Chapter 20
‘How long are you going to keep this silence up? Because it’s very droll, Cara. Rather like the behaviour of a child. Your mother used to do something similar when she was young. She got this beady-eyed stare, would look at me like she was looking right through me and just brush the hair of one of her awful second-hand dolls.’ Margot sniffed. ‘They call it pre-loved these days, don’t they? Making old, grubby things sound like people actually cared for them. I don’t understand it at all.’
In her head, as she was ignoring her aunt in the air-conditioned comfort of their room while she got dry from her shower, Cara was actually running through all the things she was going to do alone tonight. She was going to walk out of the hotel and see what nearby Gouvia had to offer. There was a marina apparently and a beach and even a little church in the bay. She would spend some time regrouping and reflecting on her short but packed-to-the-brim-like-a-Maxi-Go time here. She didn’t even want to be in this room with Margot but apparently the room she had slept in last night was no longer hers to have. Cara wouldn’t put it past her aunt to have paid up for the one night just so she had to come back to the shared one.
‘You have to start somewhere, Cara, you know that, don’t you? Whether it’s at this wedding or it’s not. This can’t be you forever. You’re a singer. You sing. That’s just how it is. I know I’ve kept you away from that for a while now and I thought I was doing the right thing, giving you time to heal, but I didn’t honestly think it was going to take this long. So?—’
‘Stop it!’ Cara hissed. ‘Stop talking now.’ She rubbed at her hair with the towel.
‘Good,’ Margot said, smiling. ‘Good, getting that anger out is an excellent starting point. I can work with that.’
‘This is not a negotiation!’ Cara exclaimed. ‘I am not some deal you’re desperately trying to land. I’m your niece. Who you have lied to. About this wedding. About the whole reason we’re here.’
‘Not exactly,’ Margot said. ‘There are many reasons why we’ve ended up here, it’s not all to do with a little wedding gig Sofia’s trying to get on the pages of Hello!Greece.’
‘Well, what other reason is there? Other than to set me up for more humiliation, that is.’
‘That’s negative thinking, Cara. One of your therapists was bound to have mentioned that. I have, instead, presented you with an opportunity. A fantastic, yet small-scale opportunity in a country where probably the least amount of people know about your past. And on one of its islands too, not centre stage at the Parthenon.’
Negative thinking. People used that phrase too often. It made you the problem, not the anxiety. As if you were in charge of what was happening to you. It wasn’t as simple as that.
‘I wouldn’t care if it was the tiniest stage at the back of a pub,’ she shot back, ‘I can’t sing in front of an audience. I can’t even sing the whole of an Adele song in front of one man and a donkey apparently!’
When silence cloaked the room Cara knew she had made a mistake and there was no point in trying to backtrack. Margot was off the chair she’d been sitting in and prowling closer.
‘You sang!’ Margot announced. ‘You said “the whole of an Adele song” which means you sang something.’
Margot’s voice was full of praise as if Cara was a toddler who had eaten two carrots so could now leave the rest of her dinner. She shook her head.
‘Did you sing in front of Sofia’s son? The hot one who makes his money taking his clothes off? The one who was getting rather energetic with you at the hen night? I saw him leave the table after you. Well, what did he think?’
‘Currently he thinks I’m hearing things in my head.’
‘I was asking about your voice.’
‘It doesn’t matter what he thinks about my voice, this wedding singer thing is not going to happen! And not only that, why the hell did you not say anything about this before we came here?’
‘Why do you think? Because if I had said something you wouldn’t have got on the plane!’
‘You got that right!’
‘For God’s sake, Cara, stop towelling your hair like that, you’re going to ruin it!’
Margot snatched the towel from her hands and threw it onto the bed.
‘It’s my hair and I will ruin it if I want to! See! My small seed, my decision!’
‘What are you talking about? Honestly, it’s sounding more mumbo jumbo by the minute.’
There was no easy way to make this stop and have an outcome that was healthy for both of them. Cara had two choices: she either gave Margot more of the silent treatment now she had made it clear she wasn’t going to be singing at the wedding, or she steered the conversation. She picked up her hair brush and began to comb.
‘Is there something going on with the business that you haven’t told me about?’
‘What?’ Margot asked. ‘Why would you ask that? And what has it got to do with you singing at Sofia’s wedding?’
She wanted to say it wasn’t Sofia’s wedding, it was Cosmos and Wren’s wedding, but it was a pointless battle and she needed to adjust the focus.
‘Well, I know the last time you were really worried about the business, when Go-Bag were making their foldable rucksacks, you put your head in the sand about it and found something else to focus on.’
‘I came up with the Maxi-Go concept. It was hardly putting my head in the sand! I am not a head going into the sand kind of person, Cara. You should know that.’
‘No, OK, but you are the kind of person who portrays outward calm when you’re internally raging like a Spanish bull.’
There was just a flicker of change in her expression, which told Cara there was something else going on.
‘I don’t internally rage either, Cara,’ Margot said in a soft, managed tone. ‘If I need to vent some frustrations – and note I said “frustrations” rather than “rage” – then I will organise a game of squash followed by a deliciously no-strings-attached vigorous night with someone I will never see again.’
Cara smiled. ‘And wasn’t that exactly what you did last night?’
‘I told you I do not wish to discuss last night. In fact, I’m quite bored of this whole conversation now, so I am going to go to the bar and should you wish to join me that is where I will be.’
Before Cara could say anything more, Margot had whisked herself out of their room and closed the door behind her.
Cara couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Now it seemed that the tables had been turned and she was somehow the one in the wrong. But what she did know, from Margot’s behaviour, was that this was not just about the wedding, there was definitely something else going on.