Page 19 of You Lied First
Margot gets up early the next day, packs her day bag quietly, makes a quick coffee and creeps out of the house before anyone else wakes up. She knows there are women who like to go to the spa with girlfriends and catch up in the sauna and the jacuzzi or sip ginger tea while wrapped in white robes, and she realises this might have been a good chance to bond a little with Sara, but she’s been looking forward to this alone time for so long she can’t sacrifice it. How on earth would she manage to talk to Sara all day?
She closes the front door quietly and takes the Land Cruiser – it’s a given that Guy will drink at the golf club and therefore won’t drive. She cranks up the music and opens the windows and, less than half an hour later, she’s passing through the hotel’s elegant white gateway. Already the tension and stress sitting in her neck from the tonne of responsibilities she always seems to shoulder are starting to dissipate as she anticipates stretching out in blissful solitude on a lounger next to one of the three beautiful pools. The childfree one that faces the sea, she thinks.
As the hotel’s ever courteous staff welcome Margot and usher her through the lobby, her insides are twisted oncemore by the pang of regret that Guy didn’t book them into a hotel. Yes, they have the garden at the villa, but what they don’t have is all this luxury and service – the things that makeherlife easier for the week.Andthey wouldn’t have bumped into bloody Celine. It needn’t even be somewhere as fancy as The Chedi. Muscat has plenty of gorgeous beachfront hotels. It would have meant that she, too, could have a proper holiday rather than simply hosting guests in a different location, which is what self-catering in an Airbnb feels like to Margot.
‘Enjoy,’ the pool butler says, after unfurling a thick towel onto the lounger he’s arranged for her, partly in the sun, partly in the shade, just as she requested. Margot slips out of her kaftan and lets her body sink onto the lounger. This is what a holiday should be like, she thinks. This is what she craves. It hasn’t slipped her notice how she’s most content when Guy isn’t around. Everyone else finds him charming but his bonhomie – the exact thing that attracted her to him in the first place – has begun to grate on her. Perhaps it’s because she can see through it. Perhaps it’s because he turns it on for everyone, like a lamp. He’s not discriminating and, as someone who is very discriminating, Margot finds his chumminess phoney.
She lets her head fall back on the lounger, fixing her hair off her face with her sunglasses, and, as the sun warms her eyelids, she lets her mind wander properly for the first time since they arrived. When Guy had first brought up the idea of coming back to Oman she’d had mixed feelings. Of course she wanted to come, her love for Oman is enmeshed in her soul and she was keen to soak up that Gulf winter sun. But equally she didn’t want to be reminded of the way in which they’d had to pack up their lives, of the indignity of quittingthe country where they had, very publicly, said they wanted to stay for the long term, by pretending it was their choice to leave to take care of her dad. Humiliated beyond endurance, she’d turned her back on friends, who’d been almost as close as family, as she and Guy had wound up their expat lives. Always presenting a united front: the Forrests’ family motto, voiced most loudly by Guy, was ‘one for all and all for one’.
Once Guy had the idea that they should come to Oman over the Christmas school holidays, he’d ridden roughshod over her objections until, in the end, Margot had allowed herself to look forward to the holiday.
What she wasn’t expecting was to go back to the precise scene of their old lives – not just that, but to find Celine still there. Margot is not naive enough to imagine that was a surprise for Guy. So, is this his cack-handed way of trying to tell her that nothing happened between them – back when she chose to look the other way in order to keep the family together? That the red lingerie she found trapped down the side of the spare-room bed was not Celine’s? That the figure she’d seen Celine kissing in her shadowy bedroom window was not Guy? Because the alternative – that he was and still is carrying on with Celine – is too monstrous to consider. Besides, she’s seen the way he’s now looking at Sara of all people. The images of Guy passing her his fork, of admiring her work and complimenting her student-standard cooking slide into Margot’s memory like unwanted DMs. Sighing she resolves not to let these thoughts ruin her perfect day.
When the sun’s temperature on her skin starts to border on uncomfortable, she places her wide-brimmed hat on her head, slips into the pool and, with languid breaststrokes, swims overto the infinity edge. There, facing the sea, she leans on her elbows, stares out at the endless horizon and lets her mind drift.
She’s pleased with how well Margot’s Mansions is doing although, if she’s honest, she could do without the huge pressure she’s now under to produce models to deadlines. When Flynn was tiny, she’d started making the doll’s houses as a creative outlet that she could fit around childcare. She liked doing things with her hands and was captivated by making things in miniature. She made one for a friend and that led to another until it started to give her not just a small income but a legitimate reason to spend time apart from Guy in the evenings. Perhaps that’s why she put in so much time, she thinks ruefully, and became so good at it.
But Guy couldn’t let her have it. He couldn’t bear that she had something without him. When he was sacked, he took over her hobby and now she’s stuck at home with him 24/7. She can’t even go to the bathroom without him knowing. It’s suffocating, and her hobby is no longer her respite. She can feel the pressure building, and she has no idea how it’ll end.
15
SARA
With the pool and villa to myself for most of the day, I’m a pig in clover. For a few hours, I don’t need to be the perfect houseguest; I don’t need to worry about stepping on toes, offending egos, making faux pasand worrying about what Margot thinks of me. I find a local English-language radio station and boogie around the kitchen as I make breakfast, pretending to myself that the villa with the glittering pool is mine – that the life here in the gorgeous sunshine is all mine, mine, mine. And maybe it could be! I’ve always hated the dank greyness of the British winter, the short days, and the endless rain that leaves everything wet for weeks at a time. Maybe Icouldmake this work. I do some visualising, trying to send a message out to the universe that I’d be open to life in Oman. Maybe Liv would come with me once she finishes school. They must have universities here. I smile to myself as I think about Michael taking that and shoving it in his six-holidays-a-year pipe.
I see that Margot’s bought some flour and we have milk, sugar and eggs, so I whisk up some batter and make a stack of pancakes which are just about ready as Liv and Flynn come down. I haven’t been this domesticated in years, and the pancake recipe is a bit hit-and-miss but who’s watching?
‘Ta-da! Breakfast’s ready – if you fancy some,’ I say, and the look on Liv’s face is one I know I’ll cherish. Selfishly, I hope news of the wonderful pancakes I made for the teens filters back to Margot.
‘Oh, wow, thanks,’ Liv says. ‘Flynn loves pancakes!’
‘Great! What do you have on them?’ I ask. ‘We don’t have syrup but there’s Greek yoghurt, bananas and blueberries. Oh, and dates?’
‘Amazing,’ Flynn says. ‘A bit of everything, maybe?’ As they both sit down and start helping themselves – and I whip out all the fruit and start slicing bananas and pass over the Greek yoghurt – I experience for the first time in forever what a joy it is to feed people who want to eat. I can be a good mum. I know I can. I just need to be given the chance. Maybe it’s true what they say: the way to someone’s heart is through their stomach. Well, with Liv, maybe it’s through her boyfriend’s stomach, but at least I’ve had another chance to impress her.
When their taxi comes, I wish the kids a fun time at Marah Land and start clearing up the kitchen. I’m tempted to leave it till later since I know Margot will be out all day, but the thought of the look she’d give me if she came back to a messy kitchen is enough to motivate me. Before long, I’m stretched out on my towel on a lounger by the pool, thinking how wonderful it would be to have this as an everyday thing. Imagine getting up in the morning and being able to have a swim before breakfast! Imagine the weekends lying by the pool!
I lose myself in my book, make a sandwich for lunch, and continue my day by the pool. Who needs the expense of The Chedi when you have this in your backyard? People who have money never seem to ask themselves if there’s a perfectly good,free option for what they want to do. What will Margot be doing over there? Exactly what I’m doing here, but for loads of money.
That thought gets me wondering what she thought when I didn’t offer to go with her. Did she think I was being a cheapskate? Or that I was giving her space? I’ve moved from being slightly scared of her to feeling like I might want, maybe, to be friends with her. If things continue with Flynn and Liv, Margot and I will be seeing a lot of each other in the coming years. But Celine’s words about me being on Margot’s radar have rattled me – now I feel I need to prove to Margot that there’s absolutely nothing between Guy and me. Speaking of which, perhaps I should have just gone with her to The Chedi, after all? Was she waiting for me to offer? Or being polite and not inviting me in case I couldn’t afford it? For a counsellor, I sometimes surprise myself with how socially inept I can be.
‘Yoo-hoo! Sara!’
In one movement, I scramble to sit up, get my sunglasses over my eyes and arrange my legs in the most flattering pose I can think of, like I’m modelling for a magazine cover. As I do so, I notice that the sun is significantly lower in the sky. I must have fallen asleep. My skin feels hot. I bet I’m red as a beetroot.
‘Celine! Hi! Oh, and hello, Guy!’
They both stand over me, blocking out the sun.
‘Had a good day?’ I ask. ‘How was golf?’
They look at each other.
‘Great,’ says Guy. ‘Celine was at a loose end, so I persuaded her to join me.’
‘Oh, nice,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know you played.’
She laughs. ‘I hacked my way around to keep him company. He hates playing alone. Anyway, “Celine says” we’ve earned a glass of wine, so how about you fetch us all one, G?’
