‘They might not love her, they might not agree with her actions, but I think they’ll understand her. They’ll understand her despair at how badly she was treated by her husband. At how she gave Jason stature, children, her love. Then he took it all. Left her with nothing. Just, discarded her. What happens doesn’t come out of nowhere. She’s not a psycho who does the most messed-up thing she can think of. She’s utterly wronged.’

‘Wronged?’

‘Yes?’

‘Your mate Tommy probably felt wronged after the reviews he got for In Golden Square. Didn’t go out and butcher his family though, did he? Let me know if I’ve got that wrong. I’d have to write him an apology.’

Becky feels her foundations shift. She hasn’t got anything solid after all. She has a whole script and yet suddenly it’s all blown into nothing substantial, and so easily. She sees the reviews forming. ‘Implausible.’ ‘Unlikeable.’

‘Haneke gets away with it every time,’ she smiles. ‘People butchered in their homes. Cutting their throats for effect. He doesn’t worry about making people likeable. He says: this is who we might be, if we strip the rest away.’

‘I fucking hate Haneke films.’

‘No you don’t. I read your review of Caché. You gave it four stars.’

His mouth curls into a half-smile. ‘It’s a four- or five-star film. I still hated it.’

‘So maybe you’ll hate my Medea but still give it an OK review.’

‘It certainly sounds well-intentioned.’

‘I’ll join forces with Tommy and pay to have you killed.’

He laughs. Clinks her glass with his own. ‘Biggest compliment you can pay a critic, threatening to dismember them. It’s only then that we know you actually give a shit about what we say.’

She sees it then, beyond his confidence, the part of him that is both vain and anxious. He is courted here only because his reviews are read. But he wants more than that. She understands that. When he teases her, her discomfort flatters him. The moment his opinion can’t touch her, he’ll hate her instead, albeit from a new distance. Is it only women who have to work this hard? she wonders. Or is it just that the exchange between men is more straightforward? Is it the possibility of sex that makes it so much more difficult? Medea comes to her again; resolute, cutting away the trappings of her gender, ready to be unloved, loathed even, for all time. Is that bravery, or has she simply lost too much to bother saving anything?

She wonders what she might say to Alex, were the boot on the other foot. But she cannot discount the fact he might review her work in the future and thus she cannot offer him anything, really, beyond a passing entertainment and the threat that, maybe, if her stars align, one day she might matter like Matthew does.