And I lost everything.
Would Maisie have carried on tearing her apart then?
Becky has rehearsed the moment many times, picturing Maisie as she learns that her father – the man she loves most in the world, who gets her humour, who makes pancakes with her, who kisses her hello and goodbye and with whom she feels safe – broke into her mother, and then lied. And lied and lied.
No longer the child of two kids who were once in love enough to do it, and then kept her because they loved her, and still love her together. Instead, a child born of violence. A nearly-given-away child. A lied-to infant, daughter of a deceived and broken mother and her manipulative rapist. Her baby face searched for evidence of her paternity.
What happens when your story collapses? How do you fill the gaps that you are left with? Becky knows something about that, and it is the last thing she wants for her daughter. But it is the price that would be paid for justice with Adam. There is no way around that. If she wants to keep her child as she is today – happy, loved, and whole – then there is no place for the truth.
And so she makes a choice.
She chooses her daughter, who in this moment is screaming at her and calling her a terrible person and angrily claiming that she will never forgive her for having done this to another woman.
Becky chooses her daughter.
Let Maisie scorn her. Let Maisie reject her. Let Maisie hate her, if she must – but Becky knows she will never reach for Medea’s knives and poisons.
She will let Adam have Maisie, only for the sake of letting Maisie have Adam.
She will not knowingly raise her daughter, part of a new generation, to feel broken, at fault and ashamed.
When Adam stopped coming round to their flat, Maisie of course had her narrative. Becky was the cause and Adam’s absence was the effect.
Maisie was furious. She demanded that Becky make things right. Unlike Lily, whose parents could apparently not be within a thousand yards of each other, she had a Mum and Dad who hung out. Who liked each other!
‘I’m sorry,’ Becky had said, again, as Maisie set off for Adam’s flat, enraged at the new distance.
Becky had cried. Not for her daughter now, and not for Amber either, but finally for herself.
Adam had lost nothing but Becky. How could that possibly be fair?
Maisie’s whole school knew about her mother. Overnight she flipped from being someone who was making a cool feminist film with rising star Emilia Cosvelinos, to a hypocrite, career-prioritizing, woman-trashing, liar-bitch. The woman in the kitchen. The woman who did not come forward (at least not straight away).
One night, soon after the news broke, she heard Maisie come crashing and tripping back into their flat.
She waited for her daughter to fall asleep before she poked her head around the door. She smelt the acetone traces of alcohol. She picked Maisie’s school blazer off the bedroom floor and smelt the sharp and sweet herbal scent of weed on it. But what authority did she have left?
She tiptoed back to her own bed and sat, head in hands.
Two days later, Becky was waiting at the school gates after a meeting. She’d spent nearly half an hour in the headmistress’s office laying out the case for her daughter as a talented and deserving scholarship candidate, who was going through a rough patch. The headmistress had been supportive. Maisie had never been a problematic student before now. Then Becky had decided to wait at the gates for Maisie, risking the cold shoulder, a stony silence, head in her phone as they made their way home. And so, when she saw Maisie break away from her friends and walk towards her with a not-unwelcoming smile, Becky was surprised.
Even more surprised when Maisie began talking to her as if she was picking up from a conversation they’d started earlier that day. ‘Jules’s mum showed me pictures of the women living in shacks who look after their kids by selling their bodies to truckers,’ she said. ‘She said you’re a victim of a patriarchy that pressures women to support men. I think that’s what she said. I was a bit stoned. She also told me to stop getting stoned in term-time.’
‘What did you think about that?’
‘She seemed really shitty that I was angry with you. And she’s really clever. So, I don’t know …’
‘You don’t know what?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong? I don’t know. I sort of want to be wrong.’
Marry Jules, Becky had thought. Marry him for his mother.
It’s not like it was all bad. Some old friends came out of the woodwork to support her. She even got a postcard from her schoolfriend Mary wishing her well. A few industry contacts reached out and told her that it didn’t sit right that ‘yet again’ a powerful man’s downfall also took out the women around him. You may be down but you’re certainly not out, they told her, though nobody went as far as offering her a job. Nobody was that stupid, bringing that kind of heat to their own doorstep. But there were at least hints that, when things died down, it wouldn’t be impossible for her to find her way back. If that was what she wanted.
Matthew didn’t get in touch, either before or after the trial. For all matters relating to Kingfisher, Becky spoke to lawyers.
In fact, apart from in court, Becky hasn’t heard Matthew’s voice in a year. She has seen him in the papers a few times, looking pale and overweight and bone-tired.
She feels sorry for him, despite everything. How must it be to hold your children and still hope to feel loved by them when the world knows you as a rapist?
He sold everything he could. He chose to leave rather than attempt to rebuild. He probably calls it retirement, but really it
