Becky hates that there are secrets. Whose fault is this? Is it hers? Did she somehow prey on Adam? Did she use him? She blinks at the memory of those early days of feeling so exhausted and so sad that she could barely make it out of bed, let alone make any kind of decision. Adam had put the idea to her. An easy path. A lie told out of love. His gift and his choice. Surely his parents would love him more for such a kind and selfless act? But might they love Becky less, this girl who’d taken most of a life from their too-kind son? Who’d robbed them of children with Grandma T’s eyes, with Grandpa T’s youthful head of curls, and all the history that they carried in their blood, the connections made from life to life in a chain of descent that Maisie should have carried beyond them, bearing a spark of them past their deaths and into tomorrow. All gone. Perhaps they might still love Maisie, the habit of love too ingrained to be erased, but what of her liar-mother?
But they are here, aren’t they? And they look like a family now, and how easily the final change is happening. Becky can see the going to sleep and waking up together, under the same roof, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Her arms around Maisie, Adam’s arms around Becky.
She deletes Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and the password-protected folder called ‘Household’ which is really filled with words and images that she has collected from Scott’s life.
It’s time to start again.
The table is laid for cake and fizz, around an Aladdin’s cave pile of presents wrapped in silver and gold metallic paper. Streamers and balloons have been draped across every photo and picture frame and a thin plastic banner sags over the door.
BIRTHDAY GIRL
Becky steps into the kitchen, cardigan wrapped tight round her body and over her fists, despite the warmth of the summer day. Adam and Maisie are already seated at the table, waiting for proceedings to begin. And soon, Grandma T, blue-eyed and bird-like, and Grandpa T, GT for short, named by Maisie after his favourite drink, join them from the hall after hanging coats and sorting shoes.
She can see the joy, its warm fireplace colours, pass between the grandparents as they hug their beloved and only grandchild: holding her tight, commenting on her lovely height and how much she has shot up in the three weeks since they last saw her. And Becky knows in that moment that although she can easily recall the exhaustion of those early days, she cannot inhabit that place again where she was prepared to give her daughter up for adoption. To think of a life without this gorgeous, funny, happy girl whose arms are folded around her grandmother, comparing each other’s heights. No one in that kitchen can imagine a life without her: not her, not Adam, not the grandparents who plan their summer holidays just so they can spend time with their beloved granddaughter.
Adam yanks at a champagne bottle’s cork and the wine bubbles and spills like water from a garden hose, and there is laughter in unison at the indulgent waste and the humour and mess of it all. Adam passes everyone a glass as they take their places at the kitchen table.
‘Thank you,’ Becky says, taking her glass, her body tired but her mind restless, roaming, rebellious. She thinks of her family and her film, a new beginning, and she sips her champagne. From boardroom to kitchen, has she had a glass in her hand all day? Is this the happiest day of her life?
Becky’s phone beeps – a text message, from Matthew – and her heart leaps with anxiety. Agreements now ready for signature. Boardroom meeting first thing Monday. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’ll turn it off.’
‘Spielberg calling?’ says Adam, scooping himself a marshmallow square.
‘We all think you’re doing so well,’ says Grandma T, pulling a hair out her mouth. ‘We told Audrey about it and she said that the chance of making a film is lower than the chance of … of, what was it?’ She turns to her husband to corroborate a thought, complete a sentence. ‘A comet hitting earth?’
‘Honestly, Margot. Stop exaggerating. I think it was higher than the lottery …’
‘No, she didn’t say that …’
‘It’s a huge achievement anyway,’ says Adam, knowing that the conversation is more likely to end in a cul-de-sac about Audrey’s knees rather than something conclusive about a film being made. ‘Presents?’
Maisie applauds, a lasso of streamer curling out of a lightly bunched fist, and her grandparents laugh.
‘Family first, or Any Other Business?’ Adam says. AOB is what they call presents from people who aren’t family. It’s a funny little Adam-thing from one year when he ran Maisie’s birthday like a corporate meeting, just to amuse her. AOB has stuck and it became the way they’ve always done their birthdays. An inheritance for Maisie. Will she do AOB with her own children one day?
Becky’s head isn’t really here. She tries to wrench it back.
‘AOB,’ says Maisie firmly. ‘Let’s sort the wheat from the chaff!’ Becky swears her daughter’s love of attention is only getting more pronounced. Will she end up commanding a boardroom or an audience from the stage? Becky often finds herself wondering whether her daughter’s life will be anything like that, or nothing at all like that. What would Maisie have been like with young brothers or sisters? Does she have half-siblings now, somewhere, unknown? Has Becky’s assailant made a life for himself, with a wife and children and a job and the rest? Has he ever done it again or was she somebody’s one-off, their great and last mistake? Or have they forgotten her?
Did Becky say yes that night?
Maisie tears open a shiny, metallic-papered package from Lily. It’s a garish, deliberately ugly knitted jumper with the words Hot Sauce written in Comic Sans font. Maisie laughs delightedly. ‘She remembered! This is awesome! Look at that font. I totally love it. I’m wearing it forever.’ Maisie wriggles her way into it.
‘You’d look good in something like that, love,’ says Grandpa, turning to his wife. ‘I still think of you that way. Hot Sauce.’
‘Oh, enough!’ Grandma says, pleased and smiling. ‘You look gorgeous, Maisie.’
‘I thank you!’
Becky grasps her champagne stem. She can’t concentrate. Her mind is on Siobhan now. Will Siobhan really drop it? And will it matter if she doesn’t? What if she goes to the police? Becky thinks about raising it with Matthew: perhaps they should say that she came to him, after the story broke, and told him then that she’d walked in on them? That she’d offered to be his witness but he’d told her not to bother feeding the fire. That he’d declined because he trusted his own innocence absolutely. There was no crime to bear witness to.
His story fitted with everything she knew, after all. She had been moved by his candour. His confession of ugly behaviour, albeit with the desire to show Amber a hard truth lying beneath it all. He was trying to show her the truth: wasn’t that what he had said, in so many words? Done for her sake as much as his. And now Amber is in hospital, because she has tried to end her life.
She listens to the burble of Adam and Maisie riffing off each other about another present opened; she barely registers what it is. A prank present from a friend, perhaps. Here is her beautiful, accomplished daughter on the verge of the exams that will launch her into the next exciting phase of life. She has everything laid out ahead of her … This is a good day and yet she feels on the other side of the glass: smiling along, nothing really touching her.
And yet. Becky has weathered the storm, has she not? Siobhan will get her reference and keep her silence. Amber will live or die, and that’s not up to Becky. The stories in the papers, already fading, will vanish altogether. Her film will pick up more cast members, more money. She will choose her staff and, unlike Siobhan, they will be grateful for the opportunity to work hard for her. To learn from her. Everything can now flower into life.
‘Sorry,’ she says, when she realizes someone must have said something to her, because everyone is looking to her like they’re expecting an answer. ‘Still haven’t got my strength back from Camber. What did you say?’
‘Only should we put the pizzas on?’ says Ad
am. ‘It’s OK. Let me take care of things.’
‘I think I just need some coffee. I’ll make it.’ Becky gets up and puts the kettle on. ‘Any other takers?’
‘I like my coffee like I like my women,’ says Adam, in a husky bass tone. ‘Served in a mug.’
‘I like my coffee like I like my men,’ replies Maisie instantly. ‘Strong. And yet decaffeinated.’
‘Open another present,’ says Grandma T, rolling her eyes. She knows that left unchecked they might do this routine for another five minutes.
Becky heaps two spoons of coffee granules into a mug. The idea of making proper coffee is too much.
‘Next present,’ declares Adam. ‘Who’s this one from?’
‘This is from Jules.’
‘Who’s Jules?’ asks Grandma T.
‘A boy who likes Maisie,’ says Adam.
‘Dad! Back off.’
‘What?’ cries Adam, doing his outraged New York Jewish matriarch bit. ‘A boy shouldn’t like my beautiful girl? Boys shouldn’t write poetry about this beautiful face of hers?’
Maisie squirms.
‘Adam, you’re embarrassing her,’ says his father.
‘That’s my job! Maisie, tell him!’
‘It’s his job, Grandpa, and he’s extremely good at it.’ Maisie shoots pretend eye-daggers at Adam.
Becky sits back down with her coffee. ‘What’s this one?’ She can’t seem to hold anything in her head.
Maisie tears open an A4-sized envelope. She pulls out a folder. And bursts out laughing.
‘What is it?’
‘Oh my God, I can’t believe he actually did this!’
‘Did what?’
‘OK,’ says Maisie to her grandparents. ‘So me and Jules have this joke that I’m a Viking or from Denmark or something because I’m tall.’
‘What?’ says Grandma, perplexed.
‘It’s just this stupid joke. With my eye colour and everything, I must have come from Viking stock. We do this whole thing with me feasting instead of eating at school lunch, and any time I go off he’s like, Maisie’s off pillaging. Lock up your livestock and clay jugs.’
‘But you’re tall because your mother’s tall. It’s something to be proud of, it’s …’
‘It’s fine, it’s just a joke, Grandpa. Anyway, he did this thing where he was like, I’m going to prove it once and for all, and he swabbed my cheek with a cotton bud thing and said he was having me analysed by the Viking institute. But he’s actually done it. I mean, there isn’t a Viking institute. He’s done me one of those ancestry service thingies.’
A ripple of ice-water seems to run through Becky. She catches Adam’s eye. His gaze darts, sharp and quick, away and back in the direction of Maisie. She knows he is thinking the same thing.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t quite follow,’ says Grandma T.
‘They take the DNA in your saliva,’ says Maisie, ‘and then they compare it to millions of other samples and then they can tell you your family history. Like, on a genetic level. Not names and stuff, but where your lineage is from over thousands of years.’ She opens up the booklet. It is full of charts. Her eyes shine as she reads. ‘This is so cool!’
‘Over thousands of years?’ says her grandfather. ‘And all from some spit?’
‘From some cheek cells.’ Maisie beams.
‘That’s unbelievable. Fantastic,’ he says. ‘What’s next? Day trips to Mars?’
Maisie laughs.
Becky is urgently trying to catch Adam’s eye again. This has to stop, and now. ‘Do you want to read it later?’ asks Adam.
‘We’ve got a pile more presents to get through,’ adds Becky. ‘And honestly, I might have to head to bed in a minute.’
‘It’s really detailed,’ says Maisie. ‘I have Irish heritage. Like, thirty per cent of me is Irish genes.’
‘That’s my dad,’ says Becky, her interest piqued, despite herself. ‘His mum and dad were both from Wicklow. Is this one of the ones that gives you medical results? I’d be interested in that.’
‘No, you can get those too but this one’s just ancestry,’ says Maisie. ‘Ha ha! I can’t believe this.’
‘What?’ says Becky.
‘He’s written here that I’m still a Viking even if these results say otherwise. He’s written that I’ve managed to get my own DNA wrong. That’s funny. He’s really funny.’
So she likes him back, thinks Becky. He has teased her into loving him. Well, he wouldn’t be the first.
‘Next present,’ says Adam, handing her a big box. The photo album had finally arrived. There will be enough in there to distract Maisie from the rest, for a good long while: Becky has gathered and printed photographs from all their recent trips away together. ‘This one’s from me and your mum.’
Becky pushes the box further forward.
‘Thanks,’ Maisie says, still reading the sheets. ‘I’m, like, fifteen per cent Greek,’ she says.
‘That’s right, you’re from immigrant stock,’ says Grandpa. ‘Along with your height, that’s another thing to be proud of.’
‘Yes but look, it’s so specific. It’s not even Greece, it’s like, Southern Greece.’
‘That’s right,’ says Grandpa. ‘My family side are from Sparta. Never mind your Vikings, the Spartans were real warriors. Put me in an arena with that Jules and I’d have him in a headlock in a second.’ He flexes his arms.
‘I’m not telling Jules about being from Sparta! I’d never hear the end of it.’
‘Sorry, what was all that?’ says Becky. An impossible thought is assembling itself, through the fog of too-many-other-things. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said put me in an arena with that Jules …’
‘No, the bit about Maisie and Greece.’
Maisie leaps up and comes round the table to sit next to Becky, pointing to a pie chart. ‘So this is me. I am the pie. And this is all the gene pools that I’m made up of. And this is over, like, a thousand years. They take tiny little mutations and average patterns and loads of science stuff and it says what you’re made up of. Like, there’s a bit of Jewish genes there, like three per cent?’
‘That’s my great-grandmother!’ says Grandma T happily. ‘She married out. Big scandal. This is wonderful!’
Becky looks at Grandma and Grandpa T. Her daughter. ‘And can it be wrong?’ she says. With every breath from her lungs and beat of her heart she hopes, wishes, prays it is wrong.
Becky can’t look at Adam but from the corner of her eye she can see he is looking fixedly at the table.
‘It’s just data,’ says Maisie. ‘But you know, I just feel so Greek. I often prefer to eat olives when crisps are also a choice.’
‘I like this present,’ says Grandpa. ‘Your people grew olives outside Kalamata. My own grandfather used to talk about them being big as apples. Does it say about Kalamata?’
Becky stands, legs weak underneath her, edging past Maisie, gripping the back of chairs as if they were crutches. ‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m not feeling well. I have to lie down.’
‘Should we wait?’ says Maisie.
‘Help her, Adam!’ says Grandma T.
‘No!’ says Becky, the trembling spreading through her body like a fever she will never be rid of. Adam doesn’t move. ‘No. Go on without me.’
Becky hears a roaring in her ears as she runs up the stairs. It is the sound of the universe ending, of hell opening.
She finds herself standing motionless in the doorway to her bedroom, absorbing the surroundings as if recently killed and now standing outside her own body, hanging onto the last images of life: the rose-pink walls painted in eggshell. Curtains held back with lengths of nautical rope. Shelves refitted twice so they wouldn’t slant. All Adam’s DIY.
He has touched her here, in this room, and now everything that he has ever touched, those shelves, her ribcage, her neck, is damaged.
She hears the sound of the grandparents and Maisie gathering in the hallway, and the click of the front
door, and finally those voices receding down the street.
Then a knock on her bedroom door, before Adam steps in.
If he is there, armed with a long-rehearsed emergency explanation, it fails him at their first moment of eye contact. She has known the paralysis of shock, the caving-in feeling of bad news making her legs buckle, but this is different. Why is he here, in her bedroom, when he should be far away and never returning?
At first she cannot speak and it kills her that she can’t get her words out because she wants them to fly out of her, like daggers, landing in his flesh, cutting him into parts.
‘I can explain,’ he says.
She rushes at him with arms raised and, feeling the white heat of grief and anger fill up the space inside her, forms boxer’s fists. Then, for the first time in as long as she can remember, she uses her physical strength to harm someone other than herself.
She pounds away at Adam’s half-covered head as he ducks down, like he is a stake she is trying to bury deep in the earth, her fists like mallets, only stopping when she is exhausted and has not managed to destroy him, has not buried him out of existence. Then she stumbles back, away from him, the bed between them as protection. She stands trembling with her spine pressed to the wall, panic swelling up through her breathlessness. She claws at her own throat, and all she can say is, ‘It was you it was you it was you.’
She sinks now, his mirror image on the far side of the room, on her knees, overwhelmed by the pure misery of love curdling and blackening. Her heart …! Oh God, how it hurts.
For long minutes they stay that way, the room’s length between them, Adam racked with sobs, Becky fighting a new urge to be sick, to be empty, to become a void again, capable of feeling nothing.
Blurred Lines: The most timely and gripping psychological thriller of 2020 Page 25
