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

by Hannah Begbie

  I called her up the following weekend to say the kids were out of town so she should come to the house to sort things once and for all. I thought I could give her some useful numbers for people. A psychiatrist, for one thing.

  He told the police: We drank a lot. I was having a nice time.

  He said: She sat on my lap. She wasn’t wearing any knickers. It was a seduction.

  Amber, in her evidence, instead offered: He came and sat next to me on the sofa. Put his hand up my skirt and tried to pull my knickers off. I told him no, but I did kiss him. I wanted to leave but I didn’t want to be rude.

  Matthew said: She kissed me and I said something like: Hold on, I’ve already said no to all this. But we got carried away. We’d had a lot to drink. We kissed on the steps all the way up to my bedroom, nearly didn’t make it. And then we were in the bedroom having sex on my bed. I’d never have sex on a floor, let alone a kitchen floor.

  Amber said: He got me onto the kitchen floor. He raped me.

  Matthew said: Of course there is no ‘witness’. It never happened. And there would have been nothing to see. Two people drinking too much wine. That’s all.

  And Becky?

  Becky, shivering with both cold and nerves, had given her evidence: a red and black shoe. A thigh pinned down. A look on Amber’s face. What look? Distress. There was a time she thought it could have been ecstasy but no, she thinks now distress. Had Becky ever been asked by Matthew not to say anything? No. Do you vouch for the character of Matthew Kingsman? Not any more. Can she be sure that what she saw was rape? No. All she can say is that she was there. In the kitchen.

  And now she was here.

  Becky sits down next to Amber.

  Amber Heath, publicly torn down, disbelieved, called a slut and slag and liar.

  ‘Hello again,’ she says.

  Outside the courtroom, the photographers had surged at Becky like baying, drunk football hooligans. Up in her face with their questions and microphones. Camera flashes dazzling her.

  Matthew had the best barristers that money could buy. He was acquitted. Of course he was. He and Amber had met before, slept together before. She went there, knowing that his wife was away. They drank wine. And if he denied having sex on the floor, it was because it was a humiliation too far. To be thought of that way.

  Amber puts her arms around Becky and hugs her for a long time.

  Afterwards, they sit next to each other on the bench, Amber holding Becky’s hand.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come forward when you asked,’ says Becky. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t say anything sooner.’

  ‘But you did say something.’ Amber turns to face her.

  ‘But he was acquitted. It might have been different.’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘They wouldn’t have called you a liar,’ says Becky.

  ‘Some of them still would have.’

  ‘Stop being nice. You tried to kill yourself. You thought you were going mad, and I let that happen.’

  ‘You didn’t know me. And you didn’t owe me anything.’ And then, ‘Why did you do it? In the end?’ asks Amber.

  ‘I thought I owed you an answer. You needed an answer and I had it. I could at least give you that.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d have come forward. I’d have kept quiet.’

  ‘You don’t know that,’ says Becky. ‘Are you not angry with me, Amber?’

  ‘You burned down your whole life for me, when you didn’t have to. I’m not angry with you. You’re my hero.’

  The two look at each other then. Amber squeezes Becky’s hand.

  ‘It really helped. Please believe me.’

  ‘I do,’ says Becky. ‘I believe you.’

  Acknowledgements

  As an ex-agent myself, I’ll start with my old peer-group. Thank you to Veronique Baxter for her ongoing support, ideas, gift for perspective and downright brilliance. Many thanks also to her tireless colleagues Sara Langham, Alice Howe and everyone in the foreign rights department at David Higham Associates. My gratitude to the always erudite and fabulous St John Donald at United Agents for his work on the film and TV side.

  Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins for their enthusiasm for this book – Abbie Salter, Jen Harlow, Liz Dawson, Holly Macdonald, Fionnuala Barrett – in particular my editor Martha Ashby, whose notes I always look forward to. Outrage, determination, amusement, analysis, joy, tears: her talent and humanity are present in every conversation and track-change. It makes working with her an absolute joy and privilege.

  My friends continue to be an essential source of support, love and knowledge. Thank you to the women who have shared their stories of workplace and home. During my research a number of friends offered their particular expertise across various technical matters: Rupert Russell on court procedure, Melissa Case on criminal and family justice policy and imposter syndrome, Marianna Turner on medical general practice, Heather Brearey on the workings of both the police force and the teenage mind. Thanks also to Negeen Yazdi and Damien Jones for sharing their insights into the film industry, from international film financing to the colour of the beach umbrellas at Cannes. Any mistakes are entirely my own.

  Many others supported me during the writing of this book. Zofia Sagan and Emily Pedder both deserve a particularly extended virtual-hug of thanks.

  Family, always. The unerring belief and enthusiasm and love of the Begbie family: Mum, Dad, Louise – thank you. And all the Edges for their support and love. My best friend, Melissa, for always talking things through, around and over.

  I gratefully acknowledge the works of several authors whose books I read in preparation for writing: Rebecca Solnit, Laura Bates, Jessica Valenti, Rose McGowan, Deborah Frances-White and Brené Brown. And last but not least, a big thanks to Euripides, dead for a long time but still bitingly relevant.

  A huge, warm thank you to my two sons Jack and Griffin who, when I emerge from writing, exhausted and sometimes disturbed, manage to ground me with their hugs and talk of martial arts and Minecraft. And finally, kisses to my husband – my buddy, my sounding-board and story-breaker, lifetime co-pilot, supporter-in-chief, partner in everything, Tom.

  If you enjoyed Blurred Lines, keep reading for a taste of Hannah Begbie’s first novel Mother.

  PROLOGUE

  We were a normal family for exactly twenty-five days.

  On the second day we brought her home from the hospital in a car seat. We put it down on the black-and-white weave of the living room rug and Dave said, ‘I feel like I can breathe again.’ Because for most of the pregnancy it was like we had held our breaths.

  ‘Dave, come on. She’s almost asleep.’ My smile was fading but his was wide and bright like a row of circus bulbs and part of me thought, let him just enjoy it.

  ‘BABY!’

  His volume made me flinch. ‘Dave, please stop.’

  ‘What? Come on! Mia is here!’

  Mia. Found on page 89 of The Great Big Book of Baby Names and circled like a bingo number. He kissed me on the forehead and I smiled for him. I kissed Mia and there we were, connected in a Russian doll of kisses. What a lovely family, someone looking on might have said.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he whispered. ‘Nothing’s going to get us now.’

  And I believed him. I really think I did.

  It was the kind of summer where everyone knew it was going to be a good one, right from the first days of the end of spring. The week she was born, the doorbell rang twice a day with deliveries of fresh-baked muffins, wrapped packages of soft toys, and cards printed with storks, peppered with sequins.

  Mum, my sister Caroline, Dave’s mum. Our house seemed constantly full of people making the tea, padding in and out of the living room in their socks holding plates of cake, burbling their news. I would look up occasionally, to make a show of listening, but she was always there, cradled in my arms – a tiny person wrapped warm and safe in blankets, peacefully living out her first days in soft, new skin that shone like crushed diamonds.<
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  I am lucky, I thought, in the mornings, as Mum emptied the dishwasher and waxed lyrical about the church pews being cleaned with an alternative furniture polish that had given Sarah-from-six-doors-down a terrible thigh rash.

  I am so fortunate, I thought in the afternoons, as Dave and I walked – no, strolled – in the local park, gripping pram handle and coffee cup, like all the other parents.

  A hood and a hat for the blinding sunlight.

  Balled socks and folded babygros in neat stacks.

  Floral fabric conditioner and frying onions lacing the air and warm, sweet milk everywhere. Bubbling away in me. Poured over the porridge that would feed me, so that I could make yet more milk to feed her. I never felt like an animal, not in the way of feeling hunted or preyed upon, but I also didn’t feel any more complicated than an animal. It was hard to explain exactly. Grazing and feeding her. Sun up, sun down.

  There were plenty of times when, despite how happy I was, how honestly happy I was, I would start to think about the past. But I could always stop myself, because the important thing was that she was here.

  Dave and I had spent ten years together already, looking at each other – across kitchen and restaurant table. Staring and blinking and watching and glancing in bed, meeting rooms, waiting rooms and at parties. De-coding the hidden messages in each other’s eyes. We knew every wrinkle, line and tic in each other: the single eyelash that ran counter to the rest. How the face contorted with laughter and tears.

  The right time, then, to greet something new, a new version of ourselves with her barely there hair and tense red fists wrapped in a cellular blanket – cellular, like the mathematics paper marked with its complicated workings and rubbings out.

  And there were other times, more than I care to remember, when Mia writhed and bobbed and made her warning siren sounds with a rounded mouth. And I worried. Like any mother would. I would pull her away from a feed, the sweat that had once sealed us now escaping, tickling and itching, all the while thinking: She is in pain. Something is hurting her.

  ‘She needs a new nappy, that’s all,’ Dave would say. ‘You’re just worried about things going wrong.’ That smile again.

  Didn’t he know that after ten years together you can tell a genuine smile from a fake smile?

  Why didn’t he say what he meant? Don’t spoil this for us, Cath.

  On the early evening of the twenty-fifth day I drew the curtains against the setting sun and answered a phone call.

  ‘Is this the mother of Baby Freeland?’

  Her mother. Hers.

  Yes, I belonged to her.

  ‘Mia Freeland is her name now.’

  I wanted her tone to change, to lilt into a floral exclamation of how lovely a name, but she was hesitant. She told me that her name was Kirsty and she was a health visitor, based at our local GP practice in Terrence Avenue.

  ‘There were some results from the blood test, the heel-prick test,’ she said.

  I got hold of a flap of skin on the edge of my thumbnail and sucked through my teeth as it tore. Test. My four-letter word. Dave and I had failed so many tests already, each time more stinging than the last. But Mia was here now. Our final pass.

  ‘Are you still there?’ said Kirsty.

  The heel-prick test, yes. They had taken a spot of blood from Mia’s heel when she was only a few days old, like they did with every newborn in the country. I had flinched when the thing like a staple gun had punctured her snow-white skin, so much worse than if it were piercing my own. A card was pressed to this tiny new wound and then lifted away to reveal a roundel of red. Now there were results. They hadn’t told me to expect results.

  ‘Yes, I’m here. Do you phone everyone with their results?’

  ‘Not unless there’s something, you know, definite to say. In Mia’s case they are inconclusive, which means we need to do more tests. Can you come to Atherton General tomorrow morning at eleven?’

  ‘The hospital?’

  ‘Yes, Atherton General, a bit past Clyde Hill … Fourth floor, paediatric outpatients’ reception. They’ll know to expect you.’

  ‘But what are the tests for?’ My stomach twisted and complained.

  ‘Her levels look a bit abnormal.’ There was a pause and paper shuffle. ‘For cystic fibrosis. I’m putting you on hold for a moment.’

  The soft thump of blood drummed its quick new tune in my ears as I googled:

  Cystic fibrosis – A genetic disease in which the lungs and digestive system become clogged with thick and sticky mucus …

  Stomach pain …

  Trouble breathing …

  Must be managed with a time-consuming, daily regimen of medication and physiotherapy …

  Over the years, the lungs become increasingly damaged and eventually stop working properly …

  Debbie Carfax, twenty-three, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at the age of two and has been told she has less than …

  Catching the common cold could kill this young man with cystic fibrosis as he waits for a life-saving lung transplant …

  End-stage cystic fibrosis and how to manage the final days …

  One in every 2,500 babies born in the UK has cystic fibrosis …

  Average age of death …

  Like drowning …

  Just breathe.

  A piece of hold music droned on, vanilla and classical, chosen to calm interminable situations.

  I could feel the adrenalin rise inside me. Everything sharpening, narrowing, ready for flight as I stared at that single question.

  Her levels looked abnormal.

  I understood that there was a level to everything.

  Under the right level, you drowned.

  Above the right level, you overflowed.

  Finally, a new crackle as the hold music was killed.

  ‘Yvonne says it’ll be something called a sweat test. You’ll need to bring lots of blankets for the baby to make her sweat. Do remember that. Blankets. And maybe some snacks and mags to pass the time?’ I had no time to reply before she said, ‘And make sure that your husband is with you. Have you got the address? Paediatric outpatients …’

  ‘Yes. Thank you.’

  ‘Best of luck.’ And with that, Kirsty was gone.

  I hung up, the appointment details scribbled on the back of a tea-bag box with a free T-shirt promotion.

  Make sure your husband is with you is the same thing as saying: Are you sitting down? It’s what a person says before they give you the news that will knock you to the floor and turn out the lights.

  The consultant with a blunt fringe took a deep breath before she said, ‘I am sorry to have to tell you …’

  The hospital, God, just the smell of the place – the mashed potatoes and disinfectant and newly opened bandages – the only way to have kept that air from crawling into my cells would have been to stop breathing altogether.

  I threw up when she told us, but I made it to the sink. Still holding Mia, there was no time to pass her to anyone.

  Everything emptied.

  Click here to keep reading this emotional story of love and obsession …

  About the Author

  Hannah Begbie studied Art History at Cambridge University. She went on to become a talent agent, representing BAFTA and Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning writers and comedians for fifteen years until her youngest son was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis.

  In 2015 she joined the board of The Cystic Fibrosis Trust, to raise awareness and advocate for the CF community. She also enrolled in The Novel Studio course at City University, winning that year’s new writing prize. The book she developed there became her debut novel, Mother. She has since won the RNA Joan Hessayon Award for New Writers 2018.

  Hannah lives in north London with her husband, a screenwriter, and their two sons.

  @hannahbegbie

  /HannahBegbieAuthor

  @hannahbegbie

  Also by Hannah Begbie

  Mother

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