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.