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

by Hannah Begbie

  ‘I understand.’ He smiles. ‘But I’m sure Maisie will find a dozen other ways to nearly bankrupt you this weekend, if that’s what you’re after.’

  But Becky doesn’t really hear him. She glances at the bin and then at her daughter taking receipt of an enormous citric-orange cocktail, a delighted smile painted across her face. Becky’s stomach contracts. She does not think of all the positive ways in which her daughter might see her: as a bold, young producer, someone who tackles big issues, someone who understands characters and stories and storytellers. In that moment, all Becky sees is what she’s passed down to her daughter: toxic offerings and her own shame – repackaged, reconstituted, nothing to do with her and yet, still, the shame that is having a mother who is spoken about in the same sentence as the words sexual harassment.

  Becky feels like such a fraud standing there on the soft marl carpet. She feels … dirty.

  Adam leans in, his shoulder brushing Becky’s, as if he senses she needs reassurance. They are touching each other in the way they have contrived so many times in the past – through doorways, knees brushing under the table – always moving away, snooker balls glancing against each other, but this time is different. This time they are both aware of entering each other’s space and how the atmosphere is warmer and more magnetic there.

  She turns to him and says, ‘I think I want to leave.’

  Maisie has arranged the cocktails on a low table and is examining a leaflet.

  ‘If you don’t want the boss paying,’ says Adam. ‘I’ll pay. She’s really happy. Look at her.’

  ‘No, it’s not that. You don’t need to do that. Please don’t do that.’ She wants for them to run from here and pitch their own moth-eaten bell tent in a field near the beach, to buy a portable barbecue and beers, to sit by a fire and sing eighties power ballads. ‘I feel spoiled. It’s making me uncomfortable.’

  ‘Your daughter is extremely comfortable with it, I must say.’

  ‘So should I just suck it up?’

  ‘Yes, Becks. Try to suck up all the free luxury pampering. And if you can’t handle it, I’ll scout around for a bin for you to sleep in.’

  She laughs, and it produces tears. ‘God. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’

  ‘Working too hard?’

  ‘I should be grateful, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘You should try and enjoy it.’

  She considers Adam’s point: how Maisie would feel to have something so nice given to her and then taken away in less than ten minutes. And what reason could Becky then offer her for such mean-spiritedness?

  ‘Look at it this way,’ says Adam, equitably. ‘From Maisie’s point of view she’s being spoiled and pampered for a special birthday. That’s a nice thing, isn’t it?’

  It’s only later that Becky comes back to what he has said: did Adam talk about Maisie’s point of view because, from his, it looks different? Like a bribe. Like blood money. He’d be too careful to say it outright. She wants so much to know what he thinks but doesn’t know where to begin or even if she should.

  She decides to ignore it all. To be in the moment.

  Half an hour later, they meet poolside in the spa complex. The water is untouched. Gemstone blue. Adam and Becky lie on loungers, wrapped in chalk-white waffle robes, gazing up at black-veined marble and gold-stuccoed ceilings.

  ‘That is a lot of money to spend on a ceiling,’ says Adam, but Becky’s not ready to joke about the money. The money is the problem.

  Maisie leaps into the water and emerges, hair shining like the wet skin of a seal. ‘Are you coming in? It’s amazing! I mean, obviously it’s amazing.’

  ‘In a minute,’ replies Adam, standing up and letting his robe fall off his shoulders. ‘I’m going to have a relax. Beckles, are you all set to relax? Can I get you anything to increase your relaxation?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ says Becky, lifting her hands off the side of the lounger as if they are covered in something sticky. ‘There used to be a place that sold chocolate pancakes in the car park at Camber Sands. Shall we walk there later and get some? If it still exists?’

  Adam pushes his lounger closer to hers. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t hear what you were saying over all the Bach and birdsong.’ He is wearing navy trunks and a T-shirt that falls nicely across his shoulders, over his chest and down his stomach. ‘Something about pancakes in a car park?’

  ‘I’d just like to get out of here. Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Poolside luxury or car park?’ He weighs them up with open palms. ‘It’s a tough one, but the pool wins. Anyway, it doesn’t look like Maisie’s going anywhere.’

  Becky looks up and sees Maisie leaning against the poolside at the far end, arms folded over each other, talking to a boy on a lounger whose age Becky cannot determine. When did the boy even arrive? Did Maisie wish for him? Is that how her sixteenth is going to work?

  ‘That boy has got very defined abs,’ she says.

  ‘You like a defined ab, do you? How do you rate a good circulatory system and correctly working organs?’

  ‘Very attractive.’

  ‘Thanks. I feel less terrible about my abs now.’

  ‘What abs?’

  ‘Such cruelty. This is why you’ll die bitter and alone.’

  Silence.

  ‘That,’ says Adam, ‘sounded a lot more fun and teasing in my head.’

  ‘It’s fine. It’s true.’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘Speaking of dying alone, what did you decide to do about Kate?’ She keeps it light. Nonchalant. Like she barely cares.

  ‘I’m sorry about the other night. I was quite drunk when I was saying all that.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. You can tell me anything.’ She doesn’t add that she reserves the right to agonize about some of those things for hours. For days. She wants him to be honest with her. She can’t make him afraid to tell her the truth.

  ‘We went to the pub the night before last. I didn’t even have to bring it up. She’d obviously been thinking the same. She put it on the table.’

  Becky shuts her eyes and allows this information to sink through her, like a stone dropped into dark water and landing in mud, a slower sinking for the final inch towards burial.

  ‘She said she had feelings for me,’ he says.

  ‘Oh yes, what kind of feelings? Tired feelings, hungry feelings, sad feelings?’ She doesn’t open her eyes because she fears that if he sees them, they will betray her.

  There is a long and heavy silence, during which Becky makes a wish of her own. Can she please find a way to connect with him, one last time before Kate is confirmed as a thing in his life, one last time before they can never go back to the way they were before? Can she make him promise not to leave them, even if he’s going to leave her?

  ‘So what did you say to that?’ says Becky, quietly, opening her eyes again.

  ‘Well, do you want to know what she said first?’

  ‘Not really,’ Becky laughs.

  ‘I’ll tell you anyway. It needs that context. She said she had feelings for me. She said she’s been in love with me for about a year.’

  ‘That was around the time you got those new skinny indigo jeans, wasn’t it?’

  ‘We always knew those jeans had power. You said it at the time.’

  ‘So when’s the wedding?’

  ‘It was actually a very hard conversation.’

  ‘It’s a big decision. Vegas or Clapham?’

  ‘Please. Becks. I’m trying to tell you this.’ She glances down as she feels his hand touch her. Feels the warmth and insistence that transmits itself through skin and flesh and blood on its journey to her heart. She dares herself to look up at him and fails the challenge. ‘I told her that I didn’t feel the same way. I’d thought I might feel the same way, but I realized it was more like I was willing it to happen, if that makes sense.’

  ‘It makes sense.’

  ‘I don’t love her.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘
What does that mean?’ he asks, after falling silent for a moment.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Becky.

  ‘Do you really not know?’

  But Adam’s words are carried up through the peppermint-scented steam puffing from an open steam-room door, interrupted by the gleeful laughs coming from the swimming pool and finally forgotten as Becky turns her attention to what is playing out in front of her: Maisie and the boy, who is now by her side in the pool, both leaning on their forearms, speaking into the tiles before turning to face each other. Laughing again.

  ‘If you’re thinking of getting a cocktail, I’m in,’ she says, not taking her eyes off this scene. As if she might miss something crucial if she did.

  Adam looks at her for a moment, then lets his head drop a little, disheartened perhaps. ‘What’s your poison?’

  Their laughter is getting louder. The boy is leaning in further to show Maisie something on his arm and Becky cranes to see what. Then Adam lightly touches the top of Becky’s wrist to get her attention and she leaps out of her skin.

  ‘Woah,’ he says. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to …’ She looks at him like he’s just appeared. ‘I just wanted to know what you’d like to drink?’

  ‘I don’t know, nothing, I don’t want anything.’

  ‘Right, I’ll just get the one.’ He pauses. ‘Becks? They’re just talking.’ The pool water splashes over the edge as one of them showers the other in a playful game. ‘Let her have her fun before you send in the lifeguards.’

  She blushes, looking over to Maisie, feeling caught in idiocy.

  She waits for Adam to depart for the bar before she stands up. She can see the alchemy happening between boy and girl in a swimming pool, the magical violet and emerald and silver mist passing between their lips, swirling in a vortex around their two bodies, the Wizard of Oz twister that takes away the house. There is no time to waste, she must interrupt now, and break the spell before it is complete.

  Becky stands at the pool’s edge. ‘Come on, Mais, we’re going for an early dinner.’

  Maisie keeps her eyes fixed on the pool tiles. ‘What? It’s not even five. Can I meet you later? I’m kind of having a nice time swimming.’

  ‘Sorry, chick. We’re going now, and you’re coming with us.’ Becky tries so hard to sound light and casual, but she is declaring a done deal. Maisie will hate her, but the alternative is worse: giving her trust to someone who will steal from her. ‘We’re going to have fish and chips in Dungeness.’

  ‘You can go. I could just stay. I’m not even that hungry.’

  Becky squints at the boy in the pool, and he takes her steely gaze as his cue to swim away.

  ‘Here, I’ll give you a pull-up,’ says Becky.

  ‘Jesus, Mum …’ Maisie hisses at her like an aggravated snake as she pulls herself out of the pool, spurning the offer. ‘Could you be any more annoying?’

  The boy wades into the shallow end and emerges slowly out of the water like he thinks he’s in an aftershave advert. He is a few years older than her daughter. Eighteen, perhaps. He is wearing red swimming trunks that fit well around his slim waist. It is clear that he cares about his body, that he runs or lifts weights or something.

  ‘Maisie?’ he says. He holds himself well: his face shines with health, his hands rest on slim hips and his smile is easy. ‘I’m heading down to Camber Sands later, if you fancy it? After dinner, or something? Just if you’re into it.’

  ‘Sounds fun,’ she says.

  Maisie, in her tangerine bikini.

  ‘Maybe when you turn sixteen,’ says Becky to her daughter, ever so lightly. Even as she says it, she knows she’ll pay for it but she sees the boy make the calculation. As she intended. Fifteen-year-old girl: that’s a prison sentence.

  Maisie looks away from her mother, at her feet and then at the boy. She rests her hands on her waist, above where the bikini ties at her hips in bows. ‘Maybe see you later then,’ she says to the boy. ‘I’m sixteen at midnight. Maybe I’ll come and find you on the beach at 12.01.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says, though he seems embarrassed, caught between mother and daughter. He lowers himself back into the water.

  Becky’s vision dims. ‘What did you mean by that? You’re not going out tonight.’

  ‘What did you mean by telling him I’m fifteen? I’m not stupid. You might as well just write “It’s illegal to have sex with me” in permanent marker on my legs. Or just draw a big “Stop!” sign over my pussy.’

  ‘Fucking hell, Maisie!’

  ‘Don’t pretend you weren’t doing that.’

  ‘I don’t want you skulking around on a beach on your own after dark looking for some sketchy guy you’ve known for all of two minutes.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have to do that if you’d let me hang out in the pool for a bit longer instead of dragging me off for cod and chips.’

  ‘We’re meant to be spending time together!’

  ‘Don’t shout.’

  ‘What, because I’m embarrassing you in front of your serious long-term boyfriend?’

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Maisie looks tearfully furious now, determined not to show it.

  ‘You’re being reckless.’

  ‘I’ve got my swimming badges. I’m OK to be in a pool.’

  ‘So why were you so keen to stay in?’

  ‘God, do I have to spell it out?’

  ‘Yes. Go on.’

  ‘I think he’s hot.’

  Becky crosses her arms across her chest. ‘And so what’s your plan?’

  ‘I haven’t got a masterplan, Mum. Not everyone’s as neurotic as you.’

  ‘Any mum would find it worrying you’re trying to get rid of us to be with some boy who could be anyone.’

  ‘He’s staying here with his parents as well. He has a name and everything.’

  ‘It’s not safe.’

  Adam returns with an overly bright cocktail. ‘Aloha!’ he says, holding it up in a toast. Then, reading the atmosphere, asks Maisie, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Mum’s being Mum.’

  ‘I told her she couldn’t ditch dinner to hang out with a stranger,’ says Becky, matter-of-fact.

  ‘Can we not do this here?’ hisses Maisie, terribly aware that her boy is swimming short lengths behind her back.

  ‘Back to the rooms?’ Adam offers, all neutrality.

  ‘Why do you always do this?’ Maisie says. Now that they are dressed, and behind the solid door of Maisie and Becky’s room, voices are raised, all the way up to how they’re feeling, which is very loud indeed.

  ‘I don’t do anything,’ Becky shouts. ‘Do what?’

  ‘Stop me from doing anything! You don’t trust me to make any decisions. What have I ever done to make you not trust me? I don’t smoke crack. I’m not whoring myself. I hardly leave the house without your written permission! Why don’t you trust me?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t! What the fuck happened to make you like this?’

  Becky takes a deep breath. ‘I trust you, of course I trust you,’ she says. ‘It’s boys your age I don’t trust. They get drunk, they get out of control, they don’t think.’

  ‘You can’t control everyone’s behaviour.’

  ‘It’s my job to protect you.’ For a moment Becky closes her eyes and in the darkness chides herself. She hadn’t even been able to protect herself.

  ‘I’m sixteen tomorrow and then your job is over. I can legally do what the fuck I like.’

  Becky glares at her. ‘Not while you’re under my roof!’

  ‘Then I’ll find another roof! It’ll be better than living in Shawcross prison!’

  Becky collapses down onto one of the two double beds, suddenly exhausted, wishing Adam would hurry up and stop obsessing about the games console in his room and help her with all this: even just to intervene with a stupid joke to distract them both from this maddening, twisting journey down a rabbit hole.

  Maisie glares back at her.

  ‘Fine then,’ sna
ps Becky. ‘Go and live your life. Just don’t expect me to pick up the pieces when you’re gang-raped on the beach.’

  Maisie looks utterly shocked. Becky feels like the words came out of her mouth without her brain’s say so, all overheated and fearful and vicious.

  ‘You’ve got massive problems,’ says Maisie. She grabs her handbag, opens the door, steps through it, and is gone.

  Becky turns her face into her pillow and sobs and sobs. She is radioactive with pain and shame and fury and guilt. And loneliness.

  She pictures herself beating Scott to a bloody pulp with her bare hands, until the individual features of his face are gone, smashed into a uniform pink mush, but it does nothing for her. Nothing will ever be enough for her.

  She blows her nose in the bathroom. Washes her face with cold water from the basin.

  Surveys the over-sized bath with Maisie’s bikini discarded by the plughole and her vast collection of open tubes and pots of metallic-pink powder, creams, pastes and perfume arranged around the sides.

  In the room, Becky perches on the peacock-blue bedspread still flat and made, the iron-smooth pillow dented once from a quick moment checking the hotel’s TV channel. The dark gold curtains are open and quivering with the contrived cold of air-conditioning. She doesn’t know what to do with any of this: the embossed complimentary stationery, the view …

  Why won’t Maisie just shout that she hates her? Instead she pities me, thinks Becky.

  She flies to a knock at the door, but finds only Adam there, brandishing a packet of popcorn. ‘I’ve got a really well-stocked minibar, if dinner’s off the cards? Chez Adam or stay here? Décor is exactly the same though I prefer my paintings.’

  ‘Maisie’s not here. She went off in a strop.’

  ‘Classic fifteen-year-old. It’ll all be different when she’s sixteen.’

  ‘Adam.’

  ‘She’ll be fine. She’s not stupid. She’s not reckless. She’s a really smart kid.’

  ‘She went off without her room key card.’

  ‘Well, you’re here.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I go after her?’

  ‘Maybe not?’