She’d left it there. For a few days it had been enough but then, as the sludgy feelings sunk back in, she’d returned to the computer and searched Skyscanner for flights, thinking: What if I got on that 6am EasyJet flight? Arrived on the Croisette, waited for someone to let me into the main apartment (lost my key card!), lift to the twelfth floor, bing bong – hello there, he says, answering the door with an espresso cup in one hand – barely finished his sentence before I’m in and driving him through with his own fucking serrated steak knife. Don’t wait around. Back on 3pm flight. Home for an omelette and an early night.
She feels her heart-rate increase, her skin heat, her eyes prickle. She tells herself she must keep her eyes on the present. She is here for herself and her own dreams now. Not him. What did Adam say? Enjoy yourself! Well OK then.
And soon she will meet Matthew who flew in on a different airline to her. Having met briefly at City airport, they parted ways at the first-class lounge and she had felt both envy, and then relief at not having to make impressive and professional conversation for the journey.
For a moment she closes her eyes and allows herself to feel the heat of the sun, a favourite habit since childhood, and a rare thing that has survived to travel with her. She listens to single words break through the loud hum of conversation – yes and gorgeous and absolutely – and the happy music tumbling out of a nearby amp. She allows herself to feel at least a little excitement. She is here to bring life to her baby. And yet, as she begins to move across the grass, through lines and curves and collections of people absorbed in their tasks – meetings, a phone call, a laughingly funny conversation – she feels so uneasy.
She doesn’t look out of place – she is wearing nice enough clothes, and like them she is draped and looped with her rainbow lanyards of accreditation – but the world plays like it is on an IMAX screen in front of her. She steps almost spaceman-slow through this seemingly flawless world of self-belief that smells of suntan lotion and perfume and cigarette smoke. It sounds like glasses toasting and the soft hollow thunk of a linen-suited back-pat and the same easy laughter she hears when people come into the office to see Matthew and share the warm facts of their relationship – the work projects, dinner parties, play dates and holidays. These are the people who wave diamond-punctured sunglasses and gold-buckled bags and drinks in the air to flag each other down after a few weeks of not seeing each other.
For a moment Becky allows herself to imagine what it must feel like to indulge in appetites so freely. Laughing without concern for volume. Writing cheques without concern for bankruptcy. Drinking negronis without concern for conseqence. Then she checks herself. Wipes a sweating palm down the front of her crumpled, aeroplane-upholstery-smelling cotton T-shirt that she now realizes looks cheap even when worn under a blazer. She is not them! She is a woman defined by straight lines, limits and ceilings, not unashamed, unapologetic appetites, for God’s sake.
She thinks again about Scott. Sixteen years since she last saw him in the flesh.
She thinks about the nameless woman lying on the floor of Matthew’s house.
She thinks about Medea, about how she might persuade others to see her as she does, so much more than a villain who murders her own children to punish her husband.
She should go home while she can – this unproduced woman, who makes packed lunches with economy supermarket bread, whose trainer sole is peeling off, whose house carpets need replacing. She can’t do this. Of course she can’t do this.
But it is the thought of Maisie that stops her from turning back: Becky is wearing one of her tops, a ruffled grass-green favourite of hers. Its smell, of incense and old perfume and Maisie’s shampoo, makes her feel like her daughter is close, laughing at her doubts and willing her on as she walks through the hotel’s marbled lobby and into an outside bar area: umbrellas down with the sun, now setting on a burnt-orange tinfoil sea all punctured with the rudders and sails of yachts.
The area is crowded: coffee meetings that have turned into pre-dinner Aperol spritz meetings and chats about family, people, politics – non-film subjects and yet still business. It all deepens relationships, generates trust, creates the foundations for a good deal in the future. Becky knows that business is done on every corner and in every bar in Cannes. She knows there are makeshift offices in apartment blocks rented for the week, that the benches, sofas and bars all become workplaces and playgrounds. No one observes times of day, the standard boundaries for phone calls. She knows because she’s been on the receiving end of those calls in previous years: at the office and in the early hours as she sleeps at home. Now she’s here, for real, amidst the people who have a good time. The people who have something to sell.
She can see Matthew and another man sitting at the
