‘Mum, it’s for you,’ Maisie calls out, before returning to her piles of books and notes in the living room.
‘Rebecca Shawcross?’ asks the young man at the doorstep, glancing at his phone screen.
She is expecting a package to sign for: contracts or new bound scripts from the office, or perhaps that hand-made photo album she’d ordered for Maisie’s birthday. Here at last.
‘Can I help you with something?’ She wipes her palms down her jeans.
He glances up at her with pale green, watchful eyes, circled with dry flaking skin and red patches. He looks like an iguana, she thinks. ‘I’m from The Sun newspaper,’ he says. ‘I need a quote.’
She grips the doorframe with one hand to control the anxious quiver that has set itself waving through her blood. ‘What about?’
‘The allegations made by Amber Heath against Matthew Kingsman.’
She thinks the fire engine-red T-shirt he is wearing is too bright and that his wax jacket has too many pockets. He looks like the pixelated screen of a computer game and why won’t her thoughts stop skirting, tripping, glitching?
‘I don’t think any allegations have been made, have they?’
‘Yeah, all right, she didn’t outright name him, but everyone knows she’s talking about Matthew Kingsman.’
‘So what’s your question?’ she says impatiently.
‘Amber Heath seems to be alleging,’ he is speaking slowly, as if to a very young child, ‘that she was raped by Matthew Kingsman. Do you have any comment about that?’
‘She seems to be alleging?’
‘Do you have a comment about it?’
‘I’m not going to comment on rumours and gossip. Nobody should.’
The doorframe in her grip feels like a monumental shield.
‘What about your film?’
‘What about it?’
‘I heard it’s fallen apart over this.’
‘That’s not true. And look, I know this is your job, so I’m not being an arsehole about it, but I can’t spend all day going through everything that’s not true in the world. So we should probably leave it there. Thanks.’
She closes the door on him.
Is it true? Has her film died?
She rests her forehead against the cool, painted wood but it does nothing to stop the waters from rising around her. Adam is leaving them, heading for Kate’s bed. Her film is shrivelling into dust. She has no map, no boundary, no place to go, no beacon, no co-ordinates with which to navigate her past, present and future, and there is no end in sight for her anger and sadness. She has a void. She has toxic grime. She fears these will swell, now that their bounds are fraying, like an aggressive cancer, an unwanted, metastasizing thing piling on weight and kicking against her from her own insides.
How to hold onto her film, save Matthew, save the company and save herself? Her mind tingles and crackles with only small, weak possibilities. She doesn’t have anything good. Isn’t it her job to solve this?
‘When’s dinner?’ calls Maisie, but Becky doesn’t know what to say in response. She can’t think about food, routine, basic needs like hunger or thirst or exhaustion. She runs quickly and quietly up the stairs and closes the door so as not to make a sound. Through the bedroom window she can see the journalist leaning against a car bonnet, tapping something into his mobile phone.
She needs guidance. Needs not to feel so alone in her fear.
She dials Matthew’s mobile number.
‘Matthew, I …’ She wants to ask him is it true, is her film really dead? ‘There’s a journalist at my door wanting a quote about you. About Amber.’
There is a pause on the line and she wonders whether he is angry with her for calling him. Whether she’s done the wrong thing by adding to his worries. She should be able to handle this.
‘You have to ignore him, if you can, ignore him.’
Had she ignored him enough? Had she said too much?
‘How long is this going to last?’ she says.
‘I don’t know. This hasn’t happened to me before.’ There is a tightness and anger edging his voice.
‘I’m not complaining,’ she says quickly. ‘I know this is horrendous for you. I just wanted to ask, I mean I don’t know, what to, you know, I didn’t say, well, what should I say?’
‘I don’t know. Nice things!’ He sounds almost amused. ‘Tell the truth, Becky. Say that’s not the man you know. I just spoke to Pips.’ He is solemn now, talking about Pips, Matthew’s pet name for his son Bart, a year younger than Maisie. ‘Someone tried to talk to him as he came home from school.’
‘Oh God. They’re such shits.’
Becky can’t help but picture it. The child being asked those questions: Is the man who loves you also a man who holds down women who are not your mother, and rapes them on the same rug where you still open your birthday present?
‘Pips is so upset.’ There is a wobble in Matthew’s voice, and it is this that fills her with rage that this arrogant and bloodthirsty journalist is taking up space, her space, outside her house.
She hangs up. Hammers down the steps. Opens the door with so much force the joint of her arm stretches and burns with pain.
‘Matthew Kingsman is a good man,’ she spits. ‘He’s a family man who loves his wife and kids. He’s worked hard over decades to build a company that supports talented film-makers. He invests in women as staff and in telling women’s stories on screen. I’ve never seen anything to make me doubt him. These allegations are terribly hurtful and destructive and people should think twice before acting
