Blurred Lines

Maisie rolls her eyes. ‘Volt, Mum. Volt is the colour of the trainer, not its electrical charge.’

‘Great, the point is they’re so painfully hip that everyone will want to be your friend then you’ll never be short of an invitation so why not wait …’

‘Nice try but I’m fine with the invite I’ve got right now. Come on, Mum, please let me go? Only one boy is going to be there. He hardly counts.’

‘Definitely not. And it’s not about boys.’

A lie, but an easy one.

Becky takes some bread out of its cellophane bag and lines up two slices next to each other, all the while surveying the line of texts on her phone screen. Her stomach turns slowly at the slick of butter across the bread and twists in irritation at the congealed and messy blackcurrant jam refusing to spread tidily.

‘Who’s Scott?’

The question freezes Becky. How is it even possible that Maisie is asking it? Her laptop is closed. She’s always careful to log out and delete and tidy it all away. Becky is glad that she is facing away from her daughter. Even with years of practice, in moments like this she can be read.

‘He was an explorer. Died at the South Pole.’

‘Funny. Ish. Seriously, are you thinking about dating this guy?’

‘Which guy?’

When Maisie says his name – his full name – Becky feels like she has been cornered. Nowhere left to run.

‘Where’d you hear his name?’

‘You asked me to fix our rubbish Wi-Fi.’

‘And …?’

‘And so I logged into the router to see if anyone’s squatting on our connection and there wasn’t, but what there is is lots of visits to his Twitter and his Facebook and I was like, that’s a bit obsessive, Mum!’

Becky attempts to look calm. Blithe, she tells herself. Unruffled. Everything has to be weighed now. If Maisie asks Adam about Scott, any lie that she tells now will be easily unknotted. Something close to the truth is required.

‘He’s a guy I knew when I was younger. School days.’

‘He’s a sexy guy you used to know!’

‘Not my type.’

‘Why are you looking at him then?’

‘I was curious. He was one of those kids you wonder where he’ll end up. It’s a big bit of my job, taking real people and then making up endings. Sometimes I’ll think about someone I once knew and decide how their story ended and then look them up just to see if I was right.’

‘Oh my God, that’s so weird.’

‘I’m good at it!’

‘No, you need a better hobby than Facebook-stalking people to see if you’re good at making up stories.’

‘Fine. Get me a basketball for my birthday.’

Maisie looks up. ‘I actually thought for a moment you might be thinking of going on a date. And I was like … good! At last.’

‘I’m not against dating. I’m just really busy.’

‘Yeah, but soon all the women your age …’

‘My age? I’m only thirty-two!’

‘Yes, like I said, soon women your age are going to be getting married and having kids …’

‘Jumped the gun there, did I?’

‘Mum. You need to get in there before all the good ones get taken. Go on a date again.’

Maisie takes the plate of bread from her mum’s hands and kisses her cheek. ‘And don’t mess it all up by saying you’ve got a daughter. I know that’s a buzzkill. Get them hooked first, and then drop the clanger that is me.’

‘Begin with a lot of lying?’

‘That’s how online dating works! A lot of small lies, big exaggerations and some massive omissions, like: I’ve got a teenage daughter.’

‘And when I bring them over?’

‘Say I’m the maid.’

Becky laughs now, right from the gut. It feels like it has set off chemicals through her brain and soul.

‘I’m just saying, you don’t always need to be so honest from, like, the first minute.’

‘Thanks for the advice,’ Becky says. ‘You’re too wise.’

‘So.’ Maisie picks up a slice of bread and for a moment gets distracted by some sticky blackcurrants tumbling off the side. ‘I’ve given you excellent advice, cheered you up … quid pro quo.’

Becky knows exactly what’s coming and she can’t help it but she laughs again – all that confidence and persistence Maisie has. Armour against the bad things that will surely happen to her.

‘So can I go to the sleepover?’

‘Where is it?’ Becky leans against the kitchen cupboard and folds her arms, smiling.

‘Not far. Islington.’

‘Whose house?’

‘Jules’ house. Lily and Eva are going as well.’ Maisie is braiding a long section of hair now, eyes focused on her work and evading her mother’s searching gaze.

‘Is Jules a boy or a girl?’

‘He’s a boy from school.’

‘Is he someone’s boyfriend?’

‘Lily likes him.’

‘And who does Jules like?’

‘Oh my God. This isn’t healthy. You need to be dating.’

‘Don’t avoid the question.’

For a moment Maisie looks like she’s going to sulk like she used to when she was five or six. But perhaps sensing there is a battle still worth winning, she finds a way to let it go.

‘I think he likes me.’

‘And what do you think?’

‘I think Lily’s one of my best friends.’

‘Could be quite a complicated evening.’

‘Not really.’

‘Can we talk about drugs?’

‘I’m not selling you drugs. You have to stop asking me, Mum.’

‘Are you going to do drugs?’

‘Do you mean, when I’m trying to get another scholarship am I going to wreck my cerebellum for the sake of what the kids are calling “a high”?’

It’s not what Becky means. She wants to ask: Will anyone drug you? Will you lose your sense of who you are? What if you’re attacked? Will you be unsafe? Who will prey on you? But instead she says:

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll have some wine and maybe a smoke but that’s it. I’m not really up for getting expelled.’

Maisie’s school is beautiful to look at, expensive to attend, and prides itself on a newly strict drugs policy brought in after a sixth-former got caught dealing coke to fifth years. It is a red-brick and sandstone confection of buildings with soaring arches and narrow windows and turrets curled skyward, like an Oxford college. There are playing fields for rugby and hockey, where a fete is held every summer. Every day there are three hot options for lunch, three cold, plus an extensive salad bar including vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free choices. Maisie is there on a full scholarship and, even so, the annual bill for uniform and extracurricular classes and school trips leaves Becky swearing in disbelief and saying things she never thought would come out of her mouth, like ‘There has to be a cheaper way to play lacrosse.’

Becky always feels the gulf between her and other parents, but Maisie seems not to notice it.

The last time Becky went to a parents’ evening at the school, someone mistook her for a sixth-former and asked her for directions.

Ding, Siobhan: Brace, brace

‘Mum, can I? I’ll have my own room. Jules is going to sleep in a different room.’

‘I don’t care whether he sleeps in Glasgow.’

‘His parents will be there. You can call his mum if you want to discuss my revision schedule with her.’ The veer into acid sarcasm. The assumption of disappointment. ‘Mum, come on, I’ll be the odd one out if I have to say my mummy won’t let me go.’

Siobhan, ding. Where are you? Seriously, BRACE.

‘Oh for fuck sake, Siobhan, I’m coming,’ Becky shouts at her phone.

Maisie is startled.

‘I have to shower,’ says Becky to Maisie. ‘I’ll talk to Adam about the sleepover.’

She wants to be bold and brave, a pirate queen of a mother who encourages her daughter to take risks and trust her friends and strike out for the horizon set on gathering experiences. But every map marks monsters where the known lands end, and how can Becky be there to unwrap every tentacle, to declaw and defang, to empty the new world of snakes and sharks so that her daughter can wander through it, imagining her own courage, but never having to test it?

Chapter 5

Hampstead, London

13 September 2003

Mary whoops a greeting to someone Becky has never met before which sends a curious surge of panic and betrayal through her: did Mary mislead her when she said that she didn’t know that many people going to this party? This is Hampstead, populated by a lot of North London private school kids. These are not their people, but Mary doesn’t seem to know that.

Everything around her feels too big, too wide, too loud or too high: oversized drum and bass beats tumble out of the amps, there are paintings on the wall bigger than her fridge and a curling staircase worthy of a stage set. A vase on a plinth: Becky has no idea of how to exist in the same space as a plinth, and then it occurs to her that perhaps the truth of it is that none of these things are too grand or too big. Rather she in fact is too lowly and too small – which is an irony, a conundrum, a conflict, a terrible clash in her mind, because when Becky looks around she knows she is far from small. She is, without doubt, the tallest girl there. She is always the tallest girl everywhere, never feeling as imposing as she knows she looks.

A girl with a tiny waist, goth-black hair and electric-pink lipstick turns to Mary and says in the sweetest sing-song voice that she loves her dress. Then Mary yammers on about the shop she bought it at and just like that the two of them are friends, moving on to name all the people they might have in common. Becky doesn’t quite catch every word and instead she just hovers and watches – watches how Mary’s confidence shines from inside her like a disco ball. She wants to stop time and take Mary aside and ask her flat out: How do you do it? How do you draw people to you like that?

Soon Mary and Becky are the girls hanging out with a group of five boys. The boys’ voices are louder than the girls’ and their volume makes Becky feel like they have more to say, even though there are times she listens to their name-calling and football scores and feels like this assumption might not prove true, in the cold light of day. There is, she notices, an asymmetry to every conversation. Mary always says things to get Brendan to listen to her, and Brendan wants his friends to laugh at his jokes. Becky soon realizes that the best things she could say will be things that are funny or interesting, making her a cool friend, or to tell stories that cast Mary in a favourable light. This realization makes it hard to say anything at all, so she settles for watching things play out.

Mary has been friends with Brendan a long time and in the last year Brendan’s currency has begun to rise, what with his new haircut (short at the back and a forelock at the front which he is able to jerk away from his eyes without having to touch it) and a subtle yet clear change in his choice of clothes (bomber jacket especially appealing). Mary has decided to explore the possibility that she and Brendan could be more than just friends. Tonight is about edging further in his direction while at the same time not having to make that attempt solo.

Becky is her Sherpa. There to hold the luggage when Mary summits.

It’s not that Becky doesn’t enjoy being part of this group of people who are increasingly the subject of scrutiny, what with their nice haircuts and confidence and how together they look like a sort of rock band. But there is a limit to how other Becky is prepared to become. She knows she isn’t girly and bubbly and entertaining, nor quite loud enough or tomboy enough or confident enough to be one of the lads. What then, does she bring to the party?

‘You look hot,’ Brendan says, and Becky is so caught up in her thoughts that she thinks he is talking to someone else. He is wearing black jeans and DM boots and a black ‘Lemonheads’ T-shirt. He jerks his hair clear of his face: there is something oddly flattering about the gesture, thinks Becky, like he can be bothered to clear the path for a conversation with her.

She realizes that Brendan has said these words too loudly, in earshot of the other boys – almost as if he needed one of them to hear him say it more than he wanted Becky to hear it. Is this how it’s done? Showing the world what you mean to do before you do it. Is this what confident boys do?

Very quietly she says, ‘Thank you.’

Brendan then turns away to talk to someone else and Becky knows that her subdued response hasn’t given him enough to get his teeth into. She has failed a personality test that she hadn’t chosen to take. Will he tell Mary? Will she laugh? What did he mean by it anyway? Was he just trying to be nice? Is hot a word that he uses ten times a day, for anyone, meaning anything?

Becky feels light-headed. She hasn’t eaten since lunch because her jeans don’t allow for anything other than a flat and therefore empty stomach, but until she can track down some booze to numb the hunger pangs, a cigarette will have to do. She slides one out of the box, suddenly feeling grateful for an action that allows her to bow her head and hide from Brendan and the rest of the room for a moment. She sparks it up, lighter metal scuffing her sore thumb pad, the smoke hitting the back of her throat. The unwelcome taste of coal. But she inhales deeply anyway, elbows bent in at the waist, one forearm slung protectively across her middle, watching Mary talk to the pink-lipsticked girl. The combination of nicotine and hunger is making her feel nauseous. Vomiting on the floor in front of everyone would be totally mortifying but at least it would give her a legitimate excuse to go home.

‘Having a shit time yet?’

She turns to find the speaker leaning back on the same bit of wall as her, grinning. Just the sight of Adam’s sweet smile and the radically diminished size of his otherwise egg-large eyes under the thick-lens glasses makes her feel instantly better. He is wearing a woollen sleeveless jumper, like he does whatever the weather, and the collar of his shirt is thin and un-ironed and poking out of the top. He is skinny and into computer programs and indie rock and there isn’t anyone else at their school much like him. Most boys at their school wear the same brand of everything, making choosing a different colour their sole mark of personality.

‘Sight for sore eyes and all that,’ he says.

‘And you. That’s a particularly thin collar you’re wearing this evening. I assume you’re on the pull?’

‘That’s a particularly large number of necklaces around your neck. Selling them for spare change?’

‘Bitch,’ she says, and they both laugh. ‘Seriously, why didn’t you tell me you were coming to this thing? You knew I was.’

‘Thought I’d leave you dangling over the abyss.’

‘The abyss sucks.’

‘Well here I am now. Massive party times.’ He says it deadpan and she laughs.

‘Who do you know here?’

‘Who don’t I know.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Natalie. We used to go in the paddling pool together. When we were five.’

‘And you swapped digits and stayed in touch?’

‘Actually we are still mates. She’s a gamer.’

‘Adam, you can’t use that word any more. She’s a homosexual.’

‘Well played, Shawcross. Got the gay/gamer gag in before midnight. Who did you come with?’

‘Mary.’

‘Yeah, I mean who does Mary know?’

‘A guy called Brendan.’

‘That prick?’ Adam nods toward Brendan, who is finding it a challenge to add an extra turn-up to the bottom of his jeans because his hair keeps getting in the way. ‘I don’t know why she bothers.’

‘You’re just jealous.’

She says it as a joke but a shadow passes across Adam’s face before his face breaks into a smile. ‘Yeah, you’re right. I want the floppy hair but sadly mine stays out of my eyes on its own.’

‘You can get hair products that’ll make sure it stays in your eyes.’

‘I’ve tried them all. They do nothing for me.’

Adam offers her a drink from a clear glass bottle. Becky sniffs it suspiciously.

‘It’s a bit of everything. A mongrel spirit, like myself.’

‘I’ll try anything once.’

Becky takes a swig, and then another. Any hunger, nausea and nerves dissolve like sugar in hot tea and soon she is smiling at Adam, thank God for Adam, feeling warmer, better, looser, so much more herself.

‘Technically you’re trying everything once, when you drink that,’ he says.

‘Did you put that orange one in there?’ She feels her fingers tingle and her spirits lift a little higher so she drinks more of this disgusting, glorious, magical medicine.

‘If it was in my mum’s cabinet, I decanted it.’

‘That’s genuinely the worst cocktail I’ve ever tried.’

‘That’s crushing, given you only usually drink in London’s finest cocktail bars. Another swallow? Go wild.’

‘I probably shouldn’t drink too much more. I said I’d take a pill with Mary.’

‘Oh my God, you’re so cool.’

‘Don’t be judgy.’

‘No, really, Becky. I was going to go home early but now I want to see you do the special MDMA dancing.’

‘Thank you for your support.’

‘Always.’

‘Do you want to do it with us?’

‘Obviously I’d join you if it didn’t mean associating myself with a group of people that look like a manufactured popular music band.’

‘Popular music? Your snobbery knows no bounds. Anyway, Brendan’s wearing a Lemonheads T-shirt. You two might completely love each other if you got to know each other.’

‘That’s my greatest fear of doing pills.’

‘Not dehydrating and dying?’

‘That’d be fine. But, no, it’s telling Brendan he’s actually a really great guy. Chills me to the core.’

Becky laughs again. They smile at each other, Adam holding her gaze a split second too long. Not long enough to necessarily interpret as anything more than a minor rest in their conversation, but also not short enough to be entirely sure that this is what’s going on. It happens between them sometimes. But it’s OK. It’s acceptable. Largely ignorable.

He breaks the spell with a change in smile. ‘You’ll be fine. Just keep the ambulance on speed dial. Ciao and all that.’ He swings on his heel to leave her.

‘Wait,’ she says. ‘How about a movie night next week? Back to the Future, popcorn, I can smuggle some beers from my dad. My house?’

‘Sure,’ he says, without turning round. ‘That would be fine. Enjoy the party and … just be careful none of them miss their footing and fall on you. Those are some beefy public school types you’re hanging out with now. Scrum down, Shawcross.’

Becky finds some beers on a side table, gets drunk, and watches other people get drunk. She grasps her bottle and tells herself that she can see how alcohol floods the systems of the people around her, making their movements looser, sloppier and more animated. One girl slams her palms against the chest of a boy far taller than her and although she looks angry and sad, he is laughing as he tries to bring her round to his way of thinking. He draws her to him and she thumps his chest with her fists until she gives up and curls into him, laughing.

A girl with corkscrew hair sways and gyrates like no one is watching, or something like that. Becky feels both embarrassed and jealous, watching her dance like she is at a warehouse rave, weaving her arms in between strips of blue and green light.

Mary is talking to Brendan who is standing over her – his arm positioned in a way that makes it look like he is bolstering the wall, as if he is as essential as a ceiling joist. Mary is waving her hands, clearly telling a story that means absolutely everything to her, and she is delighted, in her element, because Brendan is looking at her and laughing and no doubt appreciating her pretty Irish eyes.

As if she hadn’t already known it, this confirms everything for Becky. Soon it is extremely unlikely that she will see Mary for the rest of the night. Despite all their promises it isn’t practical for them to do everything together. They are not Siamese twins. Mary is fun, which is why she is laughing with a boy she really likes. Becky is more introverted, harder to like, she thinks. It occurs to Becky that after tonight Mary may not in fact need her around any more. Having played her role as wingman she will be made redundant, a needless adjunct once Brendan is at the heart of Mary’s life. And then where will Becky belong?

It is no good for Becky to have these thoughts – not at this party, in this house where she doesn’t know anyone. But what can she do? She can’t afford a cab home on her own. Should she find a corner and try to sleep?

She lights another cigarette as Mary walks out of the room holding Brendan’s hand.

How embarrassing to feel so sad about something so small, a friend going off with a boy. Instead of what?

She wonders about the night bus. She can afford that. What’s the route? And can she bear it, drunk and alone and, yes, quite close to crying now?

She feels a hand at her back and a pathetic sense of gratitude rises in her that someone wants to talk.

‘Hey,’ Scott says.

He is tall, blond, good-looking. A friend of Brendan’s. Not quite in his group but not out of it either. One of those people who move around and seem to know how to get along with everyone.

‘There’s a game of Spin the Bottle going on upstairs. Mary and Brendan sent me to get you. We’ve got all the “stuff” up there.’

‘Spin the Bottle?’

‘Yeah, it’s retro. No obligations. You could just do a pill.’

‘What if the bottle says I have to do heroin?’

He doesn’t get her joke fast enough to laugh at it. She wishes she could take it back.

‘So do you want to come?’

Suddenly she knows that, more than anything, she is fed up with standing here with her thoughts. She wants to climb out of her head and have some fun.

This will fill some hours.

To think that she could have chosen the arduous night bus journey. The chances are she’d have made it home uncomfortable and tired, but safe and sound and awake enough the next day to enjoy her mum’s Sunday roast. But then again, she could also have fallen asleep on the top deck and found herself at the depot miles from anywhere, lost and vulnerable.

Followed home.

Or worse.

As it is, she stays at the party. She drains her beer bottle to its last tasteless drop, looks at Scott and tells him, ‘I’m game.’

Chapter 6

The sky is blue in Soho this morning, and the sun casts a clear clean light across a street lined with fabric shops, one after the other, their fronts thrown open and piled high with rolls of cotton and acrylic, satin and lace. The food stalls are still skeletons, too early to be stacked with vats, rolls and wraps for the lunchtime crowd. Soho’s entertainment village is populated by film execs whose heads are full of the edit, TV producers whose minds are bending with budget cuts and the interns in Converse and skinny jeans feeling so hashtag-blessed.

Becky kicks through a messy pile of plane tree bark and fuzz balls on the pavement outside the office, a red-brick townhouse on a square just south of tourist-choked Oxford Street. Her tired eyes itch with pollen and pollution, her nerves still jangling after Maisie’s disgruntled departure for the school bus.

Over the years she has worked for Matthew, she has perfected the art of placating him, knowing whether his grumps are down to hunger or thirst or aggravation with a bullish agent who is fighting for more money and more rights. She takes satisfaction in the feeling that she is somehow unique, being both soother and gatekeeper for a man as special as he. But being the cause of Matthew’s problems? That’s new to her.

How will he raise it with her? ‘Last night, as I was shagging a young woman on my rug …?’ Will he take her aside and say they like rough sex? What is the etiquette here?

Siobhan is standing at the bottom of the staircase ready to greet her, clasping a telephone in each hand. ‘Am I glad to see you? Yes, I am,’ she says. ‘He’s been on my back and now he’s locked himself in his office again and I’ve got about forty things that need his attention. I’m going to make him an extra-milky coffee and slip a beta blocker in there.’