On screen, Amber lays flowers then a tender kiss on the freshly dug ground.
Becky suddenly wishes that she had not seen the film on a day like today, when she was sure to feel even worse later on. That she had allowed herself some time to recover from seeing Amber’s face, beamed ten feet high on the cinema screen, tearful and reproachful, mourning the world’s women lost to betrayal and despair.
The credits begin to roll and – there she is – Becky’s second visitor.
Siobhan’s name has ended up in the credits for Medea, thanks to her taking a new job as Development Executive at Julia Peppard’s company, Bottom Line. Siobhan joined them only a few days before Bottom Line announced their deal to acquire all rights in Medea from Kingfisher Films.
When the news broke, Siobhan had texted Becky: I didn’t plan that one btw. It was the first contact between them since the day Siobhan resigned.
In a year of thinking things over, it is the slap to Siobhan’s face that still makes Becky feel sick with shame. Its viciousness. The fear behind it. The desire to crush and intimidate anyone who might expose her. She has gone over that moment many times, but still, her inability to take Siobhan’s censure on the chin, instead assaulting her, is something that she cannot forgive herself for.
The only silver lining is that it gives her a vanishingly small moment of fellow-feeling with Adam. That slap was not the totality of who she is. It is not her whole truth. And so when Adam had asked her to please believe that what he did to her is not who he is, now she at least understands what he means. It doesn’t change much, it doesn’t excuse anything, but she knows what he means.
A few days after Siobhan texted, Becky had taken the strength gained from a rare good night’s sleep, and the comfort of her daughter sleeping close by, and the sun beaming through a gap in the curtains, and decided to call her. So, without breakfast, without allowing herself time to doubt and unpick the instinct, she picked up the phone and dialled.
Siobhan had answered after two rings. ‘All right?’ she said, a response so unexpected that Becky was silenced. ‘Beck, are you there?’
And then the words had poured out. ‘I’m calling because it matters to me what you think. And I want you to know that of all the bad things I’ve done in the last year, the thing I most regret was hurting you. I can’t take that back and I’m not asking you to forgive me, but I want to tell you that when things started happening with Matthew and Amber, I made some really bad decisions. I was afraid of what might happen and what I might lose. I didn’t want my life destroyed by something I hadn’t done. But that was wrong. I should have been braver than that. And I’m so sorry I took it out on you.’
Enough silence had fallen for Becky to think Siobhan had ended the call until she heard her say, ‘Bit heavy for eight a.m. on a Tuesday?’
Becky had laughed, sniffing back tears.
‘Seriously,’ said Siobhan. ‘I’m feeling sorry for you right now. Some of the stuff they’re saying about you … especially as I know you loved your work and you worked hard. And you did come forward, in the end.’ Becky felt tears on her cheeks and she was glad Siobhan couldn’t see them.
Becky wanted to tell her more: to drape and underpin and contextualize everything with the details of her own story, to do as Matthew and Adam had, garlanding their actions with good reasons, solid explanations, great excuses, and a bulletproof sense that they ought never to be judged for any pain they had caused. And yet, with Siobhan, she tried to let her apology stand unreserved.
‘I’m making my film, Becks,’ said Siobhan. ‘You know the one where, like, if Watership Down was actually a laugh? I honestly think I might get Aniston. Like, comedy Aniston. The best Aniston.’
‘I’m pleased for you,’ she said, believing it too.
The industry had felt like another country then. Its vanities, its ways, its hungers – they had dropped away. On the surface, at least. And Becky had left that behind. So when Siobhan asked her what her next move was going to be, and the reply was that she had been taking long walks, Becky had to work to convince her ex-colleague that this was actually true.
‘But you were doing so well!’ said Siobhan.
Then Amber’s face, drunk or drugged, out of it and miserable, trapped, on its side against Matthew’s rug, stared back at Becky.
‘No, I wasn’t,’ she replied. ‘Not the way I should have been.’
It was only later that Becky realized she might have sounded like she just wasn’t moving up the ladder fast enough but then she thought, Siobhan will get it. They hadn’t made plans to see each other. But nor did it feel impossible that, one day, they might.
Becky watches Emilia’s credit float up the screen.
The film has attracted four-star reviews across the board. Emilia is a name in the Best Actress race, although some pundits have debated whether the ‘Kingfisher scandal’ will still bite her in the ass when it comes to the voters.
Emilia has been canny. Of course she has; her advisors are well-paid to help her navigate things like this. In interviews she has been at pains to emphasize that she refused to do the film while Kingfisher was involved, but after they exited she felt able to at least discuss it with Sharon, who she credits as a ‘visionary director and an unequivocally feminist voice’.
The divorce of Kingfisher and Medea had been messier in real life. Once Matthew’s trial was announced, the project was dead so
