One Greek Summer Wedding

Chapter 57

‘Could we have some more chips? And pita bread and… the pink dip stuff?’

Cara hiccupped as Margot ordered more food. The coffee on the Liston had turned into drinks at many of the beautiful bars in this town and then, as the alcohol took over, Margot had started acting really out of character. She had shunned getting a table at an upmarket eatery and instead wanted somewhere the locals ate with no frills and not even a tablecloth. This grill house that comprised of six tables with plastic ketchup and mustard bottles, paper napkins and wipe-clean menus was somewhere Cara had never envisaged going with Margot ever.

‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ Margot said, her mouth full of fries.

‘It is nice,’ Cara agreed. And she was supremely hungry. She had lost count of how many drinks she’d had because Margot had kept ordering things in jugs.

‘Why don’t we eat at places like this at home?’ Margot asked as more pita breads and taramasalata arrived along with skewers of chicken and pork souvlaki.

‘Because you like five-star places,’ Cara reminded her. ‘And you’re usually on a restrictive diet.’

‘Usually, but not always, and it’s time I started doing new things,’ Margot said, waving a chip in the air like it was a conductor’s baton.

‘Really?’

‘Yes, I mean, I’m at that stage in my life now where I’m starting to be overlooked.’

‘What do you mean?’ Cara asked, sipping at her glass of the owner’s homemade white wine.

‘It’s been happening for a while. Guys in bars who would usually make eye contact start to look at the younger woman coming through the door. In the boardroom there’s less flirtatious business transactions, unless I involve you. Once a woman has passed her prime, that’s it. You’re not a potential wife or a potential mother to their children, you’re halfway to the grave.’

‘Margot!’ Cara exclaimed. ‘You are not halfway to the grave!’

‘Not yet,’ Margot agreed, refilling her glass with wine. ‘However, I need a new perspective. Time to stop relying on everything I’ve relied upon before – things that now have more sag than my favourite aloo at a curry house.’

‘I don’t think?—’

‘And you need to do something similar,’ Margot interrupted. ‘Get all over that dancer-cum-piano-player like you want to stroke every key he possesses… and snap some of the strings… and fuck up the tuning.’

‘Margot!’ She looked around the grill house to check no one had heard, but the few patrons sitting had their eyes on a football match on the TV.

‘Honestly, try as I might, you’ve not shown a glimmer of interest in anyone I’ve tried to set you up with and there have been some prime candidates.’

‘Why don’t we go back to talking about new things you want to do,’ Cara suggested.

‘There was the really good-looking guy who manufactured leather. What was his name?’ Margot tapped the table with her fingers as if trying to recall.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘And there was the guy who made those special zips. Looked like he’d be good with his fingers.’

‘Margot, I really don’t?—’

‘I mean, just because Seb did the dirty doesn’t mean that every guy is going to be the same. That’s what I’ve had to tell myself all these years because of Raj. Granted, I made a piss poor effort of it and never actually gave my heart to anyone, but I did still try and?—’

‘What did you say?’

Cara felt like someone had shot an arrow of ice through her heart. The phrase ‘Seb did the dirty’ was cannoning around her brain like a pinball. Amid the Greek football commentator loudly explaining the run of play, and the sizzling grill, Cara needed to be sure she had heard correctly. Did Margot know something more than Cara about the end of her and Seb? Because as far as Cara was concerned it had been a case of her being too much after the Eurovision devastation and Seb giving up, not Seb rolling immediately into king beds new…

‘I,’ Margot began. ‘Don’t know what I said. What did I say?’ She reached for the flagon of wine.

‘Oh no,’ Cara said, taking the wine herself. ‘You’re not doing that. You said that Seb did the dirty. What did you mean by that?’

‘Did I say that?’ Margot asked.

‘Yes, you did.’

And then Margot exhaled and Cara felt that cold dagger inside her deepen even further.

‘I did, didn’t I?’ Margot agreed finally. ‘OK. So, you know there are many things in my life I’m not proud of, well, this is not one of them. Yes, perhaps I shouldn’t have kept it from you ultimately, but there we are. A clean breast of it now, I guess.’

‘Tell me,’ Cara demanded.

Margot picked up a piece of pita bread and pointed with it. ‘I never trusted him, you know.’ She bit a piece off. ‘From the first time we met when your mother made that ludicrous pie with soya, there was something about the way he sat that didn’t sit well with me. You know, there’s shoulders back and good posture or there’s shoulders rolling forward and lazy and then there was him, leaning back in the chair with such nonchalance, like he owned the chair and the table, the Orla Kiely tablecloth and the fucking pie too.’

Cara stayed quiet, knowing if she said anything then Margot might start clamming up and she needed to hear this, no matter how difficult.

‘But I had to sit back and see what happened and not say anything because you were a grown woman and I always trusted your judgement. However…’ Margot dunked pita into the dip. ‘Then he proposed just after Eurovision started happening and I could just feel that something was off. You know, most men take action for a reason and that reason is usually predominantly selfish. That’s when I got someone to follow him.’

‘Margot!’ Cara exclaimed.

‘Well, I couldn’t tell you, could I? You were in love with him and you were also trying to win that fucking glass microphone for the country! And I couldn’t ask for my sister’s help, could I? She was looking forward to draping ferns around at a wedding breakfast and then planning her departure to whatever corner of the globe needed help most at the time. So, yes, I took it upon myself to deal with the little shit.’ She took a slug from her wine glass. ‘And I was right.’ She took a breath. ‘He was messing around with that Allie. I don’t know how long for, but it only took Johnson eight hours to find them all over each other at a speedway meeting.’ Margot tutted. ‘Speedway, Cara, can you imagine anything more disgusting?’

She couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting, but not the motorbikes. To think that Seb had cheated on her, while they were planning their wedding. All the times he had picked her up late from the recording studio blaming work, or when he said he was going to see his parents – it had been lies. Her mind was spinning now, recalling every excuse, each situation he had probably lied to her about.

‘After three solid weeks of surveillance, I decided enough was enough,’ Margot said. ‘I met with him. And I told him, no matter what happened at Eurovision, win, not win, come bottom of the leaderboard, he was going to come clean. He was going to tell you exactly what he had been up to and he was going to let you choose what you did with that knowledge. But, if he couldn’t man up and do that then he was going to end things, in such a way that you were hurt as softly as possible.’

‘He ghosted me,’ Cara reminded her. ‘Ghosting isn’t soft. It’s seeing those calls unanswered, those messages unread or left unseen, it’s having someone you thought would be in your life forever just stop existing for you.’

‘I know,’ Margot said. ‘I saw you going through it and I ached for you, Cara. But that excuse for a man did not deserve you and you did not need to know what he was doing behind your back on top of everything else you were dealing with.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Cara admitted, her hands shaking as she took a sip of wine. ‘Because I’ve spent all this time wondering what I did wrong. And Seb was just doing things with someone else. But maybe, in that case, I did do something wrong. Maybe I was too focussed on my career, perhaps I didn’t pay him enough attention, like why didn’t I know that my fiancé was seeing someone else?’

‘No! You don’t do that!’ Margot insisted loudly, swiping up a souvlaki skewer and pointing with it like it was a deadly weapon. ‘This is not your fault. He cheated, Cara. His cheating, his decision, his blame. No one else’s.’

‘But I’ve spent all this time thinking that what happened in Moldova made him leave. That seeing me sprawled out on the stage, Yodi nibbling at my mic, the disappointment of the nation, the shame, that those things were what made him end things. When really it was something else. Someone else.’ She took a breath. ‘Or more simply than that… me not being good enough.’

‘No, Cara, don’t say that. That’s one thing that’s definitely not true!’

‘I can’t deal with this right now,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I don’t know what to say to you. You let me think this was on me and there was a whole other thing going on that you kept from me! I don’t know if I’m more angry at Seb for cheating, or at you for having him followed and telling him what decisions to make and hiding it all from me for so long!’

‘Cara, come on, sit down, please,’ Margot begged.

‘No.’ She wasn’t going to sit down. She was already heading for the door.