as well as being past participle verbs.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'girl hugged by boy after relative' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite see how this works, but
'girl' could be 'eve' and 'eve' is present in the answer.
'boy' could be 'brok' and 'brok' is located in the answer.
The remaining letters 'en' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't see.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for broke even that I've seen is " neither won nor lost".)