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

by Hannah Begbie

  It was him. He did this to her and he kept silent. Sixteen years of obsession and hatred and harm – and he said nothing.

  Everything becomes stillness. And then finally she can speak. Her heart cooling into iron, closing to him. Speaking to him from a dead place.

  ‘You let me suffer,’ she says.

  ‘Please …’

  ‘You knew that I needed to know. I had to know what happened to me and you knew and you didn’t tell me. Because it was you who did it.’

  ‘Becks …’

  ‘Don’t call me that.’

  ‘Oh shit …’ Adam topples forward, his face pressed into the carpet, a picture of destruction.

  ‘Sit up,’ she says.

  Now there is only room in her heart for the practical things that need to be done. ‘Maisie will be back soon because she’ll want to know how I am, and I don’t want her seeing this.’ Becky wonders whether she will be able to control herself when it comes to it: to hold herself back from the impulse to destroy Adam by telling Maisie everything. ‘Come on, sit up,’ she orders him again. ‘We need to decide what to do.’

  And he obeys her, eyes red against his pale face.

  ‘If she asks why we look this way,’ says Becky, ‘it’s because an old friend of ours died today and we just found out. Someone from school. No one she knows. I left the room because I didn’t want to spoil her birthday while she was happy opening her presents. If she asks, his name was Ben. We haven’t seen him for a long time. It was just a shock.’

  ‘Will you let me explain? Please?’

  The face she had touched with her fingertips only hours before, communicating something warm like love, is nothing more in that moment than a flesh and skin arrangement. The mask that once convinced.

  ‘I want you out of our lives,’ she says blankly.

  ‘Would you please just let me tell you what happened?’

  Becky sees it so clearly then – this pattern of men calling themselves good men, sitting her down to explain how all the things that she might have seen, or even things that she has had done to her, were in fact nothing. Trivial matters that are easily dismissed, if only she can agree to let their explanations blossom until they fill all the spaces left by her questions. Let me tell you. Allow me to explain. This is the way things are.

  Adam begins whimpering then, like a dog or a child. ‘Please, just hear me out.’

  Even as her curiosity gets the better of her, even as she tells him, ‘Fine, explain,’ she doesn’t believe that she’ll be given the truth. Not if the truth costs him more than the price he’s prepared to pay for it.

  ‘I was in love with you—’

  ‘So you lied to me for sixteen years.’

  ‘No!’ he says. ‘That’s not what it was. Please. It’s important you know I loved you. I’ve always loved you.’

  She stands up then, to make herself bigger, wanting to cower over him in his crouched position, to make him feel as small as she had once felt. But she does not walk towards him, she is not ready to be an inch closer to his body. Instead she lowers and loudens her voice.

  ‘If you say the word love again,’ she says, ‘I will kick you out and I’ll tell Maisie the whole truth, as soon as she’s back. And your parents. What you did was not love. Don’t you dare use that word.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Get on with it,’ she spits. ‘Tell me what you did.’

  ‘I came back. I came back to the party in Hampstead because I wanted to see you. I thought … I just … I won’t use the word, but I just wanted to be with you. And I thought – or at least I hoped – that you maybe liked me too. The way we talked to each other, I was in love with—’

  Becky flings the nearest object – a mug left by the bedside – hard, at his head. It smashes on the wardrobe door less than a foot from his head. She wants him out, he is as repulsive to her as a murderer. She wants him damaged and impotent, like she has been for half her life.

  ‘I came back to the party to see you,’ he says, holding himself still, upright yet foetal, legs held to his chest. Glassy eyed. ‘And when I got there it was late. I think it was about two in the morning. I had to be back at home the next day for my dad’s family but I was really high and … I don’t know. I thought I’d come and see you and maybe we’d … Anyway. I looked for you and you weren’t downstairs where most people were, and Mary had apparently taken off with that guy she was seeing, so I checked around the house and then I found you.’

  ‘Like Sleeping Beauty.’ Her voice wavers as she tries in vain to sharpen her words so they will slice him, but she finds only a withering, disappointing sarcasm to express her sadness for the girl in the bed, asleep and unaware that she is about to be invaded. ‘Waiting for my prince.’

  ‘You weren’t asleep. You were in bed but you were awake.’

  ‘I don’t remember a single moment that I was awake with you.’ But even as she says it, she finds she cannot trust that she is right. Maybe he is right. Perhaps she woke briefly. ‘I was never awake,’ she says again, holding her own hands to stop them from shaking.

  ‘You were really out of it. Like … I’d done a pill and I’d had some beers and a joint as well downstairs. And you were in bed in the dark and I put a lamp on and sat down, and I swear it was just to ask if you were OK, and you said to get in and so I did.’

  The world tilts. He is going to make it her fault.

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ says Becky. ‘I didn’t ask you to get into my bed.’ Becky puts her hand to her mouth, then wonders if the movement has betrayed her.

  ‘I got in with you and you sort of snuggled up to me and I thought, or at least I think I thought: oh my God, she likes me that way as well. And then I kissed you and … you were obviously really wasted, but so was I and, I don’t know, I really honestly thought …’

  ‘Get to the good stuff, Adam.’ She cannot take much more of this scene setting, this underpinning and drapery. She just wants him to say it now.

  ‘I don’t remember if we said much. I just remember really, really wanting to be with you and thinking you wanted that too. And so we took off our clothes.’

  ‘We?’ She presses her fingers firmly together, imagining Adam’s skin caught in her pinch.

  ‘I took them off,’ he says sheepishly. ‘But you didn’t seem unhappy about it.’

  ‘Unhappy? So, what, I was smiling? Opening my legs and asking you to fuck me? Is that what I was doing?’ Now her words land like daggers in him. And she wills herself not to cry.

  ‘You didn’t seem unhappy. I swear to God. I swear on my life.’

  ‘At least swear on something I give a shit about.’

  ‘On Maisie’s life then.’

  She holds onto the bed-head then, for balance. ‘Hurry up, you’re making me want to vomit.’

  ‘Then we had sex. And afterwards we cuddled up.’

  ‘We cuddled up? So I put my arms around you?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that exactly.’ His face strains. ‘You just, you kind of fell asleep in my arms is what I’m saying.’

  ‘I don’t remember that, we didn’t do that.’

  ‘You were so wasted. But we both were.’

  She swallows down her words. She never wants to hear him speak again, and yet she wants to hear it all, every last detail.

  ‘And then I realized how late it was,’ he continues, ‘I had to go home. So I put your top and pants back on you.’

  ‘You tidied up your mess. What a polite boy,’ she says, her teeth clamped, like gates holding back the hungry, decimating energy inside her. She wants to tear his fucking head off. She imagines the grey fleshy structure of his brain lying under her foot, the maggot shapes it would make pressed outward under the pressure, a series of little grey balloons holding sixteen years of his memories.

  ‘The next day I thought maybe I should call you, but then I was really worried you’d say you’d regretted it. So I thought I’d see you at school and in my head, if you were happy about it, th
en I’d know we were maybe going out together. And if you avoided me then you’d be letting me down gently. That kind of thing. And I tried to come up to you. Don’t you remember that?’

  She does remember. A half-wave from Adam in the hallway while she went lesson to lesson, living a waking nightmare of having been a nameless somebody’s black-hole fuck. A piece of meat built for someone to ejaculate into. Yes, he had waved.

  ‘So I thought, OK, she doesn’t want anything to do with me, and I was heartbroken, to be honest.’ Adam tries to look her in the eye. ‘I just assumed for ages that you were being weird around me because you hated that we’d had sex together and you were trying to forget about it. I felt … It doesn’t matter what I felt. But I thought I’d made you hate me.’

  ‘You have.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it wasn’t like what? Not like fucking what? Say it.’

  He is flustered. ‘Not like … I mean, until you told me you thought you’d been raped I had no idea that you didn’t even remember any of it. I remembered it even though I was really high. For me it was the biggest thing that’d ever happened to me. It was the best thing and then—’

  ‘The earth moved for you, did it?’

  ‘And then after you blanked me it hurt. Becky, it was like the biggest thing in my life.’

  ‘Me. Fucking. Too.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was that, I really didn’t. I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me the truth though, did you?’ she shouts, spittle exploding into the air, sticking to her chin.

  ‘I was sixteen.’

  ‘You didn’t tell the truth.’

  Adam takes a long breath. Staring at her, like he has suffered some great injustice and is doing very, very well to remain so patient with her as he explains. Or is he frightened? Or is he telling the truth, now, at last? Becky’s head swims.

  ‘The girl I was in love with slept with me and then ignored me. That was bad enough. And suddenly I was going to be her rapist? I was never that. That’s not who I am. And that’s what you were going to think of me if I said—’

  ‘No, Adam. That’s not enough. When you knew I couldn’t remember, you chose not to tell me. Fucking say it.’

  ‘Part of me was scared of going to prison after what you said, but more than that, I just … I honestly, in my head, in my heart, I really hadn’t done that. I could never do that, to you or to anyone. And once you’d said that and I already hadn’t admitted it, I hadn’t told you what happened, after that I realized, oh fuck, how do I go back? How do I tell her now? And the longer it went on I just … I was a coward about it. That’s true. But I couldn’t face the idea of you thinking that about me. And once I knew you were going to put the baby up for adoption I thought, well, this is terrible, but I can at least be a friend to her. If she needs someone to take the blame for it, let me … And then, and then … Ever since we met … I’ve always been my happiest when I’m with you. I’ve never loved anyone else like I love you. And when we got together?’ He blinks like he might cry. ‘It was the happiest I’ve ever been.’

  ‘What about my happiness, Adam? All those times I was so grateful to get any scrap of what you could give us, all the time thinking: he’s doing us a favour. I never asked for more. Never asked you to stay with us and help while you were off at festivals getting high with your friends because it’s not like you were her father. But you were! You fucking were! And you let it look like charity. Buying all that stuff. All the times … You let me get eaten alive by not knowing what happened. You found me looking at Scott’s Facebook page and when I told you why I was doing it, you didn’t give me an answer. You didn’t let me have the truth. You fucking let me drown!’

  He looks down at his hands. ‘I know,’ he says, so quietly that Becky must strain to hear it.

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because it was you. And it was Maisie. I couldn’t lose you. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t brave enough at the time. And then later I couldn’t see how to tell you the truth and not seem like a liar.’

  ‘But you are a liar.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to be one.’

  ‘I said, out loud, I wanted to know what happened. I asked you, who do you think did it to me? There were bruises on my wrist the morning after. Was that you? Did you hold me like that? Did you hurt me like that?’

  His eyes fill with tears. ‘I don’t know, I honestly don’t know … I don’t remember every little bit.’ He blinks. ‘I’ve tried my best to make up for it,’ he says.

  ‘I know. You’ve paid a lot of utility bills. Never child maintenance. Never because you brought her into this world, without my consent. Only because you were the guy who made all the sacrifices. So fucking selfless.’

  ‘How could I have done it any other way without telling you?’

  ‘Listen to yourself! Can’t you hear what you’re saying?’

  ‘I’ve told you the truth now and you hate me.’

  ‘I needed the truth then. I needed it the next morning, Adam, when I woke up alone and there was semen inside my underwear and part of me had been fucking stolen.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Adam rests his head in his hands. Then he seems to shrink before her as his limbs fold in on themselves and he sobs loudly into his lap. ‘I was always looking for a moment to tell you. When you weren’t suicidal. When it wouldn’t risk pushing you over the edge. And then you gave birth to Maisie and you fell in love with her. And so did I. It was our daughter, Becks, lying in your arms. And I wanted … It was never a sacrifice. And if I let you believe it was a sacrifice, or at least something I didn’t need to do, then I’m sorry, that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to be with the two of you, looking after you both for the rest of my life. Only … you didn’t love me. And so I tried to see other people.’

  ‘I hate you,’ she whispers under her breath.

  ‘It was always you. I always held out hope because you never got that involved with anyone … and it was hard, because I know that on some level you found the whole dating thing difficult because of your history …’

  ‘Because of the fact you raped me.’ Her teeth grind together, her fists bunch again.

  ‘Stop saying that! Let it be what it was, which was two really wasted teenagers …’

  And then she roars. She roars at him, in deep, thick, solid, ravaged breaths. She roars at him, wanting to singe his hair and burn his skin with the size and volume of her voice. She roars until his eyes are wide with panic and fear, so that spittle showers him and his neck retracts like a lizard.

  ‘Stop it!’ he shouts.

  ‘Did you, at any point, ask me if you could have sex with me?’

  ‘Stop it.’ He is crying now.

  And still she roars, intoxicated by the look of terror on his face, as if for a split second she had made him feel her pain.

  ‘Did you ask me? Yes or no?’

  ‘No,’ he screams. ‘I did not ask you.’

  The silence is so thick, so clogged she can hear both their struggling breaths.

  ‘And you didn’t ask me,’ he says, with a voice that is both choked and perfectly clear. ‘You didn’t say yes and you didn’t say no. And then it was you who forced me to lie.’

  ‘What?’

  He unfolds himself from his kneeling position on the carpet and stands up.

  ‘You said you’d been raped that night,’ he says. ‘And that wasn’t true. But I didn’t have any way of proving it. Maybe if you’d said you couldn’t remember, or that you’d done something stupid while you were blacked-out, then I could have said: “no, that was us, that was you and me. Don’t you remember?” But instead you said you’d been raped. And by the time I got my head around that, I couldn’t come back from it. You never let there be a question about what had happened. You said you were raped and that was it. So that either made me a rapist or not. And I wasn’t a rapist. Not then, not ever. I don’t blame you for anything. I really don’t. But can�
�t you see how what you were saying made things impossible for me?’

  The world recedes. Becky tries to hold onto what is happening. Can he possibly be asking her to apologize to him? Is that where he thinks this might end, sixteen years of agony tied off with an admission from her that yes, perhaps she had been over-hasty and backed him into a corner.

  All her fault, really. When you think about it.

  He continues speaking, filling her silence with his words. ‘I’m not saying you did anything wrong, Becks,’ he says. ‘Not at all. I should have told you what I remembered, as soon as you said anything. I just want you to understand how it was. From my side of things.’ The view from his side of the bed. ‘What you thought happened, didn’t happen.’

  ‘Is that what you’d tell Maisie? That you listened to me say I wanted to kill myself and you said nothing, because what, I’d got it all mixed up in my pretty little head?’ Her stomach is hot with acid, the spit cold on her chin. ‘That my version of events was, simply, according to you, wrong?’

  He says nothing.

  ‘That you fucked an unconscious girl,’ she continues, ‘and when she woke up alone, with her pants turned inside out, you thought it was best not to say anything, on the off-chance I was trying to … what was it you said? “Let you down gently”?’

  He stares down at his kneecaps.

  ‘Are you honestly still trying to make me believe you’re a decent man?’ she says, her words short with anger, incredulity.

  ‘I am,’ he says, and she watches his hands travel to his waist and his elbows bend and his chest widen a little. ‘I know I am a decent man.’

  The sound of familiar voices in the road outside hauls Becky, drained and disoriented, back into the present. Time has gone quickly. Adam hears them, too.

  ‘What about us?’ says Adam. ‘What happens now?’

  The doorbell goes and Becky, now dazed, leaves the room to answer it.

  Maisie’s face creases with worry. ‘Mum! What’s wrong?’

  ‘Something happened to someone we used to know,’ says Adam, from up the hall behind Becky. ‘Someone from a long time ago. It’s nothing you need to worry about.’