‘You were completely opposed to the idea of us moving in,’ he laughs. ‘I thought that was off the table.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t, it probably should be, now that you’re marrying Kate.’
Adam is laughing a lot now but inside she feels a pure and shocking panic at the thought of losing even an hour of his friendship and his kindness, to Kate. His focus elsewhere. She wants to ask him for his advice, wants to tell him what’s been happening now, wants him to help her decode her past from her present, but now it is as if there is someone else standing in the room with them.
They look at each other for a moment, and then her phone buzzes in her pocket. She has set up a Google Alert for breaking news relating to Amber Heath. And now here it is.
Amber has spoken, typed words on a white notes app page, attached as two images to a single tweet that just says ‘My statement’:
My mental health is good at the moment. I am not a mad woman making wild accusations. I wish Ollie hadn’t said anything, honestly. I didn’t get to decide any of this but now I’ve got photographers camped outside my flat and ex-boyfriends getting offered crazy money to tell journalists I’m a nasty manipulative piece of shit. Matthew Kingsman is making statements about me in the press so I will make mine and then that can be that.
I have gone to the police today and reported that I was raped at a house belonging to a man in the film industry. It was not consensual. We had drunk a lot and we kissed on the sofa but then I wanted to stop. I told him that in clear words. He raped me on his living-room floor. I tried to push him off. I never once said yes. I said no a lot of times. That’s all I can say about that.
I think there was a witness. Someone came in and I saw them see us. I think it was a woman.
If she reads this, I am begging you, can you please come forward? If only to say I’m not crazy and I’m not putting it on for whatever reason.
I am not going to make any more comments on this. Any further enquiries can go via my agent David Barraclough at Total Agents. In the meantime, if you have even a bit of humanity, can you now please leave me and my friends and family alone?
If you are the woman who saw me, you can call the police direct if you don’t want to speak to David. Please, just don’t say nothing.
Becky tries to breathe deeply, relax her face, will her eyes to beam normality. ‘I have to get to bed.’
‘Wait. We were talking. I thought we could have a bit of that rhubarb gin Kate gave me?’
‘What?’ She feels a flash of annoyance at how Kate has even managed to infiltrate what they might drink together. ‘No, sorry, I have to work early in the morning,’ she says. He looks crestfallen, but she can’t focus on him. Only Amber now. ‘Leave the washing up and I’ll do it tomorrow.’
As she hammers up the stairs, statistics float in and out, unbidden, half-remembered from stories and reports that she has read over the years.
Approximately ninety per cent of those who are raped know the perpetrator prior to the offence. Does that put Becky in the remaining ten per cent? Or the ninety per cent? She has never known. She has never felt she belonged anywhere inside those numbers.
She locks herself in the bathroom, sliding her back down the door and huddling there, next to the warmth of the radiator. Clutches her phone close, reading back and forth, again and again, pulling out the possibilities between the reported facts like they are already there, writ large for everyone to see.
Online they are speculating that the witness was Matthew’s wife. What’s her name? Charlotte? Anne? Antonia.
There are only two people in the world who know for certain that ‘the woman in the kitchen’ wasn’t Antonia. Becky, and Antonia.
Does Matthew know it was her?
Amber saw enough to know that it was a woman looking at her. Will she identify Becky from the press picture of the restaurant?
Was there CCTV footage of her entering Matthew’s house? How long is that kept? Will the police really go to those lengths?
The man in the wine shop. Why did she have to make small talk with him? Why not simply buy the thing and leave? Why couldn’t she do that?
Her credit card will prove she was there. Surely the police wouldn’t look there …
She doesn’t know what to do.
Should she come forward and say she was there?
If asked, should she say she got all the way to Matthew’s door perhaps, but turned back? Never went inside. Would that be enough?
But if she came forward now she’d put her own livelihood at risk, the career she’s been building, Medea, her growing reputation. And what would Maisie think of her if she found out? It would create problems just at a time when they both need to be focused and stable. She must be stable.
She thinks of the burnt pan and the Volt trainers, those petty things she’d been concerned about earlier in the evening, and what Adam said: maybe he was right when he said the universe puts good things and good people in your path. It’s important to be able to honour that.
Matthew has been so kind and generous this past year, she’d be nowhere without him. Surely Becky owes him more than going to the police and reporting what she may, or may not, have seen? Surely she owes him so much more than a betrayal?
Can she say nothing?
Chapter 17
The next evening, Becky slices through mushrooms,
