Page 74 of You Lied First
They stare at each other and, in that moment, Margot realises she not only has no love left for her husband, but scant loyalty. She’s had enough. The secret’s become too big, and it’s fracturing both her and her family. She doesn’t want her husband shaking her son. And neither does she want to lie to her son. She opens her mouth but finds no words.
‘Margot,’ Guy warns, and she knows that dangerous tone of his voice.
‘Mum?’ Flynn says.
Margot looks at Sara, whose eyes skid to the floor. Then Margot opens her mouth and this time words do come out.
‘We knew she was dead.’
Liv gasps.
‘What?’ Flynn sinks onto the chair as if his knees have failed him. ‘You knewall this timethat she was dead? What the hell?’
Liv rushes over to Flynn, and they clutch each other as if they’re the only two innocents in the room, protecting each other from their murderous parents.
‘Why did you lie about it? Did you kill her?’ Flynn demands.
Guy breathes in deeply through his nose. He puts both hands up.
‘Of course not! Calm down. Everyone, just calm down. No one killed Celine.’
‘Calm down?’ Flynn yells. ‘I’ve just found out my parents left their friend dead in the desert; hid it from the police; and lied to their child! What d’you expect me to do? Go to bed?’
‘Mum?’ Liv looks at Sara. Liv’s hand is over her mouth and her eyes are huge and questioning. Sara’s head drops into her hands as her shoulders slump with the agony of having let down her daughter one more time.
‘You knew?’ Liv says. ‘You really knew, and you let the search go on?’
Sara shrugs, lost for words.
‘We didn’t kill her,’ Margot says. ‘You must understand that. She died in the night.’
‘You didn’t kill her?’ Flynn says, and his voice is cold. ‘You expect us to believe that?’ He looks from Margot to Guy and back. ‘I think Dad and I both know why you might.’
‘How dare you?’ Margot explodes. ‘Flynn Forrest, you take that back! As if I would kill someone!As if!’
Flynn flinches, but he’s not finished. ‘I heard the tent zip godown in the night,’ he says. ‘I heard someone moving about outside.’
‘Well, it damn well wasn’t me!’ Margot snaps, while her mind catches up with the fact that Flynn also heard the zip. It did actually go down. And it was neither him nor her who’d left the tent.
‘And it wasn’t me!’ Liv says. ‘I know I said I didn’t like her, but I didn’t kill her! I wouldn’t know how.’
‘We know that, darling,’ Sara says and tries to smile but her lips wobble too much. ‘Was it the zip of your tent you heard, do you think?’ she asks Flynn. ‘Or could it have been Celine’s?’
‘Ours,’ Flynn says. ‘I wouldn’t have heard hers across the campsite. So who did it?’ He stares at his father.
‘No one,’ Guy says. ‘No one killed her. All right?’
‘You sure about that?’ Flynn asks. He squares up to Guy, almost as tall as his dad now, challenging him, and Margot tenses herself again, ready to intervene.
‘Yes, we’re sure about that,’ Guy says. ‘If you’re willing to listen – and that’s a big if – I’ll tell you what happened. Okay?’
And so Guy explains how, when they woke up, no one could rouse Celine. That she must have died in her sleep. He explains how they sent the kids out on the quad bike while they figured out what to do. How they agonised over making the right decision.
‘We wanted to protect you,’ Guy says. ‘That’s all.’
‘But you didn’t think to call the police?’ Flynn says. ‘Because that’s the most obvious thing to do in that situation.’
‘Flynn! We were in the Middle East!’ Guy says. ‘It’s not like the UK. We didn’t know how the police would react: we were the only people with her when she died. It’s likely they’dhave suspected us – possibly blamed us! We’d been drinking. We don’t speak Arabic. They would have taken us all back to the station for questioning; maybe they’d have made us sign confessions that we didn’t understand. I don’t actually know what the process is when you’re found in the middle of nowhere with a dead body, but it’s not something I felt we should find out. We may have been held pending trial. We’d certainly have been held until a post-mortem was done. It was too risky.’
