Page 62 of You Lied First
Since her chat with Sara, Margot’s experimented with the reframing technique and decided that the only way she’s going to be able to move forward is to pretend that none of it ever happened. She’s also going to try to focus entirely on the future, and not dwell on the past. As she chops the veggies and mixes up a spicy-sweet dressing to drizzle over the salad, she practises rewriting history in her head, summoning up new images in her mind, that she hopes will record over the existing ones.
‘Nothing happened,’ she chants. Chop. ‘We had a lovelytrip.’ Chop. ‘We didn’t see Celine.’ Chop. ‘She was never there.’ Chop. ‘We never went to the desert.’ Chop. ‘There was no quad bike.’ Chop chop. She still feels guilty about that. ‘There was no quad bike,’ she says again, stronger. Chop. ‘There was no camping trip.’ Chop. ‘Shit!’
The knife comes down in the wrong place, slicing the pad of Margot’s fingertip, and the chopping board turns red almost instantly. She lurches for the kitchen roll, reels off four or five sheets and wraps them around her now throbbing finger without looking at the damage. The pain and the blood make her think she’s chopped off the entire finger, but she can’t see anything on the chopping board so maybe she hasn’t.
She stands squeezing the kitchen roll around her finger as the pain really kicks in. Already the blood is visible through the layers of kitchen roll. She folds six more sheets and wraps those over the top, turning her finger into a fat wad of tissue. Then a wave of heat flushes through her and her knees go weak.
Margot sinks onto a bar stool at the island. She takes juddery breaths – in and out; in and out – to regain her composure. To distract herself she continues her mental refrain: Celine was never there. They didn’t go to the desert. They had a lovely holiday. They barely left the villa.
Sitting there, in between squeezing her finger and holding it above her heart to hopefully stem the bleeding, she pours herself a large glass of wine, aware that it will probably put paid to her doing any work that afternoon. But she also enjoys the numbness it brings; the way it slows down her thoughts and makes everything in her head seem less … jagged. Herchanting slows and a feeling of warmth spreads through her. Daytime drinking is so underrated.
‘Is lunch ready? I thought you were going to call me!’ Guy bounds into the kitchen but stops abruptly when he sees the blood-soaked chopping board and the nearly empty wine bottle. ‘Jesus, Mar. What happened?’
Margot lets her heavy head hang as Guy takes her hand and unpeels the layers of the kitchen roll, then examines her finger. Her limbs are floppy with wine, the pain of the cut now fuzzy around the edges.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘We’ll need to strap that up properly.’
He gets out the First Aid box, picks a dressing and a bandage, cleans the cut and starts to dress it. Margot can feel his breath on her hand as he works.
‘Thanks,’ she says. She much prefers this gentle version of Guy than the bullish one she sees most days.
‘Why are you drinking at lunchtime?’ he says without looking up. ‘We have a meeting this afternoon.’
‘Tis only us,’ Margot slurs. It isn’t a customer meeting. Just a progress report from her to him. ‘No biggie.’
Guy finishes dressing her finger and gently places her hand back on the table. ‘There we go. Now what happened? You mustn’t be so careless. We need your fingers, Mar. They’re precious.’ He kisses the tip of the bandage.
‘She was never there,’ Margot murmurs, trying to claw her way back to the place she’d been before the accident.
‘Who was never there?’ Guy frowns then he catches on. ‘Oh, Celine?’
‘Celine who?’ Margot says and smiles at him, a big, beautiful, but rather drunken smile.
Guy echoes her smile then he cocks an ear to the radio that’s been playing softly in the background and his face changes. ‘Did you hear that?’
He leaps over to the radio in two strides and smashes the volume button till the presenter’s voice is clear in the kitchen: ‘Coming up next: hope at last for the family of missing Briton, Celine Cremorne.’
Guy’s eyes catch Margot’s and they stare anxiously at each other.
‘What the hell?’ Guy says. His face has drained of colour.
Margot can’t focus. The kitchen is starting to spin in front of her eyes. The only thing she can think about is that they somehow found the body. But surely not.
In the hallway, the front door slams. Guy puts his finger to his lips, telling Margot that they need to stop discussing this now. Flynn saunters into the kitchen and does a double-take at the bloody scene that greets him.
‘What happened? Mum, are you okay?’
Margot may be woozy, but she sees her son’s eyes flick from the knife to Guy to the blood-soaked kitchen roll and back to her, and she realises with a sobering jolt what he’s thinking.
‘Cut my finger by accident,’ she says, and even though it’s true, she’s not sure she’d believe it herself. ‘Chopping veg.’
‘But you’re okay?’ Flynn asks, his eyes moving anxiously from her to Guy and back.
‘Yes, fine, thank you, darling. All good. Nothing serious. Dad patched me up.’ She beams at him.
‘Okay. Good. I just came to grab my sports kit before basketball. Did you see the news? They’ve detected activity on Celine’s phone!’
There’s a beat before Guy says, ‘Well, that sounds positive, doesn’t it, honey?’ and Margot nods.
