Blurred Lines

She makes notes on her Cannes meetings, banishing thoughts of that silken hair spilling out onto the kitchen floor, coming up with six ways to pitch her idea to six different kinds of people.

But she knows what she really wants to do and she knows that it is destructive so she fights it, at first holding her own hand lightly, reassuringly, like a friend. And then when the feeling does not subside, gripping her hand tightly, before grasping at the thin skin and raised veins of her own wrist, holding it tight, as if pulling herself back from a fight. She has agreed, in therapy, that standing up to this instinct is a good thing. Succeeding means she has taken her power back, or something like that; but without sleep all those rules are dissolving at their margins, her desires pushing away old decisions.

Surely if she just does more, the instinct will leave? She clears the washing basket. Cleans surfaces that already gleam. Lays out an array of jams and breakfast cereals despite the fact she never eats breakfast and her daughter’s favourites are firmly established and unflinching.

She means to make a cup of tea next, but somehow before the kettle boils she has opened Scott’s Twitter page and she is already on her way to losing the fight.

Becky has two Twitter accounts: one that is her. And one that isn’t.

The one that isn’t Becky is Melanie. Melanie has a line drawing of a face in the photo caption, all thick and twisty like the pen hasn’t been taken off the page. ‘Melanie Hasn’t Tweeted Yet’ but Melanie follows a few people – thirty-seven corporate accounts like BBC News, Sky News, Popbitch, and another dozen or so famous people, including a TV presenter who crossed the Gobi Desert on foot and whose dinner-party speciality is puffer fish. Then there are forty or so ‘ordinary people’, people who maybe said something funny once or do something unusual or are vocally for or against some issue or other. And she doesn’t check on anything they have to say, because all of them – the corporations, the celebrities, the nobodies – are padding to disguise the fact that Melanie is following Scott.

She knows it’s overkill, but Becky dreads the slip of a fingertip, an accidental ‘like’ or retweet of a Scott comment, anything that might tip him off that Becky Shawcross is monitoring him. Safer not to look directly at him.

Scott has changed his main picture again.

Now Scott is in fancy dress, dressed as Elvis in a maroon button-down shirt, the collar of a leather jacket pulled high around his neck and his hair styled like a whip of black treacle.

It’s not a picture she has seen before.

Perhaps he has been to a party.

She logs into Facebook, via another fake profile account. He friended her without asking questions. He already had 762 friends. Why not welcome another one? Somebody has tagged him at this party. Elvis lives! A grinning friend of his has slung an arm around Scott’s neck. Scott is pouting for the camera in aviators. Not for the first time, he has chosen a costume that allows him to wear sunglasses. He likes to hide his eyes, those giveaway windows to the soul.

She scrolls back through his timeline. She’s seen it all before, a thousand times. His whole life is in her head, or at least those parts that she can get at from the safety of her own flat.

Last year Scott purchased a large indoor fish tank. His colleagues appreciated the cupcakes he bought them one afternoon in Soho. He celebrated the birthday of his oldest house plant and 152 people put hearts by it.

Recently drank espresso Martinis with an old friend who’d flown over from Australia. You’d think he was Australian, with a name like Scott, but he’s English. Like Becky, he was brought up in Hounslow, where the roof tiles vibrate under the flight paths.

And there’s one picture of him that kills her every time now. Taken a year or so ago, it’s like he’s staring right back at her, without the usual sunglasses hiding his eyes, without a care in the world. Without remorse. You don’t get that icy-blue finish to the eyes without going into a shop and buying coloured contact lenses, without swaggering in there, your veins running cold with vanity. In the picture, he’s got an expensive haircut with bits of white blond at the ends. Becky reckons the colour is officially ‘ash blond’. Successful, good-looking, like a boy band member, his hair dipped in ash dye – the ashes of other people. Not a crack in that gorgeous fucking life of his.

She surrenders to it, the scanning and watching distracts her from her twitching hands, from thoughts of the kitchen floor. She’ll read him until Maisie stirs, she knows that now, so she scrolls to champagne glasses intertwined and fizzing. She surfs his flat, job, and the people who love him best (a sister in Belgium, some nieces and nephews). No sign of a significant other; that’s something, at least.

How easily he lives.

But she is breathing quickly now, the energy inside whipping itself into a hot storm with nowhere to go because it’s not enough to see him live his life. It never is. And yet, she has a daughter who relies on her. Everything she wants must be measured against that.

Enough, she tells herself. And so she dresses in jogging bottoms and threads the laces of her running shoes with trembling hands and closes the door behind her with a double then a triple lock. Silently, so as not to wake Maisie, a crackle of worry across her chest about leaving her, but knowing that there are two people to look after. Another edict from another therapist. Self-care. Making time for her.

Becky takes three quick steps, ordering everything inside herself to be quiet, and soon enough she has slipped into a good, quick pace and is running through the streets, heels slamming hard on concrete, landing so as to feel those shockwaves snake up sharp through fibula and tibia. And then, when her chest and muscles ache, she adjusts her gait to save her shin-splints and instead let lungs and thighs scream.

She runs down an alley – she’d never dream of taking it at night and even now, with just the weak morning daylight, she holds her breath in her chest and her keys in her hand like a dagger. Once she’s out the other end, she races for the park where round and round and round she will go, pushing herself faster on each lap.

She lets herself have one lap – only one – where she lets Scott fuck her before she cuts his throat.

Then she is so full of shame. It drums in her ears and leaks out of her tear ducts and flecks her mouth with spittle.

She stops running. Finds a tree. Stands with her back to the rough-edged bark and now she cannot stop what she does next. She curls her hand into a fighter’s fist, making sure her thumb stays on the outside of her second and third knuckles, exactly as she was taught. Then, at the thought of Scott’s flashing smile and icy eyes, at the thought of that woman’s hair shining so bright and gold, her arm stretched so long and thin across the rug, her wrist held, she pummels her thigh. Softly at first, like a drum. And soon enough she is thumping her leg, much harder this time, and imagining all her thoughts, all her feelings, being knocked out of her with every beat, like an old-fashioned washer woman pummelling the dirt out of fabric. Nice and clean, washed away and forgotten.

Soon her leg hurts so much she cannot thump it any more. Underneath her jogging bottoms she knows it will be pink where the flesh has been hammered, and that there will be a yellowish tea-wash stain behind that and that soon the pink patch will go purple and black before it too goes yellow tea-wash. She hammers and punches on the same spot because she is trying to stop something but it is a race she is losing and however much she tries to hold it back, she can’t: her mind ribbons out like it is being released into the wind, sharp claws at each ribbon’s end, thoughts and memories all searching for something, a clue and jigsaw piece, something to make her whole again.

Chapter 3

Hounslow, London

13 September 2003

Becky loves Saturdays. No school all day, and then another day just like it to collapse into after this one’s spent.

Today her parents have gone out to the garden centre and left her in peace to enjoy the high-pitched presenters of Saturday morning television as they leap about in front of butter-yellow and sugar-pink backdrops. When Becky is old enough to do this kind of thing, when it is her turn to interview people, it will be in her contract that she gets to choose the colour of the sofa – hot pink to offset her lime-green leggings, thank you! She will ideally graduate quickly from children’s television into a kind of late teatime, primetime Saturday slot just after the family game shows. And as a presenter she will have a habit of asking tough and yet elegantly emotional questions like, ‘But in the last analysis, how does that actually make you feel?’ Perhaps while reaching out a warm hand in genuine concern. It will sort of be her thing, so that after a while her guests expect it and people will talk about how she was the refreshing opposite of all the old men who do their chat shows.

Becky has a box full of diagrams of the set she will inhabit, drawing each one like a bedroom with four walls. It doesn’t occur to her that you need to put the cameras somewhere, so one wall has to be imaginary. She sees no trickery, no special effects. Just a bright, bubblegum reality that is kind enough to welcome her in, whenever she turns on the television.

Charred burgers and relish for lunch today, the classic Saturday meal in the Shawcross household, complete with Dad complaining about broken tongs and Mum saying he should bloody well do something about it then.

Becky goes to the local pool. In the changing room she watches other women’s bodies as they get in or out of their costumes. As she walks to the water, she is a catwalk model with all eyes on her. When she dives down, she is a dolphin or a jet-ski or a shark. When she returns home later that afternoon the house smells of hot dogs and frying onions: the conciliatory dish her mum offers her dad after a hard day’s arguing.

She calls out from the hallway. ‘It stinks in this house. Will someone please open the window? All my clothes are going to smell of gross oil and onions.’ Then she runs up the steps to her bedroom, two at a time, in a bid to rescue her party outfit.

Downstairs her mum begins a fresh diatribe on her favourite subject, which is ‘being blamed for bloody everything in this house’.

Becky stands at the mirror of her wardrobe in her underwear, wanting to look more sophisticated than she does in these baggy pink cotton knickers bought in bulk by her mum every Christmas. She needs to investigate alternative options. She hates the idea of a G-string, the notion that somehow you are a block of cheddar perpetually on the verge of being halved by a cheese wire. And then there’s the sheer hassle she’d get if she actually bought something nice (comfortable cut, bold-coloured lace) and her mother found them in the washing basket. The torrent of questions that would follow! Who was she thinking of impressing with a pair like that? Who the bloody hell did she think she was? Which boy exactly had she impressed so far? And the crowning glory: what precautions was she taking, and did she know that even condoms can’t prevent pubic lice from spreading?

Becky lays her outfit out on the bed and her make-up on her side table, so that everything is ready. She loves decorating herself: all that nipping and tucking and flaring and wedging, like taking a sharpened pencil and rubber to your outline and adjusting it accordingly.

She holds up a fluorescent-pink vest top with a spaghetti strap which, because it was bought at a flea market lacking a changing room, is too big and needs adjusting so the lace trim of her bra is not on display. She wreathes strings of beads and trails fake pearls about her neck until she is satisfied with how good the concentric circles look against a plain pink background. Then she takes her jeans – tight, low-slung, the fashion – and pours herself into them, ramming the zip closed twice before it stays put.

The next bit takes the longest. She outlines and flicks and smudges and colours in cheeks and eyes until she looks a picture: the best, most sophisticated version of herself, she thinks.

Just before she leaves, she stands a few feet away from the threshold of the kitchen rubbing moisturizer into arms that are dry and chlorinated from the pool, watching as her mum lays out a fresh cloth on the table.

Her dad turns to her and laughs, then says, ‘You look like you’ve fallen in the dressing-up box.’

Becky wants to say, Don’t be a dick, but she won’t risk being sent to her room and having her plans cancelled. Instead she settles for a sarcastic smile and a mumbled, ‘You’re not exactly setting Milan on fire with those Union Jack socks.’

They’re not the kind of parents who insist on collecting their child from a party at a set time. They don’t suggest it and Becky doesn’t ask them to. That’s one good thing about them. She’ll be home when she’s home.

Their party plans had nearly been abandoned because of Mary’s summer cold, which Becky would probably have been OK with, if she’s honest. But now that Mary is on the up, the only sign of her ailment a lower-than-usual voice, left gravelly by a week’s coughing, it’s all back on and they’re arm in arm, walking down the road from Mary’s house, with Mary pushing and pushing to see if Becky will do a pill with her tonight.

Mary is Irish and favours wearing pinafore dresses with band T-shirts rumpled up underneath. She is extremely persuasive. Her hair is terracotta red out of a packet which emphasizes the china white of her skin, which in turn emphasizes the rings of dark under her eyes which are there because she has to get up earlier than her body wants to, she says, which is one more crime that the education system has to answer for. Mary feels that the school week compounds the problem of weekends, which should ideally involve missing at least one whole night’s sleep.

‘So? Are you going to do one with me or not?’

Mary believes that, as friends, you go down together and you come up together. If it’s a good pill then you have a fellow traveller for the night, and if it’s a bad pill then you don’t die alone.

Today, Mary is disappointed about an unsupportive government and disappointed with the bags under her eyes, and Becky can’t quite bear to add to the tally, at least not yet, so she says: ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll take a pill. We’ll see. Yeah, go on then.’

Mary whoops because it is only a party when you are guaranteed to have fun and not die alone. Then she takes out two cigarettes, lights them both and hands Becky one as if smoking cigarettes together is the best way of sealing this deal of togetherness.

It is Saturday night and Becky is feeling good. Her skin feels lit with magpie-bright colours and sparkles, and it fits well. At this moment, walking arm in arm with her best friend, everything is as it should be.

Oh, to have a photograph of that moment, the time before the rest of it happened.

To have that to come back to, to tell yourself: you are still in there, that girl with flying hair and a newly lit cigarette and a whole weekend, a whole life, laid out for the taking. She is not lost to you. Imagine yourself back into that skin and feel the closeness of the fit. Persuade yourself.

But you are not watched by anything other than a fat, ginger housecat, which moments after you pass him forgets you for a rat-rustle in the bushes nearby.

Chapter 4

Becky sits at her kitchen table, skull resting in her hands, the sweat of her running kit rapidly cooling. Suddenly she shakes her head from side to side, like she is trying to unblock water from her ear canals.

Her hands shake as she reaches for her cup of sugar-sweetened tea. There are only minutes left before her daughter rises, before she must pack it all away, every messy part of herself, and instead shower and emerge into the office day clean and effective and capable of more than she feels. And in twelve hours she touches down in Cannes and will need to find yet more energy from somewhere to be extraordinary. Impressive. So much better than her ordinary self.

Her phone dings. Siobhan from the office.

Becky has known her for three years now and they have their taller-than-average heights in common, along with a history of photocopying, office organizing, script reading, and attending to the needs and wants of Matthew. All the things Becky is now shedding.

Something’s going down. Advise turning up on time …

Ding

… early. Ideally? M is in a weird mood. Wants to talk to us.

Becky’s body tenses instinctively, her stomach drawing in as if she is about to be punched there.

Immediately, she thinks: I am to blame for seeing something that wasn’t my business. There would be no point in telling herself that blame is an irrational response – what she feels in that moment comes unbidden, from a place that is fossilized in her bones.

I am to blame for entering his space without permission.

All that time spent preparing for Cannes: choosing and rolling and folding and packing things to decorate herself with: the pretty clothes and the jewel-toned make-up and the bangles and necklaces and perfume. The shameful, wasteful vanity of it all. He’ll cancel the trip, and then sack her from her job. All those years she worked, wasted. All the studying and handbook-reading between toddler meals and screaming baby put-me-downs and pick-me-ups. The evening courses and coursework threaded between hastily arranged pieces of childcare. Not to mention the hours spent reading novels, watching television programmes and films, not for pleasure but to educate herself: studying story construction and characters. Feeling surprised and comforted when some characters sunk into her bones, enough to make her laugh and cry and scream with frustration and sometimes, if she was really lucky, to feel their presence for days and months after … What did people call it? Characters that stayed with you, like a good friend, a true friend who holds your hand at a time of need.

One night, after watching a film about a woman who had fought against the odds to find happiness, all this feeling brimmed out of her and onto the page in the form of a well-worded letter addressed to the Soho townhouse offices of the film’s producer, Matthew Kingsman.

I want to work for you more than anything. I too want to bring stories to people that make them feel what you make them feel: less alone.

It had all been so hard-fought. And soon it would all be gone because she had put herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

She slaps her own wrist. Stupid girl.

‘Hey, Mum.’ Maisie is standing at the doorway to the kitchen in bare feet and white and blue tartan pyjamas – brushed cotton, a Christmas present from Becky – the ropes of her bathrobe hanging down, brushing the floor gently, vines in the wind. ‘Are you all right?’

Becky wipes at her cheeks with flat palms, like she is applying moisturizer. ‘Yes, absolutely fine.’ Reassuring people was something she learnt to do many years ago. One trick amongst many.

Another one: fill a silence with a question of your own.

‘How long did you stay up revising?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Maisie. ‘Late?’

‘It’s important to get some rest as well. You can’t think properly if you’re not getting enough sleep.’

‘You want me to add resting to my already massive timetable?’

Becky smiles. She likes Maisie’s sharp edges. They’ll keep her safe, she hopes. Not an easy walkover, a girl who’ll puncture your feet as you attempt it. ‘What are you working on?’

‘I was doing my physics revision. How long have you been up for?’

‘Do you study the atom bomb?’

‘You mean fission bombs?’

‘I have no idea! If I’d studied them I might be able to answer that …’

‘Anyway, no, we don’t. In our school that’s probably more of an ethics thing than a science thing.’

‘I just always thought it was interesting. A tennis-ball-sized thing flattening a whole city.’

‘Morning, Mum! Can I have some breakfast before we talk about the end of the world?’

Becky smiles and sets about sorting Maisie’s breakfast.

‘I don’t want you to stress about your exams.’

‘Yes you do! I know I need a scholarship to stay at sixth-form and those ten A grades at GCSE aren’t going to magically achieve themselves.’

‘Just don’t let it get on top of you.’

‘I actually slept really well. Did you go to bed? You look rubbish.’

‘Really building my confidence before Cannes.’

‘It’s not like you’re an actress. You don’t have to look sexy for anyone.’

‘True. Well, I’ll cling to that, shall I?’

‘Yep.’

Maisie levels her out. She always has done. There have been times, many of them, that without a child to hold onto she might have fallen off the edge of the world. And here, like a miracle, is a smart-mouthed funny young girl, living under the same roof, loving her more or less unconditionally. Even when she first pushed a pram around the park, round and around, when she thought she could actually feel the gazes land on her soul, heavy with judgement – a feckless teenager with a mewling newborn, a mistake that’ll no doubt be paid for by the state – even then just looking down at her soothed her, pushed her agony to the sides, made space in her for her heart to beat.

Now teenager-mother and baby have morphed to become mother and teenager. And often they are mistaken for sisters – they are almost the same height, have the same long mousy brown hair, the same strong thin nose. Maisie’s eyes are darker and a little larger. Her skin tans in the sun where Becky’s burns. But these are small differences. ‘Cut from the same cloth,’ Maisie’s grandfather is fond of saying. ‘Not much of you in there, Adam, and thank Christ for that!’ Adam, adored by his father all his life, affects outrage before claiming that Maisie has his hairy arms. Becky watches on fondly as they all collapse into more laughter. The joke varies. Sometimes Adam claims she’s going to have his size twelve feet, sometimes it’s his sticky-out ears, but the form is unchanging. Sometimes as the shtick begins Adam meets Becky’s eyes and there is a private understanding before the lines play on. Maisie loves it. Sometimes she prompts it, asking Grandpa T who she looks like, feigning innocence but already grinning in anticipation of which mutant body part Adam will claim for her inheritance.

‘Sorry to have to be away,’ says Becky.

‘No offence, but it’s non-stop pizza when you’re gone so there’s not going to be many tears shed.’

‘I’m going to ask Adam to make a salad.’

‘OK. He can make it and then we’ll both sit there admiring it while we eat our pizzas.’

Becky smiles and her phone dings again. Siobhan:

Scratch that. He is in a really CRAP mood. Something is UP. How long does it take you to pack anyways?

‘Can I go to a sleepover tonight?’

‘Definitely not. It’s a school night.’

‘Mum.’

‘No.’

The silence that falls is plugged with the jet rush of the tap as Becky fills the kettle. She arranges tea bag and mug. Her clothes are stiffening with drying salt.

‘I’ve got to go, Mais,’ Becky says. ‘I only said I’d be half an hour late so I could get myself sorted for this afternoon and so far neither of us has showered or eaten.’

‘How come you get cocktails in the sun with little umbrellas and bits of pineapple and sexy people dressed in Armani and I can’t even go to a boring sleepover?’

‘School night. I admire your tenacity but you’re not going to magically persuade me that Wednesday is followed by Sunday.’ Becky smiles and ruffles her daughter’s hair. ‘Anyway, I thought you were working towards buying those trainers? Put in more revision time instead of going out and you’ll be a step closer to earning them. What are they called again? The Nike neon wattage …’