Blurred Lines by Hannah Begbie

Author:Hannah Begbie [Begbie, Hannah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008283261
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

The next evening, Becky slices through mushrooms, peppers, onions – far more than she needs for the recipe, but she finds the rocking motion of the knife soothing, the clean cut through skins, satisfying. She throws the vegetables into the wok. She can at least do this. She can at least feed her daughter well. The oil spits onto the backs of her hands and she lets it, feeling the scatter of needle-prick stings through her skin. The sound of the doorbell wrenches her out of this thing, this controlled stupor.

‘Mum, it’s for you,’ Maisie calls out, before returning to her piles of books and notes in the living room.

‘Rebecca Shawcross?’ asks the young man at the doorstep, glancing at his phone screen.

She is expecting a package to sign for: contracts or new bound scripts from the office, or perhaps that hand-made photo album she’d ordered for Maisie’s birthday. Here at last.

‘Can I help you with something?’ She wipes her palms down her jeans.

He glances up at her with pale green, watchful eyes, circled with dry flaking skin and red patches. He looks like an iguana, she thinks. ‘I’m from The Sun newspaper,’ he says. ‘I need a quote.’

She grips the doorframe with one hand to control the anxious quiver that has set itself waving through her blood. ‘What about?’

‘The allegations made by Amber Heath against Matthew Kingsman.’

She thinks the fire engine-red T-shirt he is wearing is too bright and that his wax jacket has too many pockets. He looks like the pixelated screen of a computer game and why won’t her thoughts stop skirting, tripping, glitching?

‘I don’t think any allegations have been made, have they?’

‘Yeah, all right, she didn’t outright name him, but everyone knows she’s talking about Matthew Kingsman.’

‘So what’s your question?’ she says impatiently.

‘Amber Heath seems to be alleging,’ he is speaking slowly, as if to a very young child, ‘that she was raped by Matthew Kingsman. Do you have any comment about that?’

‘She seems to be alleging?’

‘Do you have a comment about it?’

‘I’m not going to comment on rumours and gossip. Nobody should.’

The doorframe in her grip feels like a monumental shield.

‘What about your film?’

‘What about it?’

‘I heard it’s fallen apart over this.’

‘That’s not true. And look, I know this is your job, so I’m not being an arsehole about it, but I can’t spend all day going through everything that’s not true in the world. So we should probably leave it there. Thanks.’

She closes the door on him.

Is it true? Has her film died?

She rests her forehead against the cool, painted wood but it does nothing to stop the waters from rising around her. Adam is leaving them, heading for Kate’s bed. Her film is shrivelling into dust. She has no map, no boundary, no place to go, no beacon, no co-ordinates with which to navigate her past, present and future, and there is no end in sight for her anger and sadness. She has a void. She has toxic grime. She fears these

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