Page 45 of You Lied First
We follow the tracks left by Guy, and I see that I’d been right earlier: it’s really not that far to the sand track. As Margot bumps the car onto it, I swivel in my seat, looking back towards the trees where we’d camped.
The trees by which Celine lies buried.
‘Can’t see anything unusual from the road,’ I say.
Margot’s face is grim. ‘Good.’ She nods to the right, ‘Looks like these guys are coming this way, though.’
‘Sod’s law, isn’t it? You go to the desert to get away from people and meet a thousand.’
We watch in silence as a convoy of Jeeps approaches like a swarm of locusts, growing larger in size and noise until they reach us, barrelling past us on the sand on either side of the track.
‘Don’t smile,’ Margot says as we enter the dust cloud kicked up by the convoy. ‘Don’t draw attention to us in any way. White Toyotas are practically invisible. We could be anyone. There’s nothing memorable about us at all.’
I’m still holding Celine’s phone and I look down, pretending to fiddle with it. My breathing starts to slow as we put more distance between us and the camp site. Our speed is limitedby the tyres we deflated to drive on the sand, and we make slower progress than I’d like until we get a chance to refill them properly. Margot’s staring straight ahead.
‘Thank you for agreeing to do this,’ she says. ‘It might not feel like it right now, but it was the right thing to do.’
I stay silent.
‘The accident wasn’t Flynn’s fault,’ Margot continues. ‘He doesn’t deserve to go to jail. He didn’t even ask her to get on the quad with him!’ She swipes a hand across her face.
What I need right now is time alone to process all that’s happened; time to make peace with the decision I made out there in the dunes, not a heart-to-heart. There’s not much left inside me to comfort Margot. I search for the right thing to say.
‘We don’t even know if the accident was the cause of Celine’s death. As Guy said, it could have been anything.’
‘Right?’ Margot whips her head to face me. ‘So why condemn Flynn?’
‘Well – exactly.’
‘I mean, it was deep, soft sand on the dune. You saw it. There was nothing she could have hit her head on. It’s like falling into marshmallow.’
‘It does seem unlikely that a fall like that would cause a life-threatening injury,’ I say carefully. ‘But you never know. You’ve got to admit it looks odd. Fall off a quad bike and die that same night. What are the chances?’
‘How about: drink your body weight in booze and die that same night?’ Margot says. ‘Or: go into the desert with an underlying health condition and die randomly in the night?’
‘I guess …’ I say, but I’m thinking that Celine likely drank her body weight in booze most weekends. She had good tolerance. ‘So, is that what you think happened? She had a health condition?’
Margot blows air through her lips. ‘Who knows? Could have been anything. Maybe even a snake bite. Or a scorpion.’
‘Yeah. I didn’t think of that. Did you wake up in the night at all? Did you hear anything?’
Margot frowns. ‘Like what?’
‘Well, anything. Voices? A commotion? I don’t know. Anything that would give us a clue.’
‘Not that I remember. You?’
I shake my head. ‘No. Nothing. I was flat out. Literally. So weird, isn’t it?’
‘Yep.’
We drive in silence as I think back over the events of the night and the horror of finding Celine dead.
‘You don’t think one of us had something to do with it, do you?’ I ask.
‘God, no. Not at all.’
‘Good. Because the last thing we need to do is start blaming each other. Like Guy said, we need to stick together.’
