Chapter 2
Margot smacked her lips together. ‘Nothing better than a champagne breakfast, is there?’ She tipped up the flute, glugging the contents quicker than someone doing a drinking challenge.
‘Well,’ Cara began, looking at her cup of tea. ‘The avocado on toast was very nice.’
Margot sucked in air through her teeth. ‘Cara, we don’t use the word “nice”. It’s a nothing word, remember? Along the same lines as “OK” or “alright”. No one wants mediocrity.’
Being word-shamed at seven o’clock in the morning wasn’t the best start. Perhaps she should have had the champagne… She took a sip of her tea and watched others in the lounge going about their pre-flight routines. Business people on laptops, devices plugged in to charge, small groups toasting their trips with wine, couples tucked into nooks feeding each other… It was Cara’s turn to suck in air – although silently. She knew she couldn’t eradicate couples from her vicinity, they were everywhere after all, but she wasn’t sure how she was going to cope with an actual wedding. Perhaps she needed more details…
‘So, this wedding,’ Cara began as Margot refilled her bubbly flute. ‘Who is getting married?’ Perhaps this was something she should have asked yesterday, before now, when they were practically minutes away from getting on a plane.
‘One of Sofia’s kids,’ Margot replied. ‘A boy. Probably the eldest. She has a few. Three? No, wait, is it four?’
‘Do you have an invitation?’ Cara asked. ‘So we can at least know their names?’
‘Somewhere,’ Margot said. ‘But I’m not unpacking the Maxi-Go prototype right now for that.’
Cara’s eyes went to the rose-gold cabin case under their table. ‘Margot, I didn’t realise that was a Maxi-Go. There’s no branding on it.’
‘Because it’s the prototype.’
‘But I thought it wasn’t ready yet. I thought it needed more testing.’
‘And that is exactly what I’m doing. Testing it. Except, instead of warehouse conditions, we’re going to see how it does in real life. You won’t believe what I’ve got in there. I did a rough calculation and I think there’s enough clothing to kit out the Hadids for six months.’
The Maxi-Go was planned to be Margot’s golden goose. It was a suitcase of large hold proportions that, once packed full, you could shrink to the size of any airline’s cabin case requirements. No one had attempted anything so ground-breaking in the industry before but Cara knew the mechanics that made the case minimise had not yet been perfected. Except Margot hardly ever listened to the experts she paid a fortune to impart advice…
‘It’s the first time we’ve been away since Krakow, isn’t it?’ Margot continued. ‘God, what was the name of that awful?—’
‘Pawel,’ Cara interrupted.
‘I was going to say what was the name of the vodka. I have no interest in remembering the name of that man. Did you know he’s started using cat fur to insulate his backpack range?’
Cara couldn’t think of one thing to say in reply to that so it was time to change the conversation. ‘So, whereabouts is the wedding?’
Margot slugged down most of her next glass of fizz. ‘Cara, I told you this. We’re going to Corfu.’
‘I know, but I looked it up last night and it’s not that tiny. So is the wedding in the capital or in the north or south of the island?’
‘No clue,’ Margot said. ‘All I know is I’ve booked us into a sumptuous Cook’s Club hotel for tonight and there’s a secret hen party in Corfu Town we’re expected to attend.’
Hmm. Cara was starting to doubt that her aunt knew as little as she was making out. And a hen night with a group of people she didn’t know?!
Margot’s phone started to buzz and she snatched it up from the table and silenced it. ‘Not now.’
‘Who was it?’
‘No idea. But I have champagne in my hand and my gorgeous niece with me… You must promise not to drink boring drinks all day when we are going to have the aperitifs of Greece at our disposal.’
Cara smiled. ‘Maybe when it’s five o’clock.’
On researching Corfu a little last night she had discovered it was an island with the most beautiful vistas. From tumbling mountainsides to turquoise waters bordering tiny coves. The photos had got her excited to visit. But then there was the wedding issue…
‘You know five o’clock is really a state of mind,’ Margot said, closing her eyes as if she might be connecting to Buddha by Bluetooth.
That nugget of wisdom sounded a bit like something Cara’s parents would say. The last time they’d spoken, a few weeks ago now, they were living amongst capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica. Her mum had always said she had been born with wanderlust. While Margot had used the black-and-white movies to style herself on the actresses, the films had just given Elizabeth Jones the urge to travel to places like Casablanca. As soon as Cara had secured her first job, Elizabeth and Daniel had upped their barely really planted roots and lived life like one long vacation. Cara had never really understood how anyone could be that blasé. There was no plan, no goal, no catch-net. They worked doing whatever gave them enough for a roof over their head, food to eat and a flight or rickety bus journey to the next destination. Cara hadn’t seen them in person since that night in Moldova and, thinking about it now, that night was when she’d lost her plans, her goals and her motivation to do anything other than let Margot look after her…
‘Cara,’ Margot said abruptly.
She jolted in her seat, her mind crash-landing back in the present. ‘Yes.’
‘Did you see the news about… the dog?’
The dog. Margot hadn’t really needed to put the entire weight of the sentence on those last two words for the chills to start shooting up Cara’s spine. There was only one dog who got called ‘the dog’ and its name was Yodi. And Yodi, well, what she couldn’t blame on Moldova, she could definitely pin on the head of a rat terrier.
‘I deleted the news apps from my phone, remember?’ Cara replied.
‘Very wise.’
It had been her therapist’s suggestion and, back then, Cara was happy for someone else to make decisions for her. And the same therapist had also said she shouldn’t care about what other people thought of her more than she should care about how she felt about herself. But she was better now…
‘Well, the pathetic mutt is allegedly going to be the new judge on America’s Got Talent.’ Margot shook her head. ‘Have you heard anything so ludicrous in your life? It’s going to have something called a “woof-ometer” to gauge its approval.’
Yodi’s career was going from strength to strength, whereas Cara’s had dive-bombed faster than her face-plant into that Eurovision crowd in Moldova. She had gone from being the UK’s big chance for European glory, with a glittering singing career to follow, to her vocal opportunities disappearing quicker than Margot’s glass of champagne. Suddenly she wished she had more than tea…
‘Good for him,’ Cara replied, expression straight.
‘Good for him? He’s a ridiculous novelty act that killed your career. A human’s career. Someone with actual talent.’
She couldn’t recall Margot being quite so blunt in the weeks and months that had followed the performance. Yes, Cara remembered her aunt being a force to be reckoned with, happy to ‘no comment’ to all the journalists, hiding her away in her Dorset retreat until the public finally started to forget. Until Cara started to recover a little. But Margot had never used phrases like ‘killed your career’.
‘Do you miss it, Cara? Touching people with your voice?’
Now she knew her expression wasn’t straight because she could feel a tremble in her cheek, a pulse in her neck as she thought about what singing had meant to her. It hadn’t been about null points that night. The loss of that one event had been awful, but the death of her vocation had been catastrophic. She was a singer. Music had been inside her for as long as she could remember, and she hadn’t sung a note since Moldova. And then there was Seb…
She took a deep breath and picked up her cup of tea. ‘I think,’ she began. ‘In the end people only wanted to hear that G10 note.’
The highest note audible to the human ear and Cara was one of the only people in the world to have hit it. She knew that had carried her to be picked for the Eurovision stage, but it was really just a trick, no more talent than a dog woofing who might be worthy of a golden buzzer…
‘Can you still reach it?’ Margot asked, leaning on the table.
She came out of her reverie, really looked at her aunt. Why were they talking about this now? One thing Margot was never very good at was hiding an agenda.
‘Reaching that note requires practice and I don’t sing any more.’
‘No,’ Margot said, raising her glass. ‘No, of course not. And, where would I be without you heading up operations at the company? I would be lost without you. Right, shall we have another little drink before we head to the gate?’
Cara sipped at her tea and tried to put Yodi, Moldova and Eurovision out of her mind. All of it was definitely in the past. And the last she had seen of Seb on socials, he was halfway up a mountain with someone called Allie.