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

by Hannah Begbie

  Becky swipes through the pictures of Amber Heath tripping up, wearing short skirts, shocking-pink bra straps loose and hanging, falling out of cars – outside night clubs and restaurants. As much as they could get of her body without it being inappropriate or illegal to print. Elastic long limbs and bloodshot eyes and messed-up hair. She looks so young in the pictures, early twenties, perhaps – chubbier then, and just breaking out.

  An ex-boyfriend of Amber Heath’s, who used to supply the highs, talks about why he broke it off and why he thinks Amber is trying to stitch this producer up.

  Emotional. Ambitious. Someone who would do anything to feed her ambition.

  There’s a blurred cameraphone picture of her cutting a line, fishnet tights and garter, legs crossed over, white of the kneecap captured by the flash. It’s grey and white, pixelated, almost, but apparently it’s definitely her.

  Here is one of Amber and Ollie in a car together, trying to shield themselves from paparazzi flashes. The piece that accompanies it asks questions about calling time on ‘anonymous sources’ and goes on to list dozens of whispers about Amber. If it means to defend her, it just ends up looking like a compendium of Amber’s worst hits.

  Matthew is spinning Amber, Becky thinks – twisting and rolling her and leaving her to hang by her threads, a dancing skeleton puppet tangled in its own strings.

  ‘What are you reading, Mum? They’re going to be here soon, have we done everything on the list?’ Maisie is flitting around the kitchen, stirring this, poking that. She looks up at Becky, trying to understand her inaction, frowns. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Matthew’s released a statement calling into question Amber’s mental wellbeing,’ Becky says.

  Maisie looks confused. ‘But she probably is a bit unstable. You even said …’

  ‘And now everyone’s jumped on her as someone who is messy and …’

  Maisie can’t see the spark of the touchpaper as it lights within Becky. Her mother has been tipped back into a past where she is unable to get out of bed, toggling between tears and panic, unable to take prescription antidepressants because of the baby growing inside her. Her mother is diving between that memory and the image she most feared: Amber’s life arrested. Unable to get out of her own bed.

  ‘They don’t have to judge her mental stability in the papers!’ says Becky, tears pricking her eyes. ‘Like somehow it, and therefore she, is to blame for the thing that’s made her feel bad. She doesn’t deserve to have this splashed about everywhere. Nobody will hire her again.’

  Damaged, damaged, damage.

  Done with this body.

  The thoughts come despite Becky’s resistance.

  She takes a deep breath and tries to swallow back her tears and anger.

  ‘Mum? Are you OK? Can you even hear me? Oh my God, why are you crying?’

  She hates herself. She thinks of the miserable-looking girl on the kitchen floor pinned underneath Matthew. She sees now that she was pushing him away and yes, he pinned her arm back, holding her down at the wrist. Now Becky cries for her. She cries and she cries and she cries and thinks she must do something, she must do something about all this.

  ‘I’m gonna call Dad,’ says Maisie.

  ‘Don’t. I’m OK.’

  ‘You’re being weird.’

  ‘I just feel really sad for her. And angry. She didn’t cause this situation. A man decided to talk about her. It’s not fair.’

  Becky puts a palm over her mouth, gasping silently as a piece of the past dislodges and slips inside her. Who is she to judge when she did the very same thing?

  She crammed the gap in her history with the most readily available story. Inside her mind she condemned Scott for a crime without either trial or evidence, and she thinks, at speed, the thoughts crash into themselves, she must at least try and get that evidence now. What if she followed that blue-veined line to his office and tore the fucking tuxedo that he’s planning on wearing to his awards ceremony right off its hanger? Stamped and spat on it? Would it help her live her life in peace to know what the truth of all of it is? Whatever the fall-out, surely it’s worth risking for peace of mind?

  As Maisie makes the finishing touches to the table before the guests arrive, she pushes her phone into Becky’s hand. ‘Sorry, Mum, but there’s more.’

  Someone has got hold of a picture of Becky, Sharon, Emilia and Matthew eating together at the window table of the restaurant, laughing and joking.

  Hadn’t Matthew talked about a private room? Instead, they’d been led to a table at the front of the restaurant.

  The female employee and newly minted producer, the maverick female director with impeccable feminist credentials, and the celebrated young actress making waves in highbrow cinema. Sitting with Matthew. Unwittingly vouching for him, every time they laugh and pass food to one another.

  Chapter 16

  ‘Ads … I need to talk to you.’ Becky’s hand rests on the door latch, having let the last of their guests out of the house. But she hasn’t yet committed to her words and they are quiet and slight and she thinks they might go unheard. And perhaps that would be for the best.

  ‘Happy Birthday to me,’ sings Adam, making a small drunken pilgrimage from table to sink with a single plate – sauce and fork teetering on its edge. It’s painful to watch, mostly because she is stone-cold sober, but also because it will take them ages to clear up his way. She watches him drop the plate into a large pan of water.

  ‘Oops,’ he says, as brown foam splashes over the edge. The pan had been soaking after he’d drunkenly promised to make everyone caramels for pudding. He’d poured half a bag of sugar and some water into her best pan, put it on a high heat and turned the contents into a shining gold gloop. In the moments he was performing his victory dance, much to the amusement of the crowd, the caramel had stuck blackly and viciously to the bottom of the pan. The pan was unsalvageable really but Becky had thrown it quickly under the tap, like treating a burn on human skin, stifling her frustration and the urge to say anything because, along with most other items in that kitchen (and now Maisie’s new trainers) Adam had sweetly and generously paid for it. It would have been churlish to say anything at the time, churlish even to say anything now, on a night when he is happy and humming contentedly, basking in the glow of having spent an evening surrounded by his oldest friends.

  And so she’d let her annoyance dissolve. Besides, the pan had been a good, momentary distraction from her worry that their guests would ask her about Matthew. But they live and work in different worlds and it didn’t come up. Maybe, she thinks, it’s not really a story outside the industry? And as they all talked about haircuts and politics and that time they went camping (Becky wasn’t there, she’d been caring for Maisie after she had her tonsils out), she was working out when and how to share the burden with Adam after everyone else had gone home to their beds.

  She needs to talk to someone, and he is her someone.

  As she watches Adam take on the portering of the next plate, she has got as far as planning her apology for not saying anything sooner, and how she feels ashamed for that, but that also no one can be sure of what really happened.

  Please just let me talk.

  He’ll want to protect her. He’ll tell her to exit and leave her film behind. She’ll end up talking about how hard it is to get a film like that made, a film that you actually care about deeply. Something that might even matter.

  She doesn’t need that conversation. She knows all that.

  She also wants to tell him about how she is longing to visit Scott to get the answers she needs, and to that one he will certainly say absolutely not, that it risks Maisie finding out, risks chaos and destabilization for all of them.

  ‘Did you want to talk to me?’ He zigzags his way back toward the sink and his phone dings a text message. He pulls it out of his back pocket and narrows his eyes to focus on the screen. His hair is ruffled, his shirt loosened at the waist, his eyes are still and bright: Becky doesn’t think she’s
seen him look so happy. ‘It’s Zee. She’s on her way home,’ he says. ‘Lazy Maisie, she never ever pays me, for the waaaays, I plaaaaays, the bassoooooooon!’ Adam turns and grins at Becky. ‘Fuck I’m drunk.’

  ‘Good. Birthday achieved.’ Becky checks her own phone, expecting the same words. Finds nothing.

  His phone dings again before he’s had a chance to put it away and his face creases up in laughter when he looks at the screen.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Jules bought her a Viking hat. Look.’

  She glances at his phone, finding no amusement in the foam confection balanced on her daughter’s head. This is why she is the less fun one, the nagging one. Because she wants information and Adam wants jokes, so Adam gets both and she gets nothing. Her mood has soured with envy and she can’t help herself when she says, ‘You shouldn’t have bought her those trainers, it was my—’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, all eyes and regret. ‘I only want her to be happy.’

  ‘But I was trying to teach her the value of working hard to earn what you want,’ she says more softly, chastened by his quick apology. ‘Not just getting it all when you click your fingers.’

  ‘Because we all know the world doesn’t work like that.’ He smiles but there is an edge to what he’s saying. ‘She can’t be all cynicism, Becks. The world can also be a good and generous place. It can drop things in your lap when you’re least expecting it and it’s good for the soul to know that. Right?’

  She’s not sure whether she’s more bothered by the removal of an opportunity to teach her daughter something, or the feeling that she’s been undermined by him. She should pursue these grievances really, to avoid it all happening again and yet she runs out of steam at the sight of his broad and warm smile. Then she can’t help but be won over by his good intentions and ability to look at the bigger picture in a way she always fails to. And his generosity, like a little kid giving away all his sweets in the playground. And it’s his birthday. On balance she decides to drop it.

  ‘You wanted to talk to me. I’m here,’ says Adam, the smile still on his face. ‘All ears. What’s really going on in that head of yours?’ He takes two empty wine glasses from her hands, places them by the sink and turns her to face him. They look at each other, a moment too long perhaps, in low light and smiles. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and she thinks she sees his eyes try to focus below the influence of all that booze. ‘Thank you for hosting tonight. It was really fun. I had so much fun.’

  He is brimming with wellbeing and the moment is so joyful that she can’t bring herself to destroy it with further conflict about Matthew and Scott and how any decisions made could seismically reshuffle their carefully balanced life together.

  ‘I had a nice time, too,’ she says.

  He never seems to have a list of problematic ‘issues’ in the same way she does. Never seems to run out of steam, or kindness, whereas, she seems to have to ration both. Why is that? Was that always the case?

  And now, a moment passes through and they both feel its flashing edges, the thrum of its warm heart, the sparkle of its energy – impossible not to, what with them playing house, having these conversations about the family, sharing a kitchen late at night, catching up after a dinner party. Just like husband and wife. He is still holding her arms gently, still looking into her eyes when he says, ‘I realized something tonight …’

  She thinks about his kindness and generosity, his wisdom, how much his friends love him, how much he loves her daughter, how he is the one she can talk to about her day, her mundane life.

  ‘I think that I really need to talk to Kate,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’

  The scaffolding behind her smile melts and too late she realizes that this is not the question she meant to ask out loud.

  Becky had been watching Kate that night, between courses and conversations, Kate had worn a top that Becky had never seen before: scarlet, one-shoulder, with a black lightning flash motif, the kind that draws attention and appreciative comments. And she had a new haircut. Again, drawing appreciative comments.

  Also new: Kate had tried not to look at Adam when he was talking, like she didn’t want to be caught out listening to him.

  ‘We went bowling last night and it was nice. We get on really well.’

  ‘Of course you do, you’ve always got on well.’ She feels her powerlessness.

  They are meant to be a platonic group of friends, now. All the ‘trying each other on’, all the sleeping together and alliances made and broken, had taken place while they did their accountancy exams and broke out into the world of jobs, together. All that had taken place while Becky was still in the muggy sleepless haze of baby and toddler. By the time Adam had introduced Becky, the wild times had calmed into pub visits and dinners and the occasional weekend spent together. Their fondness for each other is familial and friendly – not special, not romantic. That’s the rule.

  ‘I guess I’m finding it confusing, these hanging-out things that sort of feel like dates but never turn into … dates. I mean, we left the bowling alley holding hands last night and I didn’t even know what it meant.’

  ‘Right.’

  He shrugs. Her response is unhelpful. ‘Well I don’t know, I just need to talk to her about it, I suppose. What do you think?’

  ‘Why do you need to talk to her? Don’t you know what you want?’

  She feels like her feet are trying to stay anchored to the ground as she controls a kite that wants to take flight without her.

  Adam and Kate. Jules and Maisie. New relationships, growing up toward the sun, all green shoots, while all she feels is her own rotten roots diseasing everything and pulling her back.

  ‘You’ve got to know exactly what you want before you ask a woman a question like that.’ Her words sound accusatory now and the smile on Adam’s face struggles to beam as brightly. ‘You can’t just sound things out. Surely you know that? If you talk to her about this thing that you’re wondering about, that you think is between you, then you’re basically saying that you think about her as someone without her clothes on. You can’t ever undo that. It’s like if I told you I’d murdered someone in my past. You’d never, ever be able to forget that about me.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. I’d forgive you anything.’

  Would he?

  He squints at her. ‘Becks?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Have you murdered someone?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  His grin widens. ‘I just feel like you’re trying to steer the conversation around to telling me you’ve murdered someone.’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know when it happens.’

  ‘Is that because I’ll be the person it’s happening to?’

  ‘Most likely.’

  ‘So you don’t think I should talk to her?’

  She looks away, thinks about busying herself with the dishes. ‘I didn’t say that. I just pointed out that there are some things you can’t undo.’

  ‘You sound like you’ve thought it through. More than I have, at least.’

  His words are disconcertingly calm and she thinks she can see a smile in him. ‘Not really, I haven’t thought about it at all, not at all in fact, I just …’

  Adam drains a half-empty wine glass on the table. His lips are lightly pixelated with black from the red wine. ‘What did you want to talk to me about again?’

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. And you should speak to Kate, if that’s what you want. I just think you can’t have everything. You can’t want to move us all into a house together and then start going out with Kate. That would be ridiculous. That would be too much. For Maisie. It would be destabilizing. She won’t deal with that level of … whatever.’

  ‘You were completely opposed to the idea of us moving in,’ he laughs. ‘I thought that was off the table.’

  ‘Well, if it wasn’t, it probably should be, now that you’re marrying Kate.’

  Adam is laughing a lot now but inside she fe
els a pure and shocking panic at the thought of losing even an hour of his friendship and his kindness, to Kate. His focus elsewhere. She wants to ask him for his advice, wants to tell him what’s been happening now, wants him to help her decode her past from her present, but now it is as if there is someone else standing in the room with them.

  They look at each other for a moment, and then her phone buzzes in her pocket. She has set up a Google Alert for breaking news relating to Amber Heath. And now here it is.

  Amber has spoken, typed words on a white notes app page, attached as two images to a single tweet that just says ‘My statement’:

  My mental health is good at the moment. I am not a mad woman making wild accusations. I wish Ollie hadn’t said anything, honestly. I didn’t get to decide any of this but now I’ve got photographers camped outside my flat and ex-boyfriends getting offered crazy money to tell journalists I’m a nasty manipulative piece of shit. Matthew Kingsman is making statements about me in the press so I will make mine and then that can be that.

  I have gone to the police today and reported that I was raped at a house belonging to a man in the film industry. It was not consensual. We had drunk a lot and we kissed on the sofa but then I wanted to stop. I told him that in clear words. He raped me on his living-room floor. I tried to push him off. I never once said yes. I said no a lot of times. That’s all I can say about that.

  I think there was a witness. Someone came in and I saw them see us. I think it was a woman.

  If she reads this, I am begging you, can you please come forward? If only to say I’m not crazy and I’m not putting it on for whatever reason.

  I am not going to make any more comments on this. Any further enquiries can go via my agent David Barraclough at Total Agents. In the meantime, if you have even a bit of humanity, can you now please leave me and my friends and family alone?

  If you are the woman who saw me, you can call the police direct if you don’t want to speak to David. Please, just don’t say nothing.