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

by Hannah Begbie

  When Maisie has just a few more years of primary school left, Adam sits Becky down to talk about the future.

  ‘I’ve got money now,’ he says. ‘Not endless money, but enough so if you want to retrain or something you can. I can pay for some childcare. And there’s my mum and dad.’

  ‘I can’t have you pay for my whole life, Adam. It feels really wrong.’

  ‘That’s the point. I want you to find something you really love to do so you can feel less reliant on me. I don’t want you to feel like you need me around. I want you to want me around. It’s honestly not about the money.’

  ‘I just … Whatever you say about it, I find it hard to get past how much you’ve done for us when you didn’t need to do any of it. Wouldn’t life be easier for you if you didn’t have to spend time visiting us?’

  ‘I don’t have to do anything. Maisie’s the best thing in my life, Becky. She’s not an obligation. She’s not an inconvenience. I absolutely love her, more than anything in the world.’

  She is so relieved to hear him say it.

  She knows it’s true, but she likes to hear him say it from time to time. It keeps her feeling safe.

  Soon, Maisie and Becky move from her old family home into a new place, a maisonette near good schools, and closer to where Adam lives in Shoreditch. Becky takes adult education courses and applies for internships with heartfelt letters written to those people whose work she admires. She’s still young, only twenty-four herself. Somehow, between them all, they make it work.

  The day Matthew hires her as his PA, with the promise of a move into feature film development if she does her time and proves her worth, Becky finds herself standing outside the central London office, employed, with the sun out, a script to write a report on in her bag, an overpriced coffee in her hand, and she realizes that Adam was right, in the early hours of that kids’ playground in Hounslow. She has a life that she loves, after all.

  A piece of long-held tension drops away.

  That evening, after Maisie is long since tucked-up and asleep, she opens her new laptop – a congratulatory gift from Adam – and for the first time Googles his name:

  Scott.

  Chapter 14

  Less than an hour after returning home from Cannes, Becky finds herself sitting in the back of a company-account black cab, her handbag still cluttered with boarding pass pieces, torn luggage labels, a free mini-bag of airline pretzels, napkins. She has been summoned back to the office, torn away from Maisie and Adam and their cupcakes.

  ‘Where are you?’ Matthew had asked. He had flown back on a flight even earlier than hers to catch his son Bart before he left on the school trip to Venice. ‘Sorry, but I need you back at the office as soon as you can manage.’

  As Becky’s cab swings past the oversized-headphone-and-satchel-wearing walkers of Old Street, she inflicts tiny mutilations to her body – straightening her hair where it will not be straightened with tugs to the skull, pulling at her looped silver earrings so the lobes stretch and sting. She is anxious. She copes badly with the threat of bad news in a vacuum. What has she done? How has she messed up?

  She taps hard at her phone and finds an image of Scott, grinning madly with freshly bleached hair. Nominated for an award now! Oh Scott, the gods keep on giving! Something about being the best something in something to do with finance? Who cares what exactly, the point is he looks like the cat that got the cream, the Olympian gold medallist, Zeus, Neptune, Caesar – so smug with his new Tom Ford sunglasses balanced on his head, questioning: But what to wear on the big night?

  Body bag? Thinks Becky, toggling to Google Maps, typing in his office address and watching (not for the first time) the thick blue-lined route appear, running hot and fast like a vein through London. She could go there now, couldn’t she? Later today, perhaps, or tomorrow when she’s worked out exactly what she will say. Something like: Did you hold me down as you fucked me? You hurt me, you know. She could get her answers, she could, but then what? A police investigation? They’d have to believe her first! And what to tell Adam? What to tell Maisie? What if Scott denied it?

  Her head hurts. No, she tells herself, she must focus on the present. She has something more immediate she needs answers to. And so she taps at her phone again, plugging in her name, the company’s name, Matthew’s name, into Google, into Twitter, into Instagram. She has done this a hundred times, tracking word of mouth on film releases, writing up reports on how trailers have landed, how various stars are talked about. She knows her way around.

  She finds what she is dreading.

  The fractured images she had been trying to marshal the previous night in Cannes when Sharon’s agent had grasped her arm – It’s clear you don’t know – now coalesce into a toxic jigsaw.

  Blonde chignon. The long neck. That face. Lapis-blue eyes.

  Amber Heath.

  Client of DB’s.

  The woman on Matthew’s kitchen floor.

  Becky stares at the name again, and the first search result. A clip, hosted on an entertainment news website – one that carries breaking gossip, publishes intrusive photos and catty rumours and no doubt makes a ton of money; adverts, cookies, signs and banners flashing over the text. She impatiently swipes it all away as if clearing away the dirt to reveal the name on a headstone, and presses play.

  The footage appears to have been recorded on an iPhone. Perhaps shot by an opportunistic reporter. It is jerky, obviously hand-held as the questioner follows a man emerging from a bar and heading down a busy night-time street in central London. Becky recognizes him as a minor actor, but she can’t place him exactly. Was he the special advisor in that BBC drama about the disgraced MP? Or the school teacher in that ITV comedy?

  Her brain glitches and jumps, her eyes only able to dart and identify key words, unable to follow the flow of a sentence:

  Kingfisher Films. Matthew Kingsman. A relationship with the actress Amber Heath. Alleges that …

  She plays the clip.

  I’d hardly call rape a relationship.

  The words come out loud and aggressive, her phone on top volume. Her first instinct is to glance up at the cab driver to see what he’s heard, then find the mute button to stop him from hearing more.

  She plays it again and reads the words that ticker tape along the bottom: I’d hardly call rape a relationship.

  The man in the clip has large, clean-cut features, is dressed in a long beige trench coat and dandyish loafers. An air of sozzled camp about him. The reporter seems to have chased him down the street to ask his questions, perhaps that’s why his answers are so blunt.

  ‘Are the rumours about your friend Amber true?’

  ‘Yes, she’s gorgeous, it’s true.’

  ‘Is she having a relationship with Matthew Kingsman?’

  ‘I’d hardly call a rape a relationship.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No comment. Kingsman’s a nasty little bitch. That’s my last word on the subject of that tosser.’

  ‘Are they not together then?’

  ‘You’re being boring now. Go on, piss off.’

  The man waves the reporter away, knocking the phone out of his hand.

  The footage ends there.

  Her mouth dry, Becky skims the blog post’s text. The man in the video is identified as one of Amber’s best friends, fellow actor and noted bon vivant Ollie Hennessy. An update on the article says that Hennessy has clarified that he spoke out of turn and that he apologizes for having a big, drunk mouth.

  It’s far from being a retraction.

  David Barraclough, Amber Heath’s agent at Total Agents, has been asked for a comment but hasn’t replied to the website’s overtures.

  Becky looks behind her, out of the grey-dusted rear window, as if she’s being followed. The traffic is moving fast and she struggles to calculate how long she’ll need between alerting the driver, the cab making a safe stop, the wait for the door’s red light, opening the door and vomiting onto the pavement.

 
DB. Such a nice man. Such a nice lunch they had together. She looks at his client list online. Amber is a relatively small fish. Becky tries to remember: had DB pitched Amber before? Perhaps for a supporting part in something that fell apart days before shooting was due to begin? Perhaps Amber maybe even came in to meet for it? Becky tries to think back but the panic is making it hard to ground her thoughts. Was Matthew there? Did he offer an opinion?

  She tries to search her phone for more information, each movement cumbersome, clumsy, misdirected and slow now that her hands seem not to be working properly.

  Twitter has picked up on the story. Questions being thrown about.

  She thinks about Amber’s blonde hair spread across Matthew’s floor. That same hair tamed and tied up in chignons on red carpets and plaited in the pages of celebrity magazines.

  Becky closes her eyes and tries to remember precisely what she saw but all she can see is the blue-veined path on the map flashing its crooked line.

  The cab swings left and a motorbike comes for them, swerves at the last minute to avoid the collision and skids away.

  Regent Street gives way to a narrow maze of Soho streets with shoppers and workers idly walking the narrow pavements, blackened and sticky outside pubs where beer spilt from the night before traps ash and litter and diesel fumes.

  ‘Here,’ she says, when the black cab gets to Soho Square. She pays and waves away her change. Can’t think about that. Lands on the pavement, still bent from exiting the cab, no time to hold her hair back, her head tips forward and then, yes, she vomits. Her hair swings into the sick, like vines in the breeze.

  It hits the pavement and someone passing by in new white trainers leaps away from the splat, squeaking dramatically at his friend, before they both laugh. ‘Drunk or pregnant or both?’ says one to the other, loudly, as they walk on.

  It had looked like pleasure and pain, on Amber’s face. How could she know which was which? Held or pinned down? Rough sex or rape?

  She uses the aeroplane napkin from her bag to wipe glossy spittle from around her mouth. Pours water from the aeroplane bottle onto her hair where vomit has caught it, until it runs clean. Her legs are rippling. Don’t cry again, she tells herself. Now is not the time.

  Siobhan is waiting for her at the front door of their building.

  ‘There you are, thank bloody hell for that. Have you seen?’

  ‘About Amber Heath? Yes, I’ve just watched it. What’s going on?’

  ‘I don’t know. He’s holed himself away until you get here.’ So in they go.

  Matthew opens his office door and leans out, hand still attached to the doorknob like he’s in a strong wind and needs something to anchor himself to. Becky’s heart hammers against her chest wall, piston-quick. Matthew is pale and drawn, his layer of tan wiped away in a matter of hours. And she feels sorry for him.

  She and Siobhan step forward.

  ‘Just you,’ Matthew says to Becky. ‘Siobhan, mind the phones, please. Take messages, say I’m in meetings all day,’ he says. ‘Becky, in here, please.’

  Becky steps into his office. He closes the door behind her. Becky just has time to glimpse Siobhan’s expression before it shuts. Envious and wondering.

  ‘Take a pew.’

  Becky takes her seat on the sofa. Matthew takes the low Modernist leather armchair he favours in this set-up. He sits back, swings one leg over the other, grasping the wireless landline phone in one hand and his mobile in the other. Is this what a man accused of rape looks like?

  She silently presses her fingers against each other like she is rubbing butter through flour, waiting for his cue.

  ‘There’s a story,’ he says. ‘An actress has made some false accusations about me.’

  She realizes she had been expecting him to confess to some kind of crime. When he doesn’t, she is more relieved than she thought possible. Yes, she thinks. Of course it isn’t true.

  ‘Have you seen the clip?’

  ‘I had a look for company news once Siobhan called me. There’s lots of good stuff about Medea out there as well.’ She means for it to sound balanced, like the media situation might somehow tot up to being a neither-good neither-bad kind of day. She realizes immediately how ridiculous that sounds.

  ‘So, yes, it’s not quite Amber making the allegation but her mate, Hennessy. I’m not sure it makes a difference, really. Once it’s out there it’s out there. I have to decide whether to go after him for slander, or make a statement and let it fizzle out. It’s hard to know exactly what’s best. Do you know him, Hennessy?’

  ‘Not personally.’

  ‘He’s not a great actor. If I sue him, it’ll be catnip for him. He’ll be in the papers every day for weeks. Darren at IcePR agrees. We’re thinking it might be better just to weather it …’

  ‘Why would he even say that?’

  ‘What? That I raped her?’

  Becky nods.

  ‘Perhaps she told him that.’

  ‘Why would she say that though?’

  ‘Bitter, perhaps? I turned her down for a big part she thought was hers. Maybe it’s a kind of revenge.’

  ‘So she planned for Ollie to blurt it out like that?’

  ‘Come on. You know how often photographers just “happen” to be there when an actor does or says something they’d like to have recorded. We’ve worked on those things ourselves.’

  She can feel her heartbeat thrumming in her ears. Did he or didn’t he or did he or didn’t he. She has to hold it together. ‘I … I … What would you like from me, Matthew?’

  ‘Your advice and then your help with making this go away. You and I have work riding on this. IcePR are great but I need a sounding board. I’m not going to blame you if this doesn’t go my way, if that’s what you’re asking.’

  ‘No! God, no. Not at all. Of course, I’ll do anything I can.’

  ‘Great.’

  He looks tired and lost and not at all like a criminal. She feels sorry for this man who has paid her wages, who bothers to send Maisie birthday cards and who asked after her that time she had pneumonia, wished her well during exams.

  She knows he won’t have eaten – he never eats when he’s stressed – so she takes the bottle of water and the pretzels she’s been given on the plane out of her bag. Lays them on the table.

  He ignores them both and lights a cigarette. ‘You’ll need to take care of yourself.’ He pauses. ‘I’ve spent the morning talking to financiers, casting directors, the whole shooting match for the rest of our slate. They’re all good, all calm. No one’s worried. But Medea is vulnerable. It’s got those strong themes and … I don’t want a stupid bit of gossip surrounding me to affect your film’s shot at getting made.’ Becky understands immediately that there is a deal being made here. ‘So what do you think I should do?’

  ‘About Medea?’

  ‘About the whole thing. With Medea I can make sure my name’s off the press for it. You can talk to Emilia and Sharon and reassure them.’

  ‘The film wouldn’t exist without your support. It doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘Fair?’ His tone is brusque, scathing almost. ‘Learn to recognize a favour when it’s being offered to you. And learn to take it when you need it. You need to protect yourself and your work. Don’t ever assume that justice will somehow prevail and make everything OK. Good men lose everything, all the time. Women, too.’

  ‘Yes.’ She nods. ‘What should I say if Sharon or Emilia ask me about it?’

  ‘Don’t make it a questionable statement. You get in early and say: This is what has happened and this is what we’re doing about it. Make them feel special that you even bothered to consider them.’

  She notices that this is exactly what is happening now. He has not denied the allegations but then why would he need to? Never apologize. Never explain. Let everyone else do the talking, let everyone else tie themselves in knots.

  ‘All actors care about is how they are perceived,’ Matthew continues. ‘How their own careers are stan
ding up. That’s all. You have to have the conversations. You pitch it with calm and confidence? It’ll be a conversation, forgotten in five minutes, absorbed into a busy schedule. Can you do that?’

  ‘Wouldn’t it be better coming from you?’

  ‘God no.’ He almost laughs as he says it. ‘You’re good, you’re smart, you can do it.’

  ‘It must be hard on you. All this.’

  ‘You’ll get it too, one day, Becky. There’s a lot of have and have-nots in this business. Not everyone can be talented. Human beings who are failing love nothing more than to tear someone off the top spot, back down to their level. You’re not up there unless someone’s trying to drag you down.’

  ‘So I’m telling them that this person, this actress, is someone you turned down for a role, who thought she’d been offered it, and who probably bitched about you to a friend of hers, and the friend then misspoke about it because he’s a drama queen who loves attention.’

  ‘Throw in a joke about vengeful women. Medea. There must be something in the water.’ He laughs, but he is not laughing. ‘But yes, your version works. Any more questions?’

  ‘No. I’ll start making those calls.’ Becky finds herself almost looking forward to making those calls, to convincing Emilia and Sharon of how they need to think about this. She finds herself looking forward to the moment she can call him and say, It’s fine, it’s done – to making him proud of her.

  ‘You do have another question. Be honest.’

  ‘I don’t …’

  ‘Surely you want to know if I’ve slept with Amber? I’d be asking that question.’

  For a moment he lets that hang there and she wonders if she is being challenged to confess: I was there, I saw you, I know you’ve fucked her. But I don’t know what it meant, what I saw.

  ‘The answer is yes, I have,’ says Matthew. And these are the words that seal the deal for Becky. An explanation for the two being together on the kitchen floor. He isn’t trying to lie to her. She feels a flood of relief, a tension easing that she hadn’t fully acknowledged. ‘I’ve cheated on Antonia before. We’ve muddled through. Antonia has also … I’m sorry. Probably you don’t want to hear any of this. A middle-aged couple’s assorted indiscretions. But I want to be straight with you.’