Page 89 of You Lied First
‘What? You don’t believe me?’
Margot breathes in deeply and lets the air out. She’s gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles white. There will be no going back once she says what she’s about to say.
‘Sara. It’s very noble of you to want to get us all off the hook with that cock and bull story, but I know who really killed her. And I don’t want you going to jail to protect them.’
Sara whips her head around to stare at Margot. ‘What? What do you mean you know who killed her?’
Margot closes her eyes and mouths the word. ‘Guy.’
‘Guy?’
‘If you agree not to go to the police right now, I can explain.’
‘You can explain?’ Sara’s suddenly laughing, her hand over her mouth to try to stifle it, but it’s a giggle that gathers pace until it sounds quite out of control.
‘Sorry,’ she says, when she’s regained herself. ‘I know there are lots of circumstantial things that could be seen to make him look guilty, but it’s a big jump to hang the whole thing on him.’
‘Sara. You need to stop this now. Come with me and I’ll show you the evidence.’
‘Evidence?’ Sara echoes like a confused child, her face suddenly serious.
‘Yes: evidence,’ Margot says. ‘And once you’ve seen that, we can decide what we’re going to do with it.’ She smiles as she clicks her seat belt into place. It seems the power is finally in her hands.
73
SARA
Well, 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 coffeein 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.
