Becky has built a foundation on hating him. And now it is crumbling.
‘I was so desperate. I thought everyone could see it on me. I just wanted people to know we’d gone off together. Maybe think we were a thing, so they wouldn’t start wondering. And then we had a really good time. Or at least I did. I just don’t understand what this is.’
‘You didn’t do anything with me after that?’
‘God no. I told the guys the next day that I fingered you. I’m really sorry. That was so gross of me, and it was utter bullshit. I just wanted them to think I had.’
‘You just left me sleeping in that bed?’
‘Becky, what happened? Seriously?’ He sits back, thoughtful. ‘That party was in September right?’ His thoughts coalesce. ‘Did you get pregnant that night?’ She nods. ‘With Adam Thewlis, wasn’t it?’
‘No. I don’t know who got me pregnant. I don’t know who …’ She chokes and his face clouds with understanding.
‘Oh. Oh shit. Oh fucking hell.’ Scott is crying freely now. A splayed palm at his heart, eyes welling with tears again. What she sees is a man who hates to be thought of badly. Who tries to be good. He is telling the truth. She knows it in her bones.
‘You thought I’d raped you?’ he says.
She nods.
‘You’ve thought that for …?’
‘Since that night,’ she says.
‘Oh Becky. Oh fuck. Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘You were the last person I remember.’
‘I could never have …’
‘I believe you. I’m sorry.’
‘You know how I said I went home with Bento? Ben Towbridge? We’d been sort of trying things out with each other for about a month. Both in the closet. Barely even out of the closet with each other, even giving each other – well, anyway. I mean, I was always gay. My parents though … They were – they still are – massive homophobes. I’m just waiting for them to die before I’m out-out.’ He helps Becky off the floor and into one of the meeting-room chairs, sitting down next to her, hands clasping hers. ‘What happened?’ he asks her.
‘I thought it was you,’ she says. ‘I’ve never known what happened. It’s been killing me.’
‘And you had the baby?’
‘Yes. She’s sixteen now. She’s the best thing in my life.’
‘Fuck me, that’s complicated though.’
‘Not to her. She doesn’t know. Nobody knows. Apart from Adam. She thinks Adam’s her dad.’
‘And he took that on?’
‘I was going to kill myself. He told my parents and his parents that he was the father. It gave my parents someone else to be angry with and … then I couldn’t do it. Because he’d have been blamed and that wouldn’t have been fair. I was going to give the baby up. But then I held her and … well …’
‘And he carried on? Saying she was his?’ Scott wipes his eyes. ‘That is love. Fuck me, that is love. Tell me you got married?’
Becky shakes her head. ‘I’ve been a real mess. It really fucked me up.’
‘Of course it did.’
‘At least I had you.’
‘What?’
‘I had you to hate. And now I don’t have anything all over again.’
They sit there, holding each other’s hands. She feels like a cork lost on the ocean. She has imagined killing this man. She has wanted him to suffer. And now her hands are in his, and he is crying over her pain.
He tucked her in, in the recovery position in case she was sick.
‘I know it sounds weird,’ he says, ‘but in case you start thinking it must be bullshit and I must be lying …’
‘I believe you.’
‘Just listen. I think you should, like, get a DNA test of me done, or whatever. Even if you think it’s crazy. It’s good you believe me, but have the proof as well.’
She thinks about the scissors in her pocket and how hard she has been gripping them. How crazy her plan feels now. That she was going to shear the evidence from him. And here he is, offering it to her.
He sticks his head out of the meeting-room door and calls out: ‘Yol, could I have some scissors and some tissues in here, please?’
When Yol brings them, looking curious but saying nothing, he snips off a lock of his hair, and swabs the inside of his cheek with one of the tissues. ‘If you want me to do a blood test or something, I’ll always say yes, OK? But at least you’ve got these.’
She takes them, knowing she’ll never use them.
‘You’ve had quite a ride,’ he says to her. ‘Holy shit, Becky.’
They hug one last time as she leaves Scott’s office. In the lift, Becky squeezes her hand into a fist in her pocket and feels sticky blood from where the scissors have punctured a hole in her palm. She wonders if one day she will be so punctured that nothing will remain of her.
And yet, despite feeling damaged, she does not feel drained. She feels something new. A feeling that is quick and sharp and predatory and she is so afraid of it that she begins to run.
There is a darkness building inside her with the realization that she has lost the last of her power. She lacks even a name, now, to test against her pain.
She runs as if there are flames licking at her feet: home, down sun-drenched pavements, past lines of narrow-windowed, residential houses punctuated with baby-blue, grey, baby-pink and pale lime paint-jobs. She runs through estates, cutting across playgrounds and through triangles of green, skirting buggies and slaloming slow-walking toddlers and shoppers. She runs until her legs tingle and lightning bolts drive themselves through her chest cavity each time she stumbles. She runs fast, so fast from the fear that she may have passed the man that travelled into her and stole from her, a thousand times over. She may have passed him on the street striding, pausing, walking, standing still
