He concludes by saying that he has tried to reach out to Amber to talk to her, but hasn’t succeeded. He wants to wish her well, and to urge people involved in spreading malicious rumours, both at his expense and at Amber’s, to reflect before they join the feeding frenzy. We all gossip. That’s human nature, says Matthew. He’s been telling stories for decades now. He knows how quickly a good one travels. But there’s a crucial difference between fact and fiction. Or at least, there ought to be.
There is a picture, lifted from a professional photographers’ online portfolio, of Matthew looking tanned and at ease with his family in the living room of their house. Piano in the corner. Black and white.
The journalist quotes some anonymous sources:
One says she’s vengeful.
The other, a film producer, name withheld, mentions that Amber made a pass at him for a part.
The journalist finishes with ruminative remarks about stories and storytellers that echo Matthew’s points.
The article is written by Alex Simms.
Becky Googles his picture and, as she suspected, this is the same Alex she met in Cannes. Matthew’s old mucker. His passport to the best parties.
Becky’s hands are cold and they quiver at the edge of the phone.
She wonders whether she wouldn’t just do the same if she was in trouble: call a friend and get them to help out, corroborate her point of view. Give the world her truth, as she saw it.
You walk over glass for friends like that.
Becky runs a quick search on Amber Heath and finds that off the back of Matthew’s statement ‘mentioning’ her mental wellbeing, other stories have been mushrooming all over the internet in the last few hours.
Becky swipes through the pictures of Amber Heath tripping up, wearing short skirts, shocking-pink bra straps loose and hanging, falling out of cars – outside night clubs and restaurants. As much as they could get of her body without it being inappropriate or illegal to print. Elastic long limbs and bloodshot eyes and messed-up hair. She looks so young in the pictures, early twenties, perhaps – chubbier then, and just breaking out.
An ex-boyfriend of Amber Heath’s, who used to supply the highs, talks about why he broke it off and why he thinks Amber is trying to stitch this producer up.
Emotional. Ambitious. Someone who would do anything to feed her ambition.
There’s a blurred cameraphone picture of her cutting a line, fishnet tights and garter, legs crossed over, white of the kneecap captured by the flash. It’s grey and white, pixelated, almost, but apparently it’s definitely her.
Here is one of Amber and Ollie in a car together, trying to shield themselves from paparazzi flashes. The piece that accompanies it asks questions about calling time on ‘anonymous sources’ and goes on to list dozens of whispers about Amber. If it means to defend her, it just ends up looking like a compendium of Amber’s worst hits.
Matthew is spinning Amber, Becky thinks – twisting and rolling her and leaving her to hang by her threads, a dancing skeleton puppet tangled in its own strings.
‘What are you reading, Mum? They’re going to be here soon, have we done everything on the list?’ Maisie is flitting around the kitchen, stirring this, poking that. She looks up at Becky, trying to understand her inaction, frowns. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Matthew’s released a statement calling into question Amber’s mental wellbeing,’ Becky says.
Maisie looks confused. ‘But she probably is a bit unstable. You even said …’
‘And now everyone’s jumped on her as someone who is messy and …’
Maisie can’t see the spark of the touchpaper as it lights within Becky. Her mother has been tipped back into a past where she is unable to get out of bed, toggling between tears and panic, unable to take prescription antidepressants because of the baby growing inside her. Her mother is diving between that memory and the image she most feared: Amber’s life arrested. Unable to get out of her own bed.
‘They don’t have to judge her mental stability in the papers!’ says Becky, tears pricking her eyes. ‘Like somehow it, and therefore she, is to blame for the thing that’s made her feel bad. She doesn’t deserve to have this splashed about everywhere. Nobody will hire her again.’
Damaged, damaged, damage.
Done with this body.
The thoughts come despite Becky’s resistance.
She takes a deep breath and tries to swallow back her tears and anger.
‘Mum? Are you OK? Can you even hear me? Oh my God, why are you crying?’
She hates herself. She thinks of the miserable-looking girl on the kitchen floor pinned underneath Matthew. She sees now that she was pushing him away and yes, he pinned her arm back, holding her down at the wrist. Now Becky cries for her. She cries and she cries and she cries and thinks she must do something, she must do something about all this.
‘I’m gonna call Dad,’ says Maisie.
‘Don’t. I’m OK.’
‘You’re being weird.’
‘I just feel really sad for her. And angry. She didn’t cause this situation. A man decided to talk about her. It’s not fair.’
Becky puts a palm over her mouth, gasping silently as a piece of the past dislodges and slips inside her. Who is she to judge when she did the very same thing?
She crammed the gap in her history with the most readily available story. Inside her mind she condemned Scott for a crime without either trial or evidence, and she thinks, at speed, the thoughts crash into themselves, she must at least try and get that evidence now. What if she followed that blue-veined line to his office and tore the fucking tuxedo that he’s planning on wearing to his awards ceremony right off its hanger? Stamped and spat on it? Would it help her live her life in peace to know what the truth of all of it is? Whatever the fall-out, surely it’s worth risking for peace of mind?
As Maisie makes the finishing touches to the table before the guests arrive, she pushes her phone into Becky’s hand. ‘Sorry, Mum, but
