She is overwhelmed and stands up to leave, unsure whether she can weather this assault, this way of taking him in after all these years. But then the door opens and he sweeps in, bringing a strong cloud of clean laundry and pepper-spiked citrus. Her heart stops. She knows this smell, has inhaled it on tester strips in the basement of Selfridges once, maybe twice: Dior Sauvage, his choice of aftershave.
But that smell is just strong enough to drown out the will to fly and instead light the touchpaper to fight, anger in her veins bolstered with the knowledge that confrontation is, and always has been the only true way to get him out of her system.
‘Sorry!’ he says, not yet seeing her, not properly. ‘Having a mental morning already! Anyway …’
Becky stands and they shake hands, and Scott recognizes her while his hand is still in hers.
‘Becky?’
‘Hi, Scott.’
A long silence. She wonders if he will run, or call someone to drag her out. But instead he frowns, then laughs. There are no dark circles or creases under his eyes. Underneath the duck-egg blue of his jacket, this well-tailored jacket, is a white T-shirt – cellophane packaging removed only that morning, she bets, crumpled and discarded on the floor of his luxury apartment for someone else to collect and throw away. God she hates him.
‘I was expecting someone called Karin. You haven’t changed your name, have you?’
‘No,’ says Becky.
‘OK. Well … this is unexpected! Um … Did you want to discuss investment stuff or …?’ He leaves the question trailing for her to fill in.
Where does she begin?
‘How long’s it even been?’ he says.
‘A bit over sixteen years since I last saw you.’
‘Wow. You haven’t changed.’
‘I think I have.’
‘Well … you look good.’ He is being bright and sparky, the Scott of a named house plant and pretty coffees and hangin’ with his big sister Gemma. Still, she can see that he is unnerved. Well, good.
‘Do you remember that party we were both at in Hampstead?’
He squints, remembers. ‘At that girl Amy’s house? Do you want to sit down?’
‘No I don’t want to sit down. I don’t know whose house it was.’
‘OK,’ he says cautiously. ‘The same party we did a pill in her parents’ amazing wardrobe room kind of thing?’ He has dropped his voice, like he might be overheard.
‘Yes. I wanted to talk about what happened between you and me.’ Her voice wobbles a little and she digs her fingernails into her palm.
‘Like what?’ says Scott. He has dropped all the peppiness. Now he is nothing but anxious. She can’t quite bring herself to say it though.
‘After Spin the Bottle.’
‘Yeah, but what?’
‘I mean what happened. Sexually.’ There. That’s as close as she can get.
Scott looks down, embarrassed. ‘Christ,’ he says softly. ‘Did that really upset you?’ Then, ‘Is that what you want to talk about? Now? Look, I don’t remember everything. We were pretty fucked up.’
She nods, unable to trust herself to say anything more. There are tears in her eyes, and she lets them gather there, blurring her view, before she wipes them across her cheeks. She feels make-up stinging the inside rims of her eyes and knows it will have smudged coal black across her face, making her look polluted and messy and out of control.
‘OK,’ he says. ‘Well … I did actually think about it afterwards and I felt bad about it.’
‘Bad about what, Scott?’ Say it. Say it to my face.
‘We’d kissed for what, like, a few seconds or something? And then I went straight to trying to get into your pants. I opened your jeans and I was going to put my hand down there but then you obviously didn’t want to, so I stopped. I’m really sorry if it upset you. I was just … To tell you the truth, I just wanted to do it so I could say I’d done it. I didn’t even really want to.’ He looks at her, concerned. ‘Can I get you some water? You don’t look good.’
‘Keep talking.’ She can taste something sour in her mouth. It is bile rising from deep inside her, or it is something bitter that has been in the membranes of her mouth for as long as she can remember that releases itself now that she is biting down hard.
‘Um … then we did a pill each and things got really messy. I mean, they were really strong. I got them off my sister’s dealer. I hadn’t done one of those before. It was fun, but then we both got sort of spaced-out. I think you were quite pissed when we started? I don’t know. It seemed to hit you a bit harder.’
‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know. We hung out in there for ages. And the rest of the party went downstairs. I think Amy kicked everyone out of the bedrooms but she didn’t find us so we were like … own private Narnia. We had fun.’ He reaches for her hand and she flinches back. ‘I am so sorry if I crossed a line, doing what I did.’
‘And then what?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Tell me everything that happened.’
‘You basically passed out. I think mostly from the booze. I was still up and quite awake. And then I needed to go home so I was like, do I leave you there on the floor or what? So I put you in the bed in the main room.’
‘Don’t miss things out. Did you take off my clothes?’
‘Becky, what—’
‘Come on.’
‘Yes, I took off your jeans so you’d be more comfortable. I tucked you in. I think I put you in the recovery position in case you threw up. And then I went downstairs. I had a bit of a dance and a smoke and then I just started to feel a bit wrecked so I went back to Bento’s house with him. His parents were away in their cottage so we could just chill all day.’
‘Is that it?’
‘That is literally everything. And can you please tell me what this is about now, because you’re really worrying me.’
Her heartbeat is pounding in her ears. He is so smooth. So convincing. Making out like unbuttoning her jeans was the worst thing he’d ever done. Apologizing for that! He’s just like Matthew, she thinks. Making her doubt everything except him. Has he forgotten his confession? Can he possibly think she has forgotten it?
‘On my last day at that school I came and found you. I said something to you. Do you remember that?’ spits Becky.
‘Yes.’
‘What did I say to you?’
‘You told me that you knew about me and I begged you not to tell anyone,’ says Scott. ‘And so far as I know, you never did. I don’t know why you said it to me. I’ve wanted to ask you that.’
‘I told you that I knew!’ She is louder now.
His face is pale, blank, there is no flicker, so shine, no register, no nothing.
How dare he! She wants to smash the bones beneath his skin, and make black and purple bruising inside him, to make him sting and break and cry and fucking die the same way she did.
The pretence of good humour has burnt off him now and his words are chopped and sharp. ‘OK, I think maybe we’re done. Nice seeing you again.’
‘Stop fucking with me!’ Her grip tightens now, curling round the scissors, pressing deep now.
‘Jesus.’ He turns away from her. She realizes that he’s going for the door. She jumps up and puts her body in his way.
‘You bastard!’ She is weeping now. She tries to hit him. He catches her wrists. He works out three times a week. He easily grips her. ‘You fucking bastard! How could you do that to me?’
‘Do what? Do what?’
She thrashes to get at him, to beat and punish him.
‘You admitted it! You asked me not to tell anyone!’
‘I know!’
‘So say it!’
‘That I’m gay? What the fuck is going on? I don’t understand!’
The wind goes out of her. She crumples, her wrists still gripped by him, so that for a moment she hangs like a broken marionette, arms aloft, head hanging down. Thick wrenching sobs.
; She expects him to step over her and call the police. But instead he lowers her to the floor, crouches down with her.
‘Becky, please, tell me what you’re trying to say.’
She can’t speak. A low moan tunnels out of her.
‘Becky?’ He gently lifts her up, so that they are face to face. There are tears in his eyes. ‘I thought maybe I said something to you that night? Or that maybe you figured out because I was happy to stop trying to do anything with you … You worked out I was gay. You looked so disgusted with me. I just panicked.’
Becky has built a foundation on hating him. And now it is crumbling.
‘I was so desperate. I thought everyone could see it on me. I just wanted people to know we’d gone off together. Maybe think we were a thing, so they wouldn’t start wondering. And then we had a really good time. Or at least I did. I just don’t understand what this is.’
‘You didn’t do anything with me after that?’
‘God no. I told the guys the next day that I fingered you. I’m really sorry. That was so gross of me, and it was utter bullshit. I just wanted them to think I had.’
‘You just left me sleeping in that bed?’
‘Becky, what happened? Seriously?’ He sits back, thoughtful. ‘That party was in September right?’ His thoughts coalesce. ‘Did you get pregnant that night?’ She nods. ‘With Adam Thewlis, wasn’t it?’
‘No. I don’t know who got me pregnant. I don’t know who …’ She chokes and his face clouds with understanding.
‘Oh. Oh shit. Oh fucking hell.’ Scott is crying freely now. A splayed palm at his heart, eyes welling with tears again. What she sees is a man who hates to be thought of badly. Who tries to be good. He is telling the truth. She knows it in her bones.
‘You thought I’d raped you?’ he says.
She nods.
‘You’ve thought that for …?’
‘Since that night,’ she says.
‘Oh Becky. Oh fuck. Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘You were the last person I remember.’
‘I could never have …’
‘I believe you. I’m sorry.’
‘You know how I said I went home with Bento? Ben Towbridge? We’d been sort of trying things out with each other for about a month. Both in the closet. Barely even out of the closet with each other, even giving each other – well, anyway. I mean, I was always gay. My parents though … They were – they still are – massive homophobes. I’m just waiting for them to die before I’m out-out.’ He helps Becky off the floor and into one of the meeting-room chairs, sitting down next to her, hands clasping hers. ‘What happened?’ he asks her.
‘I thought it was you,’ she says. ‘I’ve never known what happened. It’s been killing me.’
‘And you had the baby?’
‘Yes. She’s sixteen now. She’s the best thing in my life.’
‘Fuck me, that’s complicated though.’
‘Not to her. She doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Apart from Adam. She thinks Adam’s her dad.’
‘And he took that on?’
‘I was going to kill myself. He told my parents and his parents that he was the father. It gave my parents someone else to be angry with and … then I couldn’t do it. Because he’d have been blamed and that wouldn’t have been fair. I was going to give the baby up. But then I held her and … well …’
‘And he carried on? Saying she was his?’ Scott wipes his eyes. ‘That is love. Fuck me, that is love. Tell me you got married?’
Becky shakes her head. ‘I’ve been a real mess. It really fucked me up.’
‘Of course it did.’
‘At least I had you.’
‘What?’
‘I had you to hate. And now I don’t have anything all over again.’
They sit there, holding each other’s hands. She feels like a cork lost on the ocean. She has imagined killing this man. She has wanted him to suffer. And now her hands are in his, and he is crying over her pain.
He tucked her in, in the recovery position in case she was sick.
‘I know it sounds weird,’ he says, ‘but in case you start thinking it must be bullshit and I must be lying …’
‘I believe you.’
‘Just listen. I think you should, like, get a DNA test of me done, or whatever. Even if you think it’s crazy. It’s good you believe me, but have the proof as well.’
She thinks about the scissors in her pocket and how hard she has been gripping them. How crazy her plan feels now. That she was going to shear the evidence from him. And here he is, offering it to her.
He sticks his head out of the meeting-room door and calls out: ‘Yol, could I have some scissors and some tissues in here, please?’
When Yol brings them, looking curious but saying nothing, he snips off a lock of his hair, and swabs the inside of his cheek with one of the tissues. ‘If you want me to do a blood test or something, I’ll always say yes, OK? But at least you’ve got these.’
She takes them, knowing she’ll never use them.
‘You’ve had quite a ride,’ he says to her. ‘Holy shit, Becky.’
They hug one last time as she leaves Scott’s office. In the lift, Becky squeezes her hand into a fist in her pocket and feels sticky blood from where the scissors have punctured a hole in her palm. She wonders if one day she will be so punctured that nothing will remain of her.
And yet, despite feeling damaged, she does not feel drained. She feels something new. A feeling that is quick and sharp and predatory and she is so afraid of it that she begins to run.
There is a darkness building inside her with the realization that she has lost the last of her power. She lacks even a name, now, to test against her pain.
She runs as if there are flames licking at her feet: home, down sun-drenched pavements, past lines of narrow-windowed, residential houses punctuated with baby-blue, grey, baby-pink and pale lime paint-jobs. She runs through estates, cutting across playgrounds and through triangles of green, skirting buggies and slaloming slow-walking toddlers and shoppers. She runs until her legs tingle and lightning bolts drive themselves through her chest cavity each time she stumbles. She runs fast, so fast from the fear that she may have passed the man that travelled into her and stole from her, a thousand times over. She may have passed him on the street striding, pausing, walking, standing still on a corner, glancing up from a phone. He may have been flicking through receipts and notes in a wallet at the corner shop as he held a big carton of milk under his arm like a small dog. All he’d have to do was angle his face a little, allow his hair to fall a little, to peer through its curtain and observe her height, taller than most, her nose, more slanted than most, and her long, long Rapunzel hair.
She is being watched by a face that is bigger and wider than she ever imagined. There is no specific twist or grimace or red-scaled skin. She is being watched by something that holds all skin colours and creeds and religions and there is absolute chaos in the universality, in the possibility of him being anyone. Of his having ebony eyes or snakeskin covering him or a long body or short legs or no hair, a waxy head, an inked head, one of those faces that can look at one moment awful in a photo and at another time beautiful. A son or father or brother or criminal.
He has become everyone.
There will be no more justice deferred to cling to; she has lost that today. The dock is empty. And yet Maisie lives.
Chapter 25
When she returns home, Adam is still in the clothes he slept in, his boxer shorts and a frayed Ramones T-shirt. ‘There you are!’ he says. ‘I thought you’d gone to work.’ He ruffles his hair, still bleary with the morning. ‘I’d have saved you some pancakes if I’d known. Maisie took the rest of them for her lunch. She’s gone in for a revision session thing.’ He pauses. ‘Hey, are you OK?’
She walks a few steps and collapses into him. He pulls her close to him, her ear to his chest. She can hear his heart beating.
‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’
> Adam walks her through to the living room, his arm looped loosely and carefully around her waist. He sits her down on the sofa and drapes a tartan blanket around her shoulders, as if she has been in an explosion and is recovering on the kerbside. He kneels down opposite her and she follows his gaze as it checks her hairline, eyes, cheeks, ears, neck, shoulders for signs of damage and distress.
‘I’m not hurt,’ she says. ‘I went to see Scott this morning.’
Adam knows what this means. He is very still, listening to her.
‘I couldn’t take it any longer,’ Becky says. ‘I had to know why he did it. But he didn’t do it. It wasn’t him.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He’s gay. And I could tell as soon as I got into it. For him it was just some party. He thought … Oh God, he thought I was angry because he tried to go to second base with me.’
‘What would have happened if he’d admitted it?’
‘I’d have had an answer.’
‘He might have wanted a relationship with Maisie. Did you think about that?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about that.’
‘Well, we have to. Imagine finding out your father was … someone who did that. It’d completely and utterly destroy her, Becks. I know this means a lot to you but we have to weigh these things.’
‘I know.’
‘Does he know about Maisie now?’
‘He won’t say anything. I know he won’t say anything. He’s a nice guy.’
‘What’s going on? I mean, confronting Scott?’ He holds her face in his hands.
‘I know, I know, I just wanted to know …’
‘After sixteen years, does it really matter? Like, enough to jeopardize everything else you’ve got? Look at your life. I know there’s been some shit, but there’s also you and me and Maisie. You’re making a film. You’re loved.’
‘Maybe it was that boyfriend of Mary’s. Brendan? He was always a bit weird with me, even when Mary was around.’
‘He’s been dead four years. You’re not going to get answers from him now, are you? I know it’s hard. I know it’s not fair. But if it’s a toss-up between letting one bad moment destroy the rest of your life, against trying to let it go?’
Blurred Lines: The most timely and gripping psychological thriller of 2020 Page 23