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

by Hannah Begbie

  Even more surprised when Maisie began talking to her as if she was picking up from a conversation they’d started earlier that day. ‘Jules’s mum showed me pictures of the women living in shacks who look after their kids by selling their bodies to truckers,’ she said. ‘She said you’re a victim of a patriarchy that pressures women to support men. I think that’s what she said. I was a bit stoned. She also told me to stop getting stoned in term-time.’

  ‘What did you think about that?’

  ‘She seemed really shitty that I was angry with you. And she’s really clever. So, I don’t know …’

  ‘You don’t know what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t know. I sort of want to be wrong.’

  Marry Jules, Becky had thought. Marry him for his mother.

  It’s not like it was all bad. Some old friends came out of the woodwork to support her. She even got a postcard from her schoolfriend Mary wishing her well. A few industry contacts reached out and told her that it didn’t sit right that ‘yet again’ a powerful man’s downfall also took out the women around him. You may be down but you’re certainly not out, they told her, though nobody went as far as offering her a job. Nobody was that stupid, bringing that kind of heat to their own doorstep. But there were at least hints that, when things died down, it wouldn’t be impossible for her to find her way back. If that was what she wanted.

  Matthew didn’t get in touch, either before or after the trial. For all matters relating to Kingfisher, Becky spoke to lawyers.

  In fact, apart from in court, Becky hasn’t heard Matthew’s voice in a year. She has seen him in the papers a few times, looking pale and overweight and bone-tired.

  She feels sorry for him, despite everything. How must it be to hold your children and still hope to feel loved by them when the world knows you as a rapist?

  He sold everything he could. He chose to leave rather than attempt to rebuild. He probably calls it retirement, but really it was flight – from the film festivals that would no longer host him, from journalists who could no longer be relied on to write hagiographies, from actors who’d refuse to be seen having a drink with him.

  He at least has his money. He has his awards statuettes and his film credits. Somebody will love him again, somebody foolish enough might even trust him. But it’s a grim shadow of what he had.

  It is time to go. She wonders, briefly and absurdly, if she ought to buy something for Amber – a gift, like flowers? She drops the thought as soon as it arrives. It’s not a moment she can pad out with gifts and other such evasions.

  At the trial Amber had said, ‘I felt like I was going mad. Everyone thought I was making it up, just to sound like I could prove it. And after a while I thought maybe I had made it up. Like nobody had ever been there. And I was this crazy drunk bitch who didn’t know what was real anymore.’ Becky read the full transcript afterwards. As a witness, she hadn’t been allowed to watch Amber giving evidence, not that she could have borne it.

  A crazy drunk bitch. Becky could have spared her that.

  Becky finds herself slowing down as she walks past beautiful Georgian terraced houses, their black-painted rails pristine against white-painted façades. Amber hasn’t given any indication of what she expects from their meeting, only that she wanted it to happen. Becky tries to think if there is anything at all that she could tell Amber about that night that she hasn’t already disclosed at Matthew’s trial. What more can she offer her, other than an apology, face-to-face? Becky is reminded of Adam crouched against her bedroom wall, shards of shattered china on the floor beside him, looking caged and desolate. Did he want to run then, like she wants to run now?

  Adam had sixteen years to think about what he might say, if the day came when he had to account for Maisie’s paternity. And what had he managed, when that moment arrived? He had given an account wherein he was wrongly accused, and of something so monstrous that he was bullied into a lifetime of silence, trapped in a lie. Poor Adam. The victim of her assumptions.

  He had a story that he could live with, maybe even one he could defend to other people, if Becky ever forced him to. He had spent sixteen years finding ways to not be in the wrong. He wouldn’t unpick them now. Not for her. But she could at least unpick herself from him. And she had done.

  To begin with Maisie had blamed it on the Amber story, the sudden gulf between her parents. But as time passed, and Maisie learnt from Adam that he didn’t at all blame Becky for what she’d done, Maisie’s questions grew sharper. She wanted their old life back, and it wasn’t happening, and nobody seemed able to tell her why; Becky understood all that, but still hadn’t thought of a way to explain her bone-deep need to be far, far away from Adam.

  ‘So what is it? Why won’t you tell me?’ Maisie had said.

  ‘Our friendship’s changed. It’s just time for us both to move on.’

  ‘Move on from what?’

  ‘Just move on. Try to meet people that we might have a future with.’

  ‘That’s bollocks. You’re not even dating.’

  ‘Can you just leave it?’

  ‘No! Why do I have to see Dad on my own just because you’re “moving on” even though you’re actually not doing that? That’s really shit.’

  Becky thought: yes, but I can live with that. And I can’t live with the way things were, not now.

  So Maisie came and went between school and home, weekdays and weekends, seeing Adam when she could – until Becky began noticing that Maisie was returning from each visit less animated and more subdued. When gently questioned, Maisie reported how pancake-day had turned to cereal and then, lately, nothing at all: no groceries in his fridge, hence no offers of food. He bought her takeaways now, if she said she was hungry. And then, uncorked, Maisie talked about Adam’s unopened post and the foetid smell in his apartment, and about how much she missed the old Adam and their jokes and, finally, directed with full force at Becky, how angry she was that Becky wasn’t doing anything about it.

  And all Becky had said was, ‘This isn’t about me. He’s not like that because of me.’ Fuck being held accountable for him.

  ‘Mum, I know people have called you about him. Everyone’s worried and you’re meant to be his best friend and you don’t even care!’

  Becky’s answers were always a variant of the same neutral thing: she didn’t know for sure what was wrong with him, hadn’t seen him much herself recently, in fairness he wasn’t really speaking to her either.

  Then one morning, Maisie begged. ‘Please visit him. I don’t think he’ll listen to anyone else.’ And the look on her daughter’s face caught her out. All Maisie’s affected teenage-weariness was gone. She looked like she had when she was toddler, bereft at some catastrophe but still hoping and believing that her mother might fix the world. Fit a dropped scoop of ice-cream back into its cone. Find a lost stuffed giraffe. Ungraze a knee. ‘Mum, I’m really worried he’s going to kill himself.’

  Becky felt a tight and bewildering knot of righteousness and grief forming. She had let Adam keep his freedom, let his parents keep their pride in him, let him have his daughter’s love and respect. She’d let him keep it all for the sake of Maisie. All she had asked was to be cut free of him so that she could graft herself to something new and grow again.

  She could have stayed home that day, ignored her daughter’s requests and the looming threat. And yet, she found herself travelling up twenty-three floors in a whisper-quiet lift to the door of Adam’s apartment. The truth was that she could live with him being dead to her, but she could not live with the idea of his death forever on her conscience any more than he could with her, sixteen years ago.

  His death would leave so much destruction in its wake. Her own sacrifices. A heartbroken daughter, blaming herself for not being enough to keep her father wanting to stay alive. Some of her own grief, perhaps.

  She would blame herself for it. And she was done with blame. She had to be.

  Adam answered the door dressed in a rat
ty navy dressing gown. He looked authentically terrible. A sour smell hung off him and it looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. She hadn’t called to let him know she was coming.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ she said.

  He turned and walked back inside. Below the floor to ceiling window panes, the city spread out, cut through with a river.

  ‘You need to stop this,’ Becky said. ‘You need to sort yourself out. You’re upsetting Maisie. It’s not good enough.’

  He turned to her, red eyes welling up. ‘I’ve tried.’

  ‘So try harder.’

  It occurred to her that it was possible that Adam’s actions in the last month, the worry he was causing his family and their friends and their daughter, might all have been orchestrated to bring her to this moment. Brought here so that she could bear witness to him paying a price. A calculated offering of despair and atonement, manufactured to satisfy her. She realized that she would never know for sure. And also that, in truth, perhaps it didn’t matter.

  ‘I can’t live with it,’ he said eventually.

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With you thinking about me like that.’

  ‘You can’t change that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Maisie loves you. And you love Maisie. That should be enough for you to get on and do your job as a father.’

  ‘But you think I raped you.’

  ‘Yes, and you say that you didn’t. I don’t want to hear it again. I’m only here for Maisie.’

  ‘We have to.’

  ‘Have to what?’

  ‘Go over it again. I’m sorry, but I can’t live knowing that you think that about me. That’s why I couldn’t – that’s why I didn’t – for you to even think that about me … I can’t live with it.’

  Becky had gone to the kitchen island then, and taken down two mugs, and boiled a kettle to make them coffee. Black, for want of milk. He had sat, stubbled and lank, on the edge of his armchair. She had felt his eyes on her but she did not look up to meet them. She knew he wanted her to throw her arms around him like a movie heroine proclaiming that they could move on and build something new.

  But there would be no heat or ice or raised voices and healing embraces from her. He was a collection of bones, he was flesh, he was a badly wired brain and a heart without a beat now. Her heart had closed to him. She pitied him. That was what she wanted him to understand. And beyond that she was only here to protect what she held dear: a future self unburdened by blame, and a daughter whose skies were clear and bright, unclouded by grief.

  ‘We were so close.’ He talked to the polished concrete floor.

  ‘I know we were. Now,’ she said briskly, all practicality. ‘You need to take your rubbish out. And you should call your mum. She’s worried about you.’

  ‘Can you please stop talking to me like that?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like you’re a social worker or something. Like we’ve never met.’

  Becky handed him a mug of coffee. ‘What do you want, Adam?’

  ‘I want to go back. I want to find you the next day at school and tell you that last night was the best night of my life and that I love you and that I’m desperately hoping you feel the same way.’

  ‘I want to go back and never go to that party. But here we are. And we have a daughter who needs both of us.’

  He couldn’t meet her eye. ‘I’m begging you to believe me.’

  ‘That’s not how it works.’

  ‘Then I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘Ask me how you can make it up to me.’

  And then he did look up at her. ‘How can I?’

  ‘Have a shower. Get dressed. Make pancakes with Maisie again.’ She felt each item on her list land like a blow. ‘She loves you. She respects you. Be there because she needs you.’

  ‘But you don’t.’

  ‘No. I don’t need you. But I do love her.’ Becky gripped the coffee mug a little tighter. ‘I’ll make things work with the three of us, for her sake. I’ll invite you over at some point, and you’ll accept our invitation. We’ll have dinner. It’ll make Maisie happy. You’ll go home after we’ve eaten. That’s how it will go. That’s what I want from you. All this …’ Becky gestured to Adam’s stained dressing-gown, to his haggard face and the clothes dumped on the floor, ‘This does nothing for anyone.’

  ‘What about you though?’

  ‘You can’t offer me anything I want that I can’t get for myself.’

  Becky turned and watched a small aircraft lift itself out of the Docklands. Sunlight caught its portholes as it banked. She tried not to cry. She had once let herself love him and it had left its mark on her. Despite everything, for a moment she felt the urge to put her arms around him and to cry on his shoulder, for all of the things they had managed to lose together. For all of the damage done and the impossibility of finding a way around it.

  But she let the urge pass.

  ‘You were really wasted,’ Adam said softly. ‘The next day when I woke up, I threw up and then I remembered … and I wanted to believe you’d wanted the same things I did. But I couldn’t be sure that was true. I wasn’t sure. And I didn’t ask you. I just hoped.’

  Becky’s stomach lurched. Adrenaline made her skin tingle.

  ‘But that’s not enough, is it?’ he said. ‘And so maybe it’s true. Maybe that means that I raped you. That’s what it means, isn’t it? To not ask. To not know for sure. And whether it’s true or not, I’m sorry. I ruined so many things for you. I did that. I loved you, and I fucked up your life.’

  She steadied herself, not letting him see it.

  ‘You …’ he raised his hands to his head and began to cry. ‘I’m so ashamed of what I did. Never letting you know.’

  She tried to fold back time, to imagine seeing Adam at school on the Monday that had followed. How would that have been? If he’d told her then that their night together had been amazing, a shared adventure, despite both of them being so out of it? Would she have believed him then, if he had looked both afraid of rejection and full of hope, and so surely like someone who had committed no crime, who could never want to hurt her or take from her? Would her underwear, clumsily rolled back up her legs, have felt like a sweet, half-arsed attempt at leaving her decent when he had to leave in a hurry? Would she have believed him then?

  Becky looked at Adam again and tried to tease him apart, to will him into somehow being different men: her lover, Maisie’s father, her partner in collusion, her friend, her counsellor, her rapist. But none of them had given her the truth.

  She won’t forgive him and he won’t forgive himself. They now have that in common, along with a daughter. It will have to be a new wound, one that fits perfectly where she once nursed her questions.

  ‘How do you feel now?’ Becky asked.

  ‘I feel trapped,’ Adam said. ‘Like I’m in a prison I’ll never get out of. I don’t feel like I can survive it.’

  ‘I did,’ said Becky. ‘You will too.’

  Then the tears ran down both of their faces; his turned to the floor, hers to the window, her gaze tracking the path of the Thames, snaking to the horizon.

  Chapter 30

  Becky enters Arlington Square through one of its four gates and stands a while looking out across the flower beds – Union Jack reds, blues and whites – and along the benches lining the central path. A woman sits, reading a book with one hand, pushing a pram back and forth next to her. An elderly couple, in sunhats, summer chinos and dress respectively, sit hand in hand, enjoying the sun.

  She checks her phone. Perhaps Amber has changed her mind? There is a WhatsApp thread from Maisie and Adam debating what kind of a cake to make for his mum’s birthday. Back and forth their messages go, each one like a stitch binding their minutes together.

  Becky looks up and sees Amber at the end of the square, seated on a bench next to a paved area, partially shielded by an olive tree. Becky plots a course along a line of fudge-coloured flint and beach ston
es buried into the concrete, and thinks about how Amber could pass for any young, slim Islington professional, maybe someone who has just moved into her first house, paid for by a collection of parents: oversized sunglasses propped against her Rapunzel-golden hair, dressed down in cropped jeans and loafers.

  Actors so often look smaller in real life than they do on screen, but when Becky saw the magazine pictures of Amber exiting court after her testimony, she wasn’t just small, she was downright thin, utterly vulnerable, childlike. The facts of Amber’s last suicide attempt had pushed at Becky’s thoughts. It wouldn’t take much to end a life as fragile as hers seemed in the pictures of that day on those courtroom steps, under a winter sun.

  But she looks better today. There is colour in her cheeks. She seems slim, not skeletal. She has been working; Becky knows this from following her on Twitter, on the account she once used to spy on Scott, back when he had been her rapist. Amber has been heard and believed. She is not a lunatic after all.

  They won’t prosecute, Adam had told her, way back when the question of what she might owe Amber had seemed in the balance. And yet they had taken it to court, despite the paucity of evidence. In fact, Matthew’s own arrogance had seen to that.

  The trial had begun in winter, on a day when the heating had broken down in the courthouse.

  It was here that Becky learned that the day after Matthew had given her his side of events, he had volunteered a statement to the police. He must have been sure, at that point, that Becky’s silence was sealed. He had her loyalty.

  Perhaps then he felt he could afford to rewrite the narrative, with Becky’s place in it wiped as surely as his CCTV footage.

  There was history between Amber and I. An affair. A few separate nights in London at my club and one, perhaps two, weekends, out of London. I ended it soon after the Hampshire weekend because she was needy, a little unstable. The girl needed a boyfriend and some therapy. I’d said I would be happy for her to seek my advice any time, because the film business is capricious and tricky to navigate. It chews people up and spits them out. I like to be able to help.