Blurred Lines: The most timely and gripping psychological thriller of 2020

into the police station to give them her story. Sometimes that feeling lasts for hours, sometimes more than a day. On other days, when doubt and recriminations flood in, she tries to lose herself in the easy tedium of office work. She is doing admin in a small solicitor’s office and she likes the simplicity of it. It requires her to be efficient and organized and conscientious, but nothing else. Nobody needs, or asks for, her ideas. She will not change anything here. Her name goes on nothing. She is useful and she is appreciated for it, and the pay is sufficient so long as she and Maisie never do anything expensive. Nobody demands lifelong loyalty from her here. One day she will look further, cast her net for other ways to spend her days but, for now, it is exactly what she needs. For now, it is enough.

On her lunch breaks, Becky sits on the green near the office and watches people talk. She allows herself to zone out, watching how tree branches bend and dip in the breeze. She allows herself to be bored. There is no pressure in this job. No one is emailing her or phoning or texting her any more. Instead there are starlings, turning as one above her, and rats slinking around the sides of a canal, and pretty purple-flowering weeds that spout from a clogged drainpipe.

She has taken to wearing only those clothes that feel good on her skin. On the rare occasion that she buys something new, it is all soft cottons and skirts that float and fall long – styles that may age her but, unlike her old black trousers and button-up shirts, make her feel less held-in, or more softly held.

Her hair is cut to a short bob. People have commented on how it brings out her rosy cheeks and beautiful eyes, but it is the colour she loves: dyed from mouse to mahogany it glosses for the darker seasons and glows warm in the summer months. And it changes the shape of her face. She is no longer so readily identified as the woman from the trial. In the office, where it’s only six of them, it has never come up. Nor has she raised it. And it’s not a drinks-after-work kind of office. They disband at five, each heading off to their own low-key life.

After twenty minutes on the bus, Becky has made it to Islington. She passes the Queen’s Head pub. Scott took her out drinking here a few months ago, pushing a vanilla-scented cocktail into her hand before they both sunk deep into a cracked-leather sofa.

Scott likes the way Becky never tells him he should come out to his parents. Everyone else is mad-keen that he do it, he says, to ‘really rub the gay in their faces before they croak’. He’s just not sure that it’s very kind, is it? Bad enough that he’s torturing them with a lack of grandchildren. But nor does he want to be a Bad Gay, letting the side down. ‘The thing is,’ he tells her, ‘they bought me theatre tokens for my last birthday and said maybe we could all go and see a West End musical together, even though that’s really not my thing, so I think they’re basically trying to tell me they know and they’re fine with it. Don’t you think?’

She has unpicked all her hatred from his face. His eyes no longer appraise women’s bodies for opportunities to drug then abuse them. His smile conceals nothing. If he frowns, it is not a sly flash of his true self – instead it is some passing discontentment, nothing to worry about. In fact, she has become fond of his face. It is open and animated. Scott cries easily. He throws back his head when he laughs. He likes to hold her hand when they’re talking, and she likes that, too.

Scott has a boyfriend at the moment. His name is Ryan. It can’t last, whispers Scott when Ryan is well within earshot, he’s too pretty and too lovely and he makes incredible hummus! Ryan thinks Becky ought to start dating again. ‘You’re wearing too much billowing velvet,’ he tells her. ‘Eventually you’ll be mistaken for a chaise longue and then that’ll be it. You’ll be stuck in some old fruit’s drawing room for the rest of your life. You’re fucking fit, Becky. You need to get out there and get some!’

‘No,’ says Scott. ‘I don’t want to share her with anyone, let alone a heterosexual!’ They carry on in this fashion, teasing her and so taking care of her. Maisie says the same things about dating. Becky is thirty-three now. That’s a third of a life, Maisie tells her, with the blissful entitlement of someone who believes anyone she loves will live a hundred years or more.

Does Becky want another child? And someone to have that child with?

Not yet. She doesn’t think so.

Not yet – her watchwords of the last few months. Her mantra. A ‘no’ withheld or postponed. A possibility untested and untaken, but not yet refused.

Becky steps into the cinema foyer. It is an elegant old art deco picture house that smells of filter coffee and musty frayed velvet. She has timed her arrival so that there will be very little hanging around in a lit theatre; in fact, the adverts are already playing.

She buys popcorn and a bottle of Diet Coke. Why not? She has taken a day off work for this, one of her precious ‘annual leave entitlements’. Why not enjoy it? She reconsiders and buys a shiny plastic bag of chocolates as well. Because God knows she is about to need them. Isn’t she?

She picks a seat off to the side and towards the back. It’s midweek, in the middle of the day, and the auditorium is nearly empty, just three other people, all alone, sitting beneath the dancing projector beam. Despite everything, Becky feels a little kick of magic. She loves