‘What’s your film going to be about then?’
‘It’s a new take on Medea, the Greek play?’ She hates that she made this a question.
‘The one about the woman who kills her kids?’
‘Spoiler alert,’ she says wryly.
‘Get Richard Curtis to take a pass.’
‘The feel-good, lighter side of infanticide. Honey, I’ve Killed the Kids.’
‘Quite. Yeah, but seriously, that sounds fucking dark.’
‘It is.’
‘Woman commits murder,’ he says thoughtfully. ‘Get it right and it’s Oscar-bait though, isn’t it?’
‘I think there’s more to it.’
‘Think what you like, it’s still going to be the murderous mum movie. Punters think in single sentences, believe me.’
Becky is beginning to find him a little patronizing. She wants to say, Don’t tell me how the punters think. She wants to say that she actually works in the industry: unlike him who simply skirts around its edges, writing about it. But she knows better than to get him off-side, he might review Medea one day, and so instead she says: ‘James Cameron’s single sentence: Romeo and Juliet on a sinking boat.’
‘A billion dollars later …’ He laughs.
‘Time-travelling robot tries to kill someone.’ She’s good at this game.
He smiles, impressed. ‘So what’s your Medea sentence if it isn’t Mum murders her kids?’
‘Woman struggles with toxic controlling masculinity and discovers that her power lies in being overlooked and underestimated. But the journey breaks her.’
‘Maybe don’t put that on the poster.’
She laughs.
‘You’ve got Matthew behind it,’ continues Alex. ‘That’s definitely something to put on the poster: From the guy who’s made a bunch of things you liked. Goes a long way.’
‘He’s only exec’ing this one.’
Such vanity! Alex spots it in an instant. She sees it in the smirk he can’t quite hide in time.
‘He’s obviously fond of you.’
He passes her a drink from a tray that is going round and she notices the tan skin covered in a soft down of sun-bleached hair, the curve his forearm makes. She’s seen that curve before, the unmistakable shape of a man who works out, a man who likes to possess strength. She thinks of Scott and his trips to the gym and wonders how many more men with bleached hair and vanity running through their honed muscles she can really take.
She puts her lips to the rim of a heavy-bottomed glass and takes a sip, would consider taking a sip or two more – how nice to drink a whole drink right now, just the one, just enough bitter gin and tonic to take the edge off her sweltering thoughts – but the liquid is sweet and bubbly and she hates it. Sweet and fizzy and alcoholic, a curious cocktail of childhood and adulthood, neither one nor the other, a confusion of the two. She hates it like she hates the alcohol tang of aftershave.
Anyway, she must remain alert and in control and alcohol won’t help that. She glances over at Matthew, willing him to end his call and return to her and get this transaction back on track.
‘How long have you known Matthew?’ she asks Alex, trying to re-anchor herself. He doesn’t bite.
‘Don’t you think killing your children is quite an extreme form of revenge? I’m just interested in how you’ll make an audience not hate her.’
‘They might not love her, they might not agree with her actions, but I think they’ll understand her. They’ll understand her despair at how badly she was treated by her husband. At how she gave Jason stature, children, her love. Then he took it all. Left her with nothing. Just, discarded her. What happens doesn’t come out of nowhere. She’s not a psycho who does the most messed-up thing she can think of. She’s utterly wronged.’
‘Wronged?’
‘Yes?’
‘Your mate Tommy probably felt wronged after the reviews he got for In Golden Square. Didn’t go out and butcher his family though, did he? Let me know if I’ve got that wrong. I’d have to write him an apology.’
Becky feels her foundations shift. She hasn’t got anything solid after all. She has a whole script and yet suddenly it’s all blown into nothing substantial, and so easily. She sees the reviews forming. ‘Implausible.’ ‘Unlikeable.’
‘Haneke gets away with it every time,’ she smiles. ‘People butchered in their homes. Cutting their throats for effect. He doesn’t worry about making people likeable. He says: this is who we might be, if we strip the rest away.’
‘I fucking hate Haneke films.’
‘No you don’t. I read your review of Caché. You gave it four stars.’
His mouth curls into a half-smile. ‘It’s a four- or five-star film. I still hated it.’
‘So maybe you’ll hate my Medea but still give it an OK review.’
‘It certainly sounds well-intentioned.’
‘I’ll join forces with Tommy and pay to have you killed.’
He laughs. Clinks her glass with his own. ‘Biggest compliment you can pay a critic, threatening to dismember them. It’s only then that we know you actually give a shit about what we say.’
She sees it then, beyond his confidence, the part of him that is both vain and anxious. He is courted here only because his reviews are read. But he wants more than that. She understands that. When he teases her, her discomfort flatters him. The moment his opinion can’t touch her, he’ll hate her instead, albeit from a new distance. Is it only women who have to work this hard? she wonders. Or is it just that the exchange between men is more straightforward? Is it the possibility of sex that makes it so much more difficult? Medea comes to her again; resolute, cutting away the trappings of her gender, ready to be unloved, loathed even, for all time. Is that bravery, or has she simply lost too much to bother saving anything?
She wonders what she might say to Alex, were the boot on the other foot. But she cannot discount the fact he
