This is also the truth. She had wanted to make up for the things Maisie lost along the way – all the missed bags of sweets, magazine subscriptions, school trips to Sorrento and Venice. She could have asked Adam for the money for all of that, but she didn’t. He’d done so much already.
‘And, you know,’ her throat tightens at the memory of those Volt trainers he paid for, ‘I wanted to show Maisie this time: Look, this is what hard work gets you.’
‘I understand.’ He smiles. ‘But I’m sure Maisie will find a dozen other ways to nearly bankrupt you this weekend, if that’s what you’re after.’
But Becky doesn’t really hear him. She glances at the bin and then at her daughter taking receipt of an enormous citric-orange cocktail, a delighted smile painted across her face. Becky’s stomach contracts. She does not think of all the positive ways in which her daughter might see her: as a bold, young producer, someone who tackles big issues, someone who understands characters and stories and storytellers. In that moment, all Becky sees is what she’s passed down to her daughter: toxic offerings and her own shame – repackaged, reconstituted, nothing to do with her and yet, still, the shame that is having a mother who is spoken about in the same sentence as the words sexual harassment.
Becky feels like such a fraud standing there on the soft marl carpet. She feels … dirty.
Adam leans in, his shoulder brushing Becky’s, as if he senses she needs reassurance. They are touching each other in the way they have contrived so many times in the past – through doorways, knees brushing under the table – always moving away, snooker balls glancing against each other, but this time is different. This time they are both aware of entering each other’s space and how the atmosphere is warmer and more magnetic there.
She turns to him and says, ‘I think I want to leave.’
Maisie has arranged the cocktails on a low table and is examining a leaflet.
‘If you don’t want the boss paying,’ says Adam. ‘I’ll pay. She’s really happy. Look at her.’
‘No, it’s not that. You don’t need to do that. Please don’t do that.’ She wants for them to run from here and pitch their own moth-eaten bell tent in a field near the beach, to buy a portable barbecue and beers, to sit by a fire and sing eighties power ballads. ‘I feel spoiled. It’s making me uncomfortable.’
‘Your daughter is extremely comfortable with it, I must say.’
‘So should I just suck it up?’
‘Yes, Becks. Try to suck up all the free luxury pampering. And if you can’t handle it, I’ll scout around for a bin for you to sleep in.’
She laughs, and it produces tears. ‘God. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’
‘Working too hard?’
‘I should be grateful, shouldn’t I?’
‘You should try and enjoy it.’
She considers Adam’s point: how Maisie would feel to have something so nice given to her and then taken away in less than ten minutes. And what reason could Becky then offer her for such mean-spiritedness?
‘Look at it this way,’ says Adam, equitably. ‘From Maisie’s point of view she’s being spoiled and pampered for a special birthday. That’s a nice thing, isn’t it?’
It’s only later that Becky comes back to what he has said: did Adam talk about Maisie’s point of view because, from his, it looks different? Like a bribe. Like blood money. He’d be too careful to say it outright. She wants so much to know what he thinks but doesn’t know where to begin or even if she should.
She decides to ignore it all. To be in the moment.
Half an hour later, they meet poolside in the spa complex. The water is untouched. Gemstone blue. Adam and Becky lie on loungers, wrapped in chalk-white waffle robes, gazing up at black-veined marble and gold-stuccoed ceilings.
‘That is a lot of money to spend on a ceiling,’ says Adam, but Becky’s not ready to joke about the money. The money is the problem.
Maisie leaps into the water and emerges, hair shining like the wet skin of a seal. ‘Are you coming in? It’s amazing! I mean, obviously it’s amazing.’
‘In a minute,’ replies Adam, standing up and letting his robe fall off his shoulders. ‘I’m going to have a relax. Beckles, are you all set to relax? Can I get you anything to increase your relaxation?’
‘No, thank you,’ says Becky, lifting her hands off the side of the lounger as if they are covered in something sticky. ‘There used to be a place that sold chocolate pancakes in the car park at Camber Sands. Shall we walk there later and get some? If it still exists?’
Adam pushes his lounger closer to hers. ‘Sorry, I couldn’t hear what you were saying over all the Bach and birdsong.’ He is wearing navy trunks and a T-shirt that falls nicely across his shoulders, over his chest and down his stomach. ‘Something about pancakes in a car park?’
‘I’d just like to get out of here. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Poolside luxury or car park?’ He weighs them up with open palms. ‘It’s a tough one, but the pool wins. Anyway, it doesn’t look like Maisie’s going anywhere.’
Becky looks up and sees Maisie leaning against the poolside at the far end, arms folded over each other, talking to a boy on a lounger whose age Becky cannot determine. When did the boy even arrive? Did Maisie wish for him? Is that how her sixteenth is going to work?
‘That boy has got very defined abs,’ she says.
‘You like a defined ab, do you? How do you rate a good circulatory system and correctly working organs?’
‘Very attractive.’
‘Thanks. I feel less terrible about my abs now.’
‘What abs?’
‘Such cruelty. This is why you’ll die bitter and alone.’
Silence.
‘That,’ says Adam, ‘sounded a lot more fun and teasing in my head.’
‘It’s fine. It’s true.’
‘It’s not true.’
‘Speaking of dying
