Page 31 of You Lied First

O ver the top of Sara’s head, Margot catches Guy’s eye and he gives her an exasperated look. Margot shrugs and mouths, ‘give her time’. Guy taps his watch and mimics pulling his hair out. They step away from Sara and form a huddle, with their backs to her.

‘Can you try talking to her?’ Guy says quietly.

‘She needs a minute.’

‘But you’re okay with … what I said?’

Margot snorts in an approximation of a laugh. ‘“Okay” is an overstatement. But I don’t see what choice we have. I’ll do it for Flynn.’

‘Agreed. But we need her to be on board or we can’t do it. All three of us have to be one hundred per cent behind the plan if we’re going to get away with it. All for one, and one for all.’ He gives an ironic smile.

‘Why do you think she died?’ Margot says. ‘Do you think it really was the accident?’

A look Margot doesn’t like flickers across Guy’s face before he wipes his hand across his mouth. His eyes don’t meet hers.

‘What? You think I did it?’ she whisper-shouts. She throws her head up. ‘I had my reasons not to like the woman, but you think I’m capable of crawling into her tent and killing her?’

‘I never said that!’

‘But you thought it.’

Guy shakes his head. ‘I didn’t. We don’t know what happened.

Maybe she had some kind of brain or spine injury we couldn’t see.

A bleed on the brain. We’ll probably never find out.

But the best thing we can all do going forward is to tell ourselves that it wasn’t caused by the accident or we’ll torture ourselves.

Maybe she had an underlying condition. Or, as I said, it could have been alcohol poisoning – I mean, we all put a lot away last night.

Or maybe it was just her time. If this had happened to her in her villa in Muscat, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

It’s just that we happened to be the only ones with her when it did happen, and now we have to deal with it.

’ His voice softens as he reaches out and touches her arm. ‘It’s not our fault, Mar.’

Margot smiles weakly. That’s probably the most reassuring thing he’s said to her in years.

‘And,’ he adds, ‘if it was the accident, then she got on that bike through her own choice. No one asked her to get on with Flynn. She knew the risks, she knew how old he was, she saw him drinking and she chose to do it. Remember that.’

Two long minutes pass. Margot stares at the sand while she draws arcs in it with her toes, then Guy says, ‘Please go and talk to her. We’re on a ticking clock here.’

‘Fine.’ She drags a deckchair next to Sara, sits down and leans in.

‘Hey. Any thoughts?’

Sara looks up and her eyes are teary and bloodshot. ‘So many thoughts. I’m scared that if we do this, we’ll get caught and end up in an even worse position.’

‘I hear you. But look at it this way. How would we get caught if we bury her properly? No one knows she was here with us. No one knows where we are. As far as the world’s concerned, we were literally never here.’

‘I’m just trying to run through what could go wrong.’

‘Look, if we do this, we’ll do everything we can to minimise the risks of being caught.

But at the moment we only have two ways this can go.

’ Margot counts off the points on her fingers.

‘One: we tell the kids and call the police. We all go in for questioning. No two ways about it. The issue is only for how long: anything from days to weeks to months of detention – or maybe a life sentence. Yes, exactly,’ she nods as Sara gasps.

‘They might even have the death penalty here. I’m not sure.

’ Sara’s breath hitches and Margot continues.

‘Two: we do what Guy suggests, hide it from the kids, so they don’t have it hanging over them – also, the fewer people who know about this, the better – we bury her and disappear. ’

‘I see the logic. I do. But we need to think through every step. How can we possibly get away with it?’ Sara says. ‘People will notice she’s missing. There’ll be a search … it’ll probably be in the papers. The kids will find out. Someone will connect us being here to her.’

‘We just say we were in Muscat, but we didn’t see her. No one else was in the compound. No one saw us. And we absolutely don’t mention that we went camping. Then the search will focus on Muscat.’

Sara gives a tiny nod, so Margot continues.

‘Look, it boils down to this: what are the chances she’ll be found out here in the middle of nowhere? Ask yourself that. I’m not sure we could find this spot again, even if we tried.’

Sara sighs. ‘Okay. But what about her family? They won’t have any closure. She’ll just go missing and never be found …’

Margot shrugs one shoulder. ‘I know. I feel the same, but …’

‘Collateral damage,’ Guy says. He sits down on the sand opposite Sara, his knees bent up. ‘Look, if it’s between saving us and our kids from a potential life in jail, or her parents from a life of worry – I’m sorry it’s not nice – I know which I choose.’

‘You know they’ll start making those appeals on telly,’ Sara says. ‘How will we feel then? When we see them weeping and begging for leads and we know where she is and we can’t say anything? What are we going to tell the kids then?’

‘We’ll act. We’re shocked that she went missing. But look: neither of the kids liked her that much anyway. I think you’re overestimating how much they’ll care.’

‘I worry how Liv will take it,’ Sara says. ‘I really hope it doesn’t trigger her anxiety again.’

‘We’ll handle it carefully, don’t worry,’ Guy says.

‘And we’ll also have to tell them that we can’t admit we were with Celine.

I’ll explain how it works out here. Say we’d be wanted for questioning if we admitted we’d been hanging out with her and, as we don’t know what happened to her, we’re better off staying out of it. ’

Sara doesn’t argue, so Guy continues. ‘Look, when we get back, they’re going straight into their mocks. They’re going to have other things on their minds. This will all fade away.’

Margot’s not sure he’s right about that but she stays quiet.

‘At the end of the day,’ Guy says, ‘I’ll do what I have to do for my family. As will any parent.’

Margot closes her eyes. She doesn’t like it, but shielding the kids from what’s happened is a really good call.

All Margot wants to do right now is get them safely out of the way, so they can’t find out, and there’s no possibility that Flynn can be blamed.

She’ll deal with the emotional fall-out and the explanations later, and she wishes Sara would stop overthinking it.

It’s clear to Margot what needs to be done, however unsavoury, and they really need to get on with it.

Guy peers back towards the big dune then looks at his watch. ‘They’ve already been gone ten minutes.’

‘And what if we do as you say and still get caught? Then what?’ Sara says. ‘It’s going to look a million times worse if they find her and it comes back to us. It’ll look like we murdered her.’

‘How can we possibly get caught?’ Guy says. ‘When she’s reported missing, they’ll be checking Muscat, maybe the surrounding areas – the police are not going to drive randomly all this way, to this exact spot and start digging. They’re just not.’

‘Okay, what if we cleared all evidence of our camp and just left her in the tent?’ Margot says. ‘Made it look like she was camping alone? So at least someone might find her and her family would have closure? Maybe some other campers?’

Guy shakes his head. ‘We can’t leave her out in the open. She’d be savaged by wild animals.’

Margot thinks about birds of prey pecking and ripping at Celine’s body.

‘Look,’ Guy says. ‘Whatever happens, she’s going to end up buried. She’s dead! We’ve got to do what’s right for us. So, what do you say? Do we have a plan?’

Sara stands up. ‘Give me a minute. I need to go through this in my head one more time. Make sure we’re not missing something crucial.’