‘No. I’ll start making those calls.’ Becky finds herself almost looking forward to making those calls, to convincing Emilia and Sharon of how they need to think about this. She finds herself looking forward to the moment she can call him and say, It’s fine, it’s done – to making him proud of her.
‘You do have another question. Be honest.’
‘I don’t …’
‘Surely you want to know if I’ve slept with Amber? I’d be asking that question.’
For a moment he lets that hang there and she wonders if she is being challenged to confess: I was there, I saw you, I know you’ve fucked her. But I don’t know what it meant, what I saw.
‘The answer is yes, I have,’ says Matthew. And these are the words that seal the deal for Becky. An explanation for the two being together on the kitchen floor. He isn’t trying to lie to her. She feels a flood of relief, a tension easing that she hadn’t fully acknowledged. ‘I’ve cheated on Antonia before. We’ve muddled through. Antonia has also … I’m sorry. Probably you don’t want to hear any of this. A middle-aged couple’s assorted indiscretions. But I want to be straight with you.’
‘Matthew, you don’t owe me, you know, I hope you don’t …’
‘We’ve always kept it between us. But now … I mean, what do I say? Do I tell the press: No, not true, never been alone with Amber? That fiction would crumble quickly and then I’d look like a liar. I would be proven a liar. But if the alternative is telling them, Yes, we’ve fucked but it was consensual? Then I ruin my family. I have to ask myself, who do I owe the truth to? To my wife I owe the ability to hold her head up in front of our friends. I owe my children their family. I owe Amber … less than any one of those people. I didn’t owe her that part either. And I owe the press nothing at all, though they don’t like settling for that. And then I suppose I have to ask myself, what do I owe you, Becky?’
This time she assumes that the question is rhetorical and that she can afford to sit in silence and wait to be given his answer. But instead he sits back, and she realizes that he may, after all, be waiting for her.
‘You’ve supported my whole career,’ she tells him. ‘You don’t owe me anything. It’s me who owes you.’
Matthew’s eyes fill with tears. He takes Becky’s hand. ‘Thank you. I know how it costs friends to weather this kind of thing together. But you don’t forget the ones who stick by you. I promise you that. You walk over glass for those friends, for the rest of your life. Believe me.’
It is the first time he has ever referred to her as his friend.
After a moment he releases her and, as if a little ashamed of his show of feeling, rises and walks to his desk to check a notebook. Becky guesses that he’s not really looking at anything, but that he simply doesn’t know how to end their meeting. As an employee he told her when the meeting is over; as her friend, how is it done?
‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to call Sharon now,’ Becky volunteers.
‘Good. Let me know when you’ve done it and I’ll set up a nice dinner for us all – just you and me, Emilia and Sharon – so we can celebrate properly. I’ll take you all to a place that’s just opened in Fitzrovia. Private room. Have Siobhan look for a date we can all do.’
He is back to business. He reaches for the phone on his desk and, without looking up at her again, expertly taps in a long number. An American number, she guesses.
She slips out of his office and goes to her own desk as Matthew’s friend and fellow producer. In the trenches together, doing what they do – putting out fires and making room for magic. It is her and Matthew together now; they are the people with projects on the line. In the middle of all this ugliness, has she somehow been promoted? Is that actually what is happening now? she wonders, feeling the granules of the favour she is doing him dissolve into water. Transaction complete.
She feels such relief there is an explanation for it all, and just the slightest knot in her stomach at his genius, his sleight of hand: how he has turned the shape in her head, the possibility of a woman who was receiving something she did not want, into the woman who was not getting enough of what she wanted.
She looks out of the window and sees the clouds form animal shapes, or just clouds. The man is a magician, an alchemist, a god.
Chapter 15
A few days later, Becky is gingerly lifting hot mugs and plates from the dishwasher back into their homes. She is tired after last night when she, Matthew, Sharon and Emilia met to share toasts and successes, stories and champagne at a new gloss-black-tabled Japanese restaurant in town. The mood had been upbeat, those unpleasant allegations dispatched with, far in advance.
They had eaten diver scallops, Wagyu beef and mountains of sashimi. Sharon told them about getting stuck halfway up Mount Kenya with the giardia bacteria multiplying in her gut. The night ended with too many tequila slammers, which Becky managed to avoid by pretending she had a call to make. Out on the pavement after midnight, they had all turned to their Uber apps, high and happy and bonded.
‘The potatoes! We’ve got to get the potatoes on!’ Maisie’s voice rises in amusement and frustration. ‘Come on Mum, that’s your job.’ She is grasping a vegetable peeler in wet hands and looking annoyed enough to use it on her mother.
Becky looks up, disorientated. ‘Sorry, yes.’
‘I worry about you sometimes.’
Becky smiles. ‘What’s to worry about?
