Blurred Lines: The most timely and gripping psychological thriller of 2020

by Hannah Begbie

  ‘Come on then,’ says nose ring. ‘Who’s first up?’ When nobody volunteers, she shrugs. ‘Let the bottle decide!’ And with that she spins it.

  People track the spinning neck like they are standing round the wheel of a roulette table. When the bottle comes to a standstill its neck points clearly to Mary. Everyone exclaims as she shields her face theatrically with closed and flattened palms.

  ‘Do it!’ commands nose ring. ‘Give it a proper shove.’

  Mary spins her bottle. It slows and points to Brendan.

  Mary smiles at Brendan.

  ‘Kiss, kiss,’ the teenagers in the circle chant.

  ‘Argh, this is so cringe!’ shouts Bento.

  ‘You’ll get yours, mate,’ laughs Nick.

  Mary’s eyes are glazed with alcohol and nerves and the excitement of everyone’s attention. She crawls on her hands over to Brendan and leans into him. They kiss each other, tentatively at first and then, encouraged by the chants and cries, lunge at each other for a fuller performance.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ whispers Scott to Becky, with a nervous laugh.

  Brendan and Mary confer then stand up, join hands and step out through the circle toward the door, like a married couple heading up the aisle. Mary turns briefly to address Becky: Sorry, she mouths, and then she is gone and Becky knows that she will not see her for the rest of the night.

  ‘Sorry, what exactly am I signing up for?’ laughs a red-headed girl.

  ‘Spin it!’ shouts someone. ‘I want to get laid too!’ More laughter.

  Becky looks down at the rubber curve of her trainers and feels more at sea than ever. She takes a huge gulp of her drink because it is something to do other than look anxious. She wants to go now.

  With no regard for order, a boy called Nick leans forward and spins the bottle, urging it on, ‘Spin, bottle of fate! Show me my sexual destiny!’

  The bottle points to nose-ring girl. She shrugs good-naturedly.

  Nick lies down next to her, posing and pouting. ‘Come on then. Lay it on me, baby!’

  Nose-ring girl leans down and gives him a quick kiss. Three seconds at most, no tongues. Raucous cheering and laughter.

  ‘Marry me?’ he says to her.

  ‘Next!’ she shouts.

  The girl sitting next to Nick reaches for it.

  One by one they spin and kiss, until it comes to Scott. ‘Ah, fuck,’ says Scott, dismayed, as the bottle faces him.

  ‘Go on, mate,’ calls out a boy in a baseball cap opposite him. ‘Good luck. Hope you don’t get a minger.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ says the red-head. ‘We’re all beautiful!’

  ‘Only on the inside,’ retorts Nick.

  When Scott spins the bottle it is with the strength of someone who wants it to ricochet across the carpet, to smash against a skirting board and disappear from the game entirely. But as it makes its final slow revolution, the group cheers and whoops as it comes to land on Becky.

  Scott and Becky look at each other and then Becky looks at the boy in the baseball cap to see if she is deemed a minger.

  Scott leans in and kisses her. She is surprised at how soft it is. It’s a kiss with good manners. ‘Shall we get out while we can?’ he whispers to her.

  ‘OK,’ she replies.

  They get to their feet, to roars of delight. ‘Wardrobe, wardrobe!’

  ‘For God’s sake use a condom!’ shouts Nick, emulating someone’s anxious mother.

  ‘How come I only got a kiss? We need to look at the rules,’ laughs someone else.

  ‘Spin on!’ declares nose ring as Scott holds Becky’s hand firmly and leads her away to the walk-in wardrobe, while the whole room raises another cheer. His expression now is not soft, or kind – rather, he looks determined.

  Becky realizes that she has agreed to leave one place, but in doing so seems to have agreed to come to this place: a space about the size of a small garage, full of orderly rails of shirts and skirts, lines of shoes and boots. What are the rules of a place like this? There is no bed to lie down on. She hasn’t agreed to that. A sliding door has bumped closed on its rails behind them. They can still hear the game being played, people hammering their hands on walls and cupboard doors and knees, like a drumroll as the bottle spins. She can’t take off any clothes in here, can she? Does she even want to? She looks at Scott, trying to decide what she wants. Is this at least an answer to the question of how to pass the night, with Adam gone and Mary somewhere with Brendan, perhaps taking her clothes off right now? Is this what she wants?

  Scott steps toward her and kisses her, pushing her slightly into a soft wall of coat sleeves. His hand circles one of her wrists.

  She closes her eyes and, actually, like the first time he did it, it’s sort of OK. He’s not really shaving yet and his lips are soft. Like kissing a girl almost, she thinks, and then she asks herself why she’s thinking such a weird thing. It’s not like this is her first kiss. Not my first rodeo! She wishes her mind would stop wandering. Why can’t she just concentrate on this or, better, not concentrate on anything?

  He slides his other hand onto the waistband of her jeans. She remembers suddenly that she is flying low. He eases away the button above the open zip and she no longer knows what this is, in the middle of all the coats and a mother’s best high heels on racks. She feels his fingers reach for the hem of her pants. She breaks off and pulls her wrist out of his light grasp.

  ‘No?’ he says.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she says, because the word ‘no’ on its own is just too stark, too short, too accusatory.

  He steps back and she breathes easily again. She does her zip and button back up. He looks ashamed of himself.

  ‘Was that not …?’

  ‘No, it’s … I’m on my period.’ An easy enough lie to stop him feeling bad.

  ‘Oh, fuck. Sorry. I should have …’

  ‘No, I should have said.’

  ‘It’s a really weird game, this whole thing. I just … Can you forget about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  They stand there. Where do they go from here? Do they go back to the room? They’ll clap. They’ll ask questions. Did she blow him like a champion? Did they do it? They won’t be able to look sad about anything.

  ‘Do you want to kiss me again?’ she says, in the end, because she can’t think of another way for things to go.

  ‘Do you want to?’

  ‘I don’t mind.’ Does he now not want to?

  ‘This whole thing’s …’

  ‘Yeah, it’s weird. I mean, it’s a random way to … you know. Get off with someone.’

  ‘I think,’ says Scott, ‘we probably stopped playing it for pretty good reasons. Not that … I mean, you’re really nice.’

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘It’s just that everyone else at this party …’

  ‘Yeah, I know!’

  ‘I’m not sure I can face going out there to kiss the rest of them.’

  Becky laughs and Scott laughs too, like a new way out of this closet space has just opened up and they’ve both elected to take it.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asks Becky. ‘Do we just hide in here until they get bored?’

  Scott reaches into his jeans pocket and takes out a small brown pill bottle. Unscrews the cap and shakes a pill into his palm. ‘I’m going to go down the rabbit hole to see where it leads me,’ he says.

  ‘What is it?’ she says.

  ‘Just a pill.’

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ Becky smiles. ‘Mary’s meant to be doing one with me later.’

  ‘I’ve got four. One’s for Brendan. He wanted two more. I’m guessing that was for the two of you. You can have yours, if you want?’

  ‘How much are they?’

  ‘Tenner.’

  ‘What are they like?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll let you know in about an hour! I might go and have a dance. Come up on the dancefloor.’ He smiles at her. ‘Thanks for not being weird about this whole … thing …’ And sud
denly she doesn’t want him to go. Can she follow him downstairs?

  ‘Can I have mine?’ She rummages in her bag for her purse and hands him a ten-pound note.

  ‘Great. We’ll come up together. Drug buddies.’

  He hands her a pill and she takes it quickly, before she can change her mind.

  If Mary can break into new areas, then maybe so can she.

  She kisses him on the cheek because she wants to let him know that she is going to be a good time when she’s high, and that she’s happy with herself and if anything goes wrong he should be a friend to her.

  There is a roar outside. Kiss. Kiss.

  ‘When we go out there,’ he says to her, ‘we should say we found another Spin the Bottle group and had an orgy with them.’

  She laughs. ‘Or we could just stay here for a bit? It’s kind of nice. Kind of Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, you know? We could just push at this bit of wall and see where it goes.’

  They both try and push through the wall and when nothing happens they collapse onto the soft carpet in giggles. Soon her head is swimming in ice cream whirls, making shapes like the silken seashell coverlet she saw in the parents’ bedroom. They giggle and they paw at each other’s faces like kittens and talk a language only the other understands.

  Her eyelids flicker, like she might be sick but she doesn’t really mind. Her nerves are all tingly.

  ‘Smacky pills,’ mumbles Scott.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m just … Jesus. Ketamine or something.’

  She rubs her hands together to send ripples through her.

  Out in the bedroom, a girl’s voice. ‘All right you lot, out you go. No one should be in here. It’s my mum and dad’s room.’

  Becky and Scott giggle quietly, pressing each other’s fingers to their lips. They aren’t going anywhere.

  There is a lot of calling out, a kerfuffle, more shouting: ‘Get a move on, Bento!’ Before silence finally falls outside.

  The light is too bright and then it’s out. Maybe she is sick after all. She doesn’t know if she is alone. She drinks because she’s thirsty and forgets she’s swallowing down another sickly sweet alcopop. Her head spins and spins and there is a point where she stops being able to remember images, feelings, anything …

  Chapter 12

  Becky breathes in the smell of her flat. She feels safe here, cocooned in the familiar furniture-polished, washing-powder-marinated mustiness. It is her refuge from the nagging rawness inside about how she crashed clumsily and painfully out of the bar. Her despairing call to Adam. The identity of the woman on Matthew’s floor. She smothers her feelings of discomfort with the business of doing things, like tamping down a plaster on the sting of freshly scraped skin.

  She collects the post from the mat. Does Maisie just step over it? Does she even see it there? She goes to hang her coat and notices that the shelf Adam said he would fix is still sliding toward the floor at a precarious angle, held in place by a single rawlplug. It’s unreasonable to feel annoyed – even though he said he’d mend it, Adam isn’t her carpenter – but she feels it anyway as she adds the task to an already over-long list of things to be resolved and fixed. She wishes she could confidently outsource these tasks to buy herself some space. Wishes she could outsource her feelings.

  In the background the comforting and domestic sounds of her kitchen filter through: china plates laid down on a wooden table top, the stiff fridge door suctioned open with might, and the springtime bird sound of Adam and Maisie laid over it all.

  Maisie laughs. Becky stops to listen, smiling. Forgetting all the tasks that lie ahead.

  ‘It did, it totally did. I’m not lying,’ she says. ‘Seriously, Lily’s place would have an actual cake stand and someone to dust it. But wow, it’s awkward when her mum and dad are around. No one talks much, it’s like they’re in church or something. Lily says they’re both obviously waiting for the day that she and her brother leave school so they can file the divorce papers. So I suppose I’m saying thank you, for sparing me a lifetime of seeing you and Mum argue, or at least hate each other silently.’

  Becky’s stomach tightens. She can almost hear the tangle and speed of Adam’s thoughts in the silence that follows.

  ‘It’s different here, I mean we’re different, it’s a different situation,’ he says.

  Becky lays a flattened palm to her tummy, protective of the place where Maisie began her life.

  She thinks of the times she wished her body would split in two. One half to live in, one half to burn. Her hand circles and un-circles the phone in her pocket. She wonders what scorn she can pour on Scott’s potential evening plans: a late showing of Nightmare On Elm Street? French onion soup at that bistro in Kentish Town? One day she’ll do it, one day she’ll have the guts to post: I hope you find glass in your soup, that it cuts your throat and you drown in your own blood.

  ‘What do you want to do with these little cakes?’ says Adam.

  ‘Shall we just put them all out on the plate? She’ll be back any minute. Hey, why are you laughing?’

  ‘I just don’t understand what’s wrong with being called Danish?’ Becky can tell that Adam is speaking the words through a broad smile.

  Maisie sighs. ‘I’m not talking about that again.’

  ‘Why is someone calling you Danish an insult, though?’

  ‘It’s not the Danish thing. He was taking the piss out of my height. So what that I’m the tallest girl in the class? I don’t give a shit about it. Call me the Great Dane. Viking girl. Watch me not give a fuck.’

  ‘Language.’

  ‘You know you can height-shame as well as fat-shame?’ Her voice is higher, more agitated now. ‘Stop laughing at me!’

  ‘I’m not laughing at you. Danish women are famously beautiful. They are known for their beauty. The Vikings loved Denmark because all the girls there are really hot.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, lovely. Pillage me now.’

  ‘Jules was probably trying to find a way to compliment you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It takes some men a long time to just say what they think if it involves feelings. Most of the time boys take the piss relentlessly out of anyone they fancy.’

  ‘I know, I know. Pulling ponytails. Starts in the playground. Jesus,’ she says with disdain.

  ‘Adults are big kids at heart. They’re worried about their feelings being spotted sometimes. Covering them up lessens the risk of, I don’t know, being hurt I suppose.’

  Becky folds her arms tight across her chest and looks up at the ceiling.

  ‘It’s a stupid strategy.’

  ‘How many times did he call you Danish or a Viking or whatever?’

  ‘All night. I was like, my dad’s short and skinny and looks more like he’s from Spain than Iceland.’

  ‘I’m the same height as your mum!’

  ‘And she’s definitely not Scandi?’

  ‘He’s really got inside your head, hasn’t he?’

  ‘I really don’t care.’

  ‘I believe you.’ Adam is deadpan. Becky smiles, pressing a palm to her mouth to stifle a laugh.

  ‘Shut up, Dad!’

  ‘I’m saying I believe you!’

  ‘You’re so annoying.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, you take after your mum, and your mum’s gorgeous.’

  Becky takes her palm away from her mouth and smiles, feeling the warmth of a gentle kind of joy, alongside a strange sense of achievement – like being awarded a certificate for something.

  ‘It’s not a consolation,’ says Maisie. ‘I’m still really annoyed with you.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Yes, you’re being a dick.’

  ‘You’re not at all annoyed with Jules, and I’m the problem?’

  ‘That sums it up. And stop laughing!’

  Becky enters the kitchen. In an instant Maisie’s ferment is forgotten and she flings her arms around her mum. ‘We missed you, oh Queen of the movie industry,’ she says
.

  Adam turns to Becky and smiles. ‘Seriously, well done. Welcome to your celebration tea party! You’re actually going to get a feature film made.’

  They hug each other.

  ‘It hasn’t happened yet,’ she says, looking around the kitchen in awe at how they have decorated it: silver lamé hanging off picture rails and cupboard corners, golden balloons bouncing across the floor. She feels loved. ‘But thank you for this. What a lovely way to celebrate a breakthrough.’

  Adam, tea cloth flung casually over his shoulder and a smile painted across his flour-dusted face, takes the pile of post from her hands and helps her with her coat. Leafing through it and seeing that only bills remain, he turns to put them in his bag.

  ‘No, don’t,’ Becky says, taking the envelopes back.

  ‘Let me,’ he says, pressing his hand over hers in such a way that is more soft than firm, in such a way that she has to let go.

  ‘Let him, Mum,’ shouts Maisie over the scrape of chair leg on tiles. ‘I would ideally like to continue having hot showers until we’re living off your movie mogul billions.’

  ‘This is the last time, OK? Thank you, but it’s the absolute last time.’ But Becky is feeling secretly relieved not to have to worry about the bills. And also guilty – at the stab of annoyance she felt when she saw Adam’s unfixed shelf. He is her lifeboat, it’s so churlish of her to worry about the fact he hasn’t repainted the stern.

  ‘So full of pride,’ says Adam.

  ‘So much pride and so little money,’ chirps Maisie. ‘It’s fine. I’m going to nail my exams and get my scholarship for sixth-form so at least you won’t have to worry about paying the school fees. And I’ve been thinking,’ she continues sombrely, ‘you don’t have to buy me those Volt trainers, Mum. They are way expensive and I can probably make do with decorating a pair of green-flash with poster paint. It’ll be less waste for the landfill and quite retro. I might even start a new trend?’

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ laughs Becky. ‘Thank you for being thoughtful but we had a deal. Work hard, put the hours in and I will buy you those trainers the day before your first exam. You’ll have earned them.’

  ‘If you’re sure? It’s true that I’ve been working super-hard and I can nearly spell my whole name now.’