And then there was whatever he paid his exceptionally-skilled barristers to defend him from the rape charge. All in, it probably cost him more than Medea’s total budget.
The day Becky received an email from Kingfisher Films’ lawyer informing her that she was no longer in its employment she had dug out her old contract and struggled through terms and conditions she didn’t remember ever having read. A contract signed at a time when she was simply grateful to have the job. She had gone through the four-page document with quivering hands: a trial three-month period, during which either party could decide to terminate … A salary that was paid monthly into her bank account … Standard terms and conditions. She might have caved and taken her termination lying down, had she not been acutely aware of a stack of bills to pay, and her iron-clad refusal to ask Adam for help. She would not let the first neutral words spoken to him be ones asking him for something. So she had knocked back a neat gin and called the lawyer back, stating in very simple terms that she expected a proper redundancy package. She had named her price. And she wanted a guarantee that if Medea was made, she would receive the full bonuses promised to her. The lawyer had outright laughed at the idea Medea might survive this shit-storm, but Becky had been adamant. She said she’d sell her story to the press if the money wasn’t in her account, and a deal memo agreeing Medea payments in her hands, by the end of the day.
She’d hung up. And to her surprise and relief, she received both. And of course the Medea demand had worked out very well.
Was it blood money? No, she told herself. She had earned it legitimately. By the time she co-signed the agreement between Kingfisher and Siobhan’s new employers, she had her own lawyer on board. She signed away any right to have her name in the credits, in exchange for a substantial cheque. That cheque had been the deposit for her flat with the view of the treetops.
Becky spills outside, blinking into sunlight after the darkness of the cinema. She stayed until the end credits finished. A small part of her had hoped that maybe someone might have sneaked a coded thank you to her into the ‘Special Thanks’ section. She might have been alluded to somehow, a wave of recognition made in disguise. But no. Her erasure is complete.
And what does she think of her film? Or rather, the film.
No. Her film.
She thinks she likes it. She thinks perhaps one day, when she can bear to tell the story as a dry account of some things that happened, instead of a searing mea culpa, then maybe she will refer to it out loud as her film. She is glad at least that it exists, to let go of it this way.
And tomorrow she will go back to work in the solicitor’s office, and set about checking, filing and posting.
She checks her phone, flicking off Airplane Mode. Amber Heath has texted to say she is running five minutes late to meet her.
Chapter 29
Becky kills time, sitting on the steps of a shopping arcade near the cinema, with a cup of coffee, hiding behind her sunglasses.
She watches as a rowdy group of teenage girls, probably skiving off school, jostle over a phone screen, shrieking with laughter, giving each other endless grief for some slip of the emotions over a boy, a photo, a friend, just life. They are still at the beginning of so much. Becky tries not to nakedly stare at them. The sunglasses help.
The past year has been hard on her own sweet teenager.
When the news broke that Amber Heath’s longed-for witness had a name and face, Maisie had asked Becky the question, and Becky had told her, Yes, it was me.
‘You were there when it happened?’ Maisie said through her tears. ‘All that time you sat on your hands and didn’t say anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you defended him! You said what a good man he was!’
‘Yes.’
‘While everyone called Amber a liar for making up a witness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Mum, she fucking tried to kill herself!’
‘I know.’
‘And you were there?’
‘I saw two people having sex and I left straight away. I didn’t really understand what I’d seen, other than Matthew on the floor with someone who wasn’t his wife.’
‘But she asked you to come forward.’
‘I know.’
‘And you didn’t. You lied and said it wasn’t you.’
‘I’ve told the police everything.’
‘When did you do that?’
‘A couple of days ago.’
‘But I don’t understand. Why didn’t you say something straight away?’
‘I wish I had.’
‘No, answer the fucking question! Why didn’t you say anything?’ And with that, Maisie had broken: the forensic questioning gone, and in its place an angry blizzard of accusations and condemnations. ‘What if it had been me? How would you have felt if someone put their fucking stupid career ahead of helping me out while I got raped on a floor somewhere?’
What could she say to save herself?
She might have said: listen. I might have had a different life, if Adam hadn’t raped me and then lied to me for sixteen years.
I might have been less frightened of losing the things I had.
She might have said: I spent sixteen years believing that I was lying to you when we told you Adam was your father. For most of that time, I blamed a man who turns out to be gay and kind and horrified that I thought that about him. I used to fantasize about killing him.
I might not have been so warped and wounded.
You might not have existed.
I ended up owing too much to two men.
Two
