with a spaghetti strap which, because it was bought at a flea market lacking a changing room, is too big and needs adjusting so the lace trim of her bra is not on display. She wreathes strings of beads and trails fake pearls about her neck until she is satisfied with how good the concentric circles look against a plain pink background. Then she takes her jeans – tight, low-slung, the fashion – and pours herself into them, ramming the zip closed twice before it stays put.
The next bit takes the longest. She outlines and flicks and smudges and colours in cheeks and eyes until she looks a picture: the best, most sophisticated version of herself, she thinks.
Just before she leaves, she stands a few feet away from the threshold of the kitchen rubbing moisturizer into arms that are dry and chlorinated from the pool, watching as her mum lays out a fresh cloth on the table.
Her dad turns to her and laughs, then says, ‘You look like you’ve fallen in the dressing-up box.’
Becky wants to say, Don’t be a dick, but she won’t risk being sent to her room and having her plans cancelled. Instead she settles for a sarcastic smile and a mumbled, ‘You’re not exactly setting Milan on fire with those Union Jack socks.’
They’re not the kind of parents who insist on collecting their child from a party at a set time. They don’t suggest it and Becky doesn’t ask them to. That’s one good thing about them. She’ll be home when she’s home.
Their party plans had nearly been abandoned because of Mary’s summer cold, which Becky would probably have been OK with, if she’s honest. But now that Mary is on the up, the only sign of her ailment a lower-than-usual voice, left gravelly by a week’s coughing, it’s all back on and they’re arm in arm, walking down the road from Mary’s house, with Mary pushing and pushing to see if Becky will do a pill with her tonight.
Mary is Irish and favours wearing pinafore dresses with band T-shirts rumpled up underneath. She is extremely persuasive. Her hair is terracotta red out of a packet which emphasizes the china white of her skin, which in turn emphasizes the rings of dark under her eyes which are there because she has to get up earlier than her body wants to, she says, which is one more crime that the education system has to answer for. Mary feels that the school week compounds the problem of weekends, which should ideally involve missing at least one whole night’s sleep.
‘So? Are you going to do one with me or not?’
Mary believes that, as friends, you go down together and you come up together. If it’s a good pill then you have a fellow traveller for the night, and if it’s a bad pill then you don’t die alone.
Today, Mary is disappointed about an unsupportive government and disappointed with the bags under her eyes, and Becky can’t quite bear to add to the tally, at least not yet, so she says: ‘Yeah, maybe I’ll take a pill. We’ll see. Yeah, go on then.’
Mary whoops because it is only a party when you are guaranteed to have fun and not die alone. Then she takes out two cigarettes, lights them both and hands Becky one as if smoking cigarettes together is the best way of sealing this deal of togetherness.
It is Saturday night and Becky is feeling good. Her skin feels lit with magpie-bright colours and sparkles, and it fits well. At this moment, walking arm in arm with her best friend, everything is as it should be.
Oh, to have a photograph of that moment, the time before the rest of it happened.
To have that to come back to, to tell yourself: you are still in there, that girl with flying hair and a newly lit cigarette and a whole weekend, a whole life, laid out for the taking. She is not lost to you. Imagine yourself back into that skin and feel the closeness of the fit. Persuade yourself.
But you are not watched by anything other than a fat, ginger housecat, which moments after you pass him forgets you for a rat-rustle in the bushes nearby.
Becky sits at her kitchen table, skull resting in her hands, the sweat of her running kit rapidly cooling. Suddenly she shakes her head from side to side, like she is trying to unblock water from her ear canals.
Her hands shake as she reaches for her cup of sugar-sweetened tea. There are only minutes left before her daughter rises, before she must pack it all away, every messy part of herself, and instead shower and emerge into the office day clean and effective and capable of more than she feels. And in twelve hours she touches down in Cannes and will need to find yet more energy from somewhere to be extraordinary. Impressive. So much better than her ordinary self.
Her phone dings. Siobhan from the office.
Becky has known her for three years now and they have their taller-than-average heights in common, along with a history of photocopying, office organizing, script reading, and attending to the needs and wants of Matthew. All the things Becky is now shedding.
Something’s going down. Advise turning up on time …
Ding
… early. Ideally? M is in a weird mood. Wants to talk to us.
Becky’s body tenses instinctively, her stomach drawing in as if she is about to be punched there.
Immediately, she thinks: I am to blame for seeing something that wasn’t my business. There would be no point in telling herself that blame is an irrational response – what she feels in that moment comes unbidden, from a place that is fossilized in her bones.
I am to blame for entering his space without permission.
All that time spent preparing for Cannes: choosing and rolling and folding and packing things to decorate herself with: the pretty clothes and the jewel-toned make-up and the bangles and necklaces and perfume. The shameful, wasteful vanity of it all. He’ll cancel the trip, and then sack her from her job. All those years she worked, wasted. All the studying and handbook-reading between toddler meals and screaming baby put-me-downs and pick-me-ups. The evening courses and coursework threaded between hastily arranged pieces of childcare. Not to mention the hours spent reading novels, watching television programmes and films, not for pleasure but to educate herself: studying story construction and characters. Feeling surprised and comforted when some characters sunk into her bones, enough to make her laugh and cry and scream with frustration and sometimes, if she was really lucky, to feel their presence for days and months after … What did people call it? Characters that stayed with you, like a good friend, a true friend who holds your hand at a time of need.
One night, after watching a film about a woman who had fought against the odds to find happiness, all this feeling brimmed out of her and onto the page in the form of a well-worded letter addressed to the Soho townhouse offices of the film’s producer, Matthew Kingsman.
I want to work for you more than anything. I too want to bring stories to people that make them feel what you make them feel: less alone.
It had all been so hard-fought. And soon it would all be gone because she had put herself in the wrong place at the wrong time.
She slaps her own wrist. Stupid girl.
‘Hey, Mum.’ Maisie is standing at the doorway to the kitchen in bare feet and white and blue tartan pyjamas – brushed cotton, a Christmas present from Becky – the ropes of her bathrobe hanging down, brushing the floor gently, vines in the wind. ‘Are you all right?’
Becky
