Page 85

Chapter 84

Liv

Margot is as white as the ghost of the past that’s come calling. She doesn’t ask what my camera recorded or what I’ve seen, because she doesn’t need to. She knows. She was there.

Anna is already aware of the clip because I showed it to her the morning I followed her to the industrial estate. I remain convinced she was more surprised by the footage itself than she was of Margot’s culpability. She knew.

It was a few weeks after the accident when a strong scent jogged my memory. I caught a whiff of Margot’s perfume when she visited me in hospital and again a week or so later, when she picked up the twins to take them to nursery.

‘Coco Mademoiselle,’ she told me once when I complimented her on it. ‘Kind of my signature scent. Expensive, but gorgeous.’

A part of my subconscious brain was linking that smell to the muddied ditch I was left to die in. I assumed it was playing tricks on me until I researched it online.

‘Minimally conscious people can react to stimulus such as touch, light or smells,’ a psychology website told me. ‘Later when they awaken, they are sometimes able to recall little else but that scent.’

My next recollection was much more sudden and stronger but equally as vague. Something about a camera. I had the feeling I might have been wearing one when I was hit. I asked Brandon but he said no, I hadn’t, even though he’d been nagging me for ages to buy one. Yet still I wondered. Eventually I checked my Amazon account and there it was in the purchased items folder. A CamMe, delivered a day before my accident. The police hadn’t searched the ditch for it because they hadn’t known I was wearing one.

So where was it? Unless the culprit had taken it with them after they hit me, it was likely somewhere close to where I was found.

On crutches, it took me an age to reach that part of the road leading out of the village. And after a thirty-minute search, I found it, partially submerged, a good ten metres from where I landed. As I told Margot, I couldn’t get it to work so sent it back to the manufacturers. And weeks later, when it was returned, I plugged it into the mains and held my breath as it automatically uploaded all the recorded data to the cloud.

Then I pressed play.

If Margot was to ask this morning what the clip contained, I’d tell her it was footage of her walking from the road to the verge, stopping and standing over my unconscious body with her hands clasped over her mouth. The camera might have landed upside down and at an angle, but a quick editing-software toggle and the re-angled footage was presented in all its crystalline 4HD clarity.

I’d remind her how she searched my wrists for a pulse, my chest for a beating heart, and my mouth for breath. And when she assumed I was as lifeless as I looked, she scurried away like the rat she is.

I don’t deny that I cried when I watched it that first time. Had Brandon not tracked me down with the Find My iPhone app, he’d now be raising our children alone.

I thank God for that camera, because without it, I wouldn’t know who my friends really are.

I could have told Brandon what I discovered and given my evidence to the police. But I know from experience with my former banking boss Harrison that, sometimes, it’s best not to show all your cards at once. Keep some close to your chest in case you need to play them later. In Margot’s case, later is today.

But I’m saving the best for last. And Anna doesn’t have a clue.