Page 73 of You Lied First

W ell, that silences me. Evidence. What can she possibly have on Guy that doesn’t incriminate me?

Would it stand up to examination? In a court of law?

I have questions I can’t voice so I sit with my thoughts as Margot guides the car through the morning traffic towards Charlton Kings.

Around us at the traffic lights sit parents coming home from the school run and people driving to work, to the shops or to meet for coffee – all of them going about their normal business with no clue of the tension in the Audi next to them.

And, all the while, I’m wondering what proof Margot could have.

Is there really a way out of this? A way that the situation can end without me spending my life in jail?

Margot seems to think so, and I’m both dying to see whatever it is that she has to show me and, equally, terrified.

When we pull up, Guy’s car is not on the driveway.

‘He’s gone to see a supplier in Bristol,’ Margot explains. ‘He’ll be gone for hours. Come on in.’

I follow her into the house, shedding my coat and shoes at the front door like she does, and through to the kitchen. We face each other across the kitchen island.

‘Coffee?’ she asks, turning on the chrome café-style machine.

I shrug. I’d been picturing, if I was lucky, an instant coffee in a paper cup at the police station, not a soy milk latte in a multi-million-pound home in Charlton Kings.

‘Sure. Thank you. Whatever you’re having,’ I say, so Margot goes about preparing our drinks while we make small talk about things I don’t care for.

Finally, she joins me sitting at the island and I cup my hands around the Hermès mug she slides over to me and inhale the welcome aroma of the fresh coffee.

‘So,’ Margot says. She sighs.

‘So, indeed,’ I say, waiting for her to spill the beans. ‘I was expecting to be in a cell by now.’

Margot gives me a kind smile. ‘It would have been so wrong for you to take the blame.’

I look at her, barely able to conceal how baffled I am.

‘What a thing to do,’ she says. ‘I mean, I want this to end as much as you do, but I won’t voluntarily put myself in jail over it.

’ She laughs to herself. ‘Look. I don’t know how much you know, but I haven’t been that happy with Guy in recent years.

’ She chews the inside of her lip, her beautiful, usually inscrutable face showing the strain.

‘I … I did wonder,’ I say, glossing over the fact that Guy himself had told me – not that I believed him at the time. ‘There were a couple of moments when I suspected that things might not be as good as they looked. But, I mean, from the outside, you look as if you rub along all right?’

‘Not these days,’ she says. She pulls her sleeve down and my eyes shoot to her wrist. She realises why I’m looking.

‘No. Not that. Nothing visible.’

I think about him looming over me in my living room. How intimidated I was.

‘Let’s just say there’s a lot you don’t know,’ Margot says.

‘He’s not the easiest person to be with, I imagine.’

‘He’s Guy ,’ she says. ‘Do you know what I mean? He’s too much.

He’s always in my face. Controlling. Bulldozing.

Belittling me. Always telling me what to do.

He always has to have the last say. And he’s always right.

He’s always goddamned totally right. Even when he’s not.

I hate the effect it’s having on Flynn.’

Memories of Guy taking charge, forcing things to be done his way, insisting that his way is the only way chase each other through my mind’s eye, and I nod.

‘I liked his swagger to begin with,’ Margot says.

‘I hadn’t known anyone like him. I found it …

compelling. He was the first person I’d met who knew what he wanted and how to pursue it.

He was a force of nature. It’s a powerful feeling to be pursued by someone like that.

It was sexy.’ She shrugs and stares into her coffee, her eyes misting over with the memories.

‘But now? After twenty plus years of marriage? I’ve realised he’s just a bully.

’ She gives her head a little shake. ‘I’m not a quitter, but I’ve reached a line in the sand.

I want a different life. One where I can make my own decisions without having to go into mental battle.

And I want to show Flynn that this is not how a successful man treats a woman.

My biggest fear is he’ll turn out like Guy. ’

‘Flynn’s lovely! You don’t need to worry about that. He’s so sweet with Liv.’

‘Thank you. I’ve done my best.’ She sighs again. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. It’s not really relevant. The point is, Guy’s finally pushed it too far. He killed someone, and I have proof.’

My face scrunches up. ‘What proof?’

‘Let me show you. Just be a sec. It’s in the safe.’ She slides off her stool. ‘Can’t be too careful,’ she throws over her shoulder as she leaves the room.

Wow. Proof in the safe. What could it be? Could it be possible that I hadn’t actually killed Celine? Had Guy finished her off? I mean, I’d known deep down that she was dead when I left her in the tent – but I don’t have a lot of experience in that department. Maybe I’d been wrong.

I look around me. Sitting in Margot’s kitchen with her and potentially planning Guy’s downfall feels Shakespearian.

All we need is a cauldron, a newt and a strand of Guy’s hair.

Margot interrupts my thoughts. In her hands is neither a smoking gun nor a newt but a strange-looking chunky camo-coloured device, which she holds up for me to see.

‘Ta-da!’ she says. ‘It’s all on here.’

‘What?’ I ask, as shock jolts through me like electricity. Is that a camera ?

‘Trail camera,’ Margot says. ‘Night vision. Christmas present from Guy. For him more than me, as is always the way. Completely forgot we had it. It’d got caught up in the camping gear. I had to get Di to courier it over.’

My mouth falls open as what she’s going to say starts to dawn on me.

‘It was on that night,’ Margot says. It has a motion detector, so it videos each time something moves. And guess what it caught, along with a desert fox? It caught my husband fighting with Celine in the wee hours, shoving her into her tent, then coming out half an hour later. How’s that for proof?’

I suddenly can’t breathe. It had been 4.30 a.m. when I’d left Celine’s tent myself. I press my hand to my chest to hide the thumping that must be so obvious, but Margot takes my reaction as relief.

I swallow. ‘Did it run till morning?’ I manage to say.

‘I set it when we went to bed and the batteries ran out soon after Guy left her tent – but I got the main act, didn’t I? Here, let’s watch. We can see it on my laptop.’

‘And what happens when the batteries run out?’ I say, my voice barely more than a whisper. ‘It just cuts out? Stops working?’

‘Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I got the important bit,’ Margot says. ‘Are you all right?’ She peers at me.

‘Yeah … I’m just …’

‘I know! I couldn’t believe it either. Talk about getting hoisted with your own petard.’

She brings over her laptop and connects the camera while I try to regulate my breathing. Until I see it with my own eyes …

Margot clicks the mouse. ‘Okay, here we go. Come closer.’