Chapter 9
MARGOT
Margot couldn’t believe it. She was here in Dorset.
She’d left her home. She’d left Perry and come down to Bournemouth where she’d made some of her happiest memories with her parents and her boys.
And she’d planned her departure so well that Perry wouldn’t have realised it had happened until it was too late.
She’d really done it.
It felt unreal in so many ways.
She took her shoes off to feel the sand between her toes as she looked out to sea, the vastness of nothing but water, nothing but freedom. The boys had always loved their time here and she’d always felt at peace. It had been the natural destination to head for.
With their mum and their gran, the boys had experienced a freedom on the south coast that came without criticism, that gave them the ability to be young and to truly be themselves.
The older they got the less easy that was to do with Perry around at home.
When Alistair was tiny, Sebastian being so much older would make him laugh with the infectious giggle that had him and Margot doing the same.
When Alistair reached the terrible twos, it was Sebastian who could calm him down and distract him.
And when Alistair had felt the pressure of his exams as a teenager, Sebastian had taken him away from his books almost as if he intuitively knew he was feeling the same pressure he had felt from their dad, and they’d go kick a football around outside instead.
Over the last week, Margot had given nothing away about what was coming.
It was as if flipping the calendar in the kitchen over to the month of September at the start of the week had marked a monumental change that she’d made cautiously but surely.
Each day she’d got up and done her chores and anything else on her to-do list in record time to make sure that Perry suspected nothing by the time he came home from work.
As part of her plan, she’d rented a storage unit less than ten miles away as it meant she could easily drive back and forth to get her most treasured things out of the house.
She moved the items she wanted from home to storage over a few days so that it wouldn’t raise suspicions.
Luckily there was a rear access to the garage so she didn’t have to come out through the front door as Perry would’ve got that on the Ring camera.
She also couldn’t take too long – everything would have to be explained and shorter outings were far easier: we needed more coffee beans; I was out of eggs; I forgot to post a letter.
Unbelievably, as she was taking things she’d felt lucky that Perry hadn’t installed CCTV cameras around the property.
Lucky? Feeling that way had reminded her of how wrong her whole situation was.
She’d taken plenty to the storage unit: the coffee table that once belonged to her mother, and because Perry said it didn’t go with their lounge furniture it had been relegated to the loft; a beautiful ornate Ming vase her mother gave her on her fortieth birthday; the boys’ memories including magic sets and board games and all the sentimental things that were either in the bedrooms they’d once occupied or packed away in the attic.
She’d taken all the photograph albums – if Perry argued about that at a later date she’d happily put what he wanted onto memory sticks and send them to him, but for now she wanted to safeguard them.
She’d had to think carefully about packing her clothes.
She hadn’t wanted Perry to see empty rails in her wardrobe should he look inside, so she’d packed her favourite items and repositioned what was left so the wardrobes didn’t look so empty.
She had a wonderful book collection, but it would be too obvious if she cleared those.
She needed to get away from the house without having a conversation about leaving because she knew Perry would stop her.
Whatever he said would get into her head and before she knew it he would’ve convinced her that this was a bad idea.
He would’ve repeated all those things he’d said time and time again – she couldn’t make it on her own, she had no money or job or skills, she was breaking the family apart.
Sometimes she had those thoughts all by herself, which was why she’d never taken the leap before.
She put a few of her most treasured books into a box.
Margery Williams’ The Velveteen Rabbit was incredibly special, having once belonged to her mother.
Margot had read it to the boys time and time again when they were little.
Into the box went other childhood favourites she’d enjoyed and then shared with her sons including The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
She slotted in ten to twelve other books – as many as she thought she might get away with – and then she positioned the antique humidor Perry’s father had passed down to him from his own father further along and spaced out more of the ornaments so it wouldn’t look like anything was missing.
Sometimes she moved or rearranged a few pieces when she was cleaning so she doubted any of the things she’d done would rouse suspicion.
The day she closed up the storage unit with the possessions that mattered the most to her tucked inside, the adrenalin was flowing freely. Her escape route was in sight. She wasn’t going to be this crushed woman she barely recognised any more.
Back at the house she’d put a couple of thick jumpers into a rucksack at the last minute when she decided she didn’t want to leave them here, given some days could be chilly despite the summer season.
As she’d taken the rucksack down to the basement to put with the rest of her things, she’d paused when she passed the photograph of their family of four on the wall of the stairwell.
The picture was of her and Perry and the boys on a boat, all of them smiling as the boat skipper took them further out to sea.
She stood there staring at the smiles, the happiness of the Yorks.
She closed her eyes. They’d had some good times.
The next picture along was taken of the boys outside the tent they’d pitched in the back garden.
It was when Sebastian was fifteen and preparing to do the Duke of Edinburgh award and he’d been desperate to camp out for the night.
Margot had borrowed a family-sized tent from her parents, and just when she was laying out the poles thinking she would have to do it with Sebastian when she didn’t have much of a clue, Perry had come home and taken over.
He hadn’t seemed himself. He didn’t mention anything about his day; he simply got on with putting up the tent.
He made a campfire and they sat around it telling stories until it was time to go to sleep.
They’d all stayed in the tent that night and it had been like a snapshot in time that was never really repeated, as if she was nineteen all over again and cuddling up to that same Perry she’d met in the pub.
They never did put the tent up again after that day, even though Sebastian and Alistair had begged.
Perry had never taken Sebastian orienteering like he’d promised, and over the years the distance between the boys and their father simply grew.
Perry had made matters even worse when Sebastian got a job as a ski instructor.
He’d called Sebastian’s career choice ridiculous, a lark.
He’d told his son that he was just a boy wanting to mess around rather than getting a real job.
Yesterday, before Perry came home from work, Margot had gone from room to room in the house.
It had a warmth in some places. In the boys’ rooms she remembered tucking them into bed, reading them bedtime stories; she remembered how she’d sit with them the night before a big exam.
She’d take them hot soups in a mug when they were sick; she’d lie with them if they needed her to.
She’d asked herself yet again whether she was doing the right thing.
But deep down despite any hesitation she knew she was. She’d take her memories, the good ones of this house and her boys, and keep them treasured in her heart.
Inside a cupboard in the same room in the basement as Perry’s bike was a filled suitcase and a holdall as well as the rucksack.
It wasn’t a lot to take, but it would do until she needed to come back to the area to access her storage unit.
Her laptop was with the holdall, as well as the bag of Sebastian’s postcards and when the clock struck twelve she would leave this house.
She’d use the back door after turning off the alarm, she would go down the side path and out of the back gate where she’d meet an Uber that would whisk her to a hotel some thirty miles away.
She didn’t want Perry to see her go when he woke up and looked at the Ring camera to see where she was, and in the morning she’d get the early train down to the South Coast.
The evening she planned to leave dragged on almost painfully. Perry had come home from work with an instant complaint as she bumped into him in the hallway.
‘What happened to the bush by the driveway?’ He took off his shoes and set them on the rack in the cupboard behind the sleek handleless door to one side.
‘The gardener trimmed it right back.’ She headed for the kitchen and took the tuna casserole that had been keeping warm out of the oven.
‘We can see the bloody neighbours now.’ He tugged off his tie and sat at the table. ‘Call the gardener. Find out what can be put in its place.’
She didn’t reply. He didn’t necessarily expect her to; he expected action. And he was going to get that. When she left.
Her heart fluttered with nerves despite the fact he had no idea. Part of her was waiting for him to announce he knew and block her path.