Page 24 of You Lied First
H aving drunk his first glass of champagne in pretty much one gulp, Guy climbs up onto the trailer and releases the quad bike.
‘Well, we haven’t dragged this thing here to look pretty so we may as well have a go. Who’s first?’ He sits astride the machine and pretends to rev it. ‘Maybe I should take her for a spin to check everything’s okay.’
‘Dad!’ Flynn snaps.
Liv’s jiggling her leg in a way that shows me that she’s also desperate to get on. My heart twists. You want to give your kids everything; you want to do anything you can to make them happy, but you also want to do all you can to protect them; to keep them safe. It’s in a mother’s DNA.
‘Okay, go on then,’ Guy says.
Half a second later Flynn’s seated on it, revving it up and then zooming across the sand like he’s trying to break the land speed record.
Just before the bigger dunes start to swell, he spins the bike around in a full circle, spraying a doughnut of sand in the air then he heads back, not breaking his speed until he’s practically on top of us.
‘Whoah!’ Guy holds up his hands as sand showers us. ‘Mate! Who invited Lewis Hamilton?’
‘Come on!’ Flynn calls to Liv.
With a sheepish look at me, she climbs aboard, winds her arms around Flynn’s waist and they roar off, Liv’s hair flying out behind her like a pennant.
It’s only then that I think: we don’t have helmets.
I watch – my eyes glued to them as they head straight for the dunes.
Flynn starts racing up and down them, the bike tipping this way and that as he crests them over and over. Liv’s screams echo across the sand.
‘So how did Liv get the head injury?’ I imagine Michael asking me. ‘She was wearing a helmet, wasn’t she? When you let her loose on a quad bike driven by a teenager who’d been drinking?’
‘Top up?’ Celine asks, plopping herself down next to me and offering the enormous champagne bottle.
‘I shouldn’t,’ I say. ‘One of us should probably remain sober. Just in case.’
‘Aww, babe. They’ll be fine. And we’ve got this massive great bottle to get through. My parents bought it for me, and I’ve been saving it for a special occasion. Come on …’ She pours more into my glass anyway. ‘Isn’t this just incredible?’
‘It is. I’m really glad we came.’ I touch her arm. ‘I know I sometimes worry too much. But Livvie, she’s … she’s delicate. I’ve been protecting her so long, I’ve forgotten how not to.’
‘Delicate? Really?’ Celine frowns. ‘In what way?’
I sigh. I don’t usually talk to people about Liv’s issues. But I feel like I can talk to Celine. She works with kids – maybe she’ll have come across similar cases.
‘She had a lot of anxiety when she was younger,’ I say.
‘I’ve no idea why. It came from nowhere.
Crippling anxiety. She was on medication for a while.
Not anymore, though. Flynn has been amazing for her.
I could literally kiss the ground he walks on.
I don’t know how he does it, but he knows how to handle her.
She’s been so much better since they’ve been together. ’
Celine nods. ‘I’d never have guessed.’
‘It’s been a work in progress. But, oh my God, the things I did to protect her over the years. To smooth her way in life.’ I laugh. ‘Quite ridiculous when I look back, but they seemed big things at the time.’
‘Like what?’
I take a sip of the cold champagne and feel the burn as it slides down my oesophagus. Should I really share this with Celine? I’ve never told anyone about all the ways in which I’ve smoothed Liv’s path through life. Until it all went wrong, of course, and I lost her to Michael.
‘One example,’ I say. ‘So, when she was in year four, there was this kid who she really, really didn’t like.
Rory, his name was. I’ll never forget. I don’t know why she didn’t like him, but every morning Liv would invent tummy aches, headaches, anything to try and get out of school.
It was awful. I used to really dread school mornings. ’
‘So, what did you do?’
‘I did what any decent mother would do: I had the other kid moved out of the class.’
Celine chuckles. ‘Oh yeah. You wouldn’t be the first.’
‘Okay. But … I might not have been entirely truthful when I spoke to the teacher. I might have exaggerated things a bit.’ I pause. ‘Implied the other kid was bullying her. And blamed the teacher for not noticing.’
‘Ouch,’ Celine says, and the champagne must have started to go to my head because, instead of reading the room, I carry on.
‘When she was younger, I used to do her homework for her myself. If it was difficult, like an essay or a project, I’d pay a tutor to do it for her.
We’d pre-prepare exam questions and, if the questions had ever been leaked – which they sometimes were – we bought them online.
What else? There was the time I might have shagged an admissions teacher in order to get her into the senior school we wanted when we were too far down the waiting list. You get the idea. ’
I stop talking as I realise that Celine is looking sideways at me, and not in a nice way.
‘Whoah,’ she says. ‘You’re a dark horse for a counsellor, Sara. Er, any other confessions you want to get off your chest while we’re here?’
My stomach drops. Does she know what happened? The time I ‘accidentally’ pushed the teacher who always picked on Liv down the stairs, causing her to break her wrist? The real reason why Liv left home? I open my mouth, unsure what to say, but Celine laughs and clinks her glass against mine.
‘Just kidding!’ she says. ‘Cheers to the tiger mum who’d do anything for her cub. Fight for who you love, eh? I’ll drink to that.’
‘To the tiger mum! And to fighting for who you love,’ I say, taking a gulp of champagne.
‘What are you two ladies nattering about?’ Guy comes up behind us. ‘Girl stuff, or can anyone join in?’ He drops into the chair next to Celine, and Margot flops down next to me.
‘Ssh, Sara, no more gossiping about Guy,’ Celine says. ‘It’ll only go to his head,’ and I almost faint with gratitude to her for covering up what we really were talking about. But I suddenly feel uneasy, like I revealed too much.
‘So, what are you doing for New Year?’ Guy asks Celine. ‘Let us live vicariously through you. We’ll be back in cold old Blighty.’
‘Not much on New Year’s Eve as my friends are still away, and I’m not big into New Year’s Eve anyway. Everything’s so overpriced. But I’ve booked into a beach club for New Year’s Day. I’m going to spend it stretched out on a sunlounger, drinking champagne and working on my tan.’
‘I can’t tell you how jealous I am,’ I say.
‘I used to love New Year’s Eve here,’ Guy says. ‘Remember that pot-luck party we had around the pool?’
‘That was so much fun!’ Celine says. ‘We haven’t done anything like that since you guys left. It’s not the same. The new people aren’t as friendly.’
Next to me, Margot gives a little snort, which I take to mean that she either knows or suspects about Guy and Celine, but the others don’t hear.
We continue chatting, our tongues loosening as we drain the magnum, while birds reel overhead and screech their evening song.
Guy spots a desert fox and starts telling us about the wildlife we might get to see – sand fish and owls and little things that scrabble around in the dark, and I try to focus on the raw beauty of this incredible landscape – not on the teens, who’ve now been on the quad bike for what seems like an eternity.