The day Matthew hires her as his PA, with the promise of a move into feature film development if she does her time and proves her worth, Becky finds herself standing outside the central London office, employed, with the sun out, a script to write a report on in her bag, an overpriced coffee in her hand, and she realizes that Adam was right, in the early hours of that kids’ playground in Hounslow. She has a life that she loves, after all.

A piece of long-held tension drops away.

That evening, after Maisie is long since tucked-up and asleep, she opens her new laptop – a congratulatory gift from Adam – and for the first time Googles his name:

Scott.

Chapter 14

Less than an hour after returning home from Cannes, Becky finds herself sitting in the back of a company-account black cab, her handbag still cluttered with boarding pass pieces, torn luggage labels, a free mini-bag of airline pretzels, napkins. She has been summoned back to the office, torn away from Maisie and Adam and their cupcakes.

‘Where are you?’ Matthew had asked. He had flown back on a flight even earlier than hers to catch his son Bart before he left on the school trip to Venice. ‘Sorry, but I need you back at the office as soon as you can manage.’

As Becky’s cab swings past the oversized-headphone-and-satchel-wearing walkers of Old Street, she inflicts tiny mutilations to her body – straightening her hair where it will not be straightened with tugs to the skull, pulling at her looped silver earrings so the lobes stretch and sting. She is anxious. She copes badly with the threat of bad news in a vacuum. What has she done? How has she messed up?

She taps hard at her phone and finds an image of Scott, grinning madly with freshly bleached hair. Nominated for an award now! Oh Scott, the gods keep on giving! Something about being the best something in something to do with finance? Who cares what exactly, the point is he looks like the cat that got the cream, the Olympian gold medallist, Zeus, Neptune, Caesar – so smug with his new Tom Ford sunglasses balanced on his head, questioning: But what to wear on the big night?

Body bag? Thinks Becky, toggling to Google Maps, typing in his office address and watching (not for the first time) the thick blue-lined route appear, running hot and fast like a vein through London. She could go there now, couldn’t she? Later today, perhaps, or tomorrow when she’s worked out exactly what she will say. Something like: Did you hold me down as you fucked me? You hurt me, you know. She could get her answers, she could, but then what? A police investigation? They’d have to believe her first! And what to tell Adam? What to tell Maisie? What if Scott denied it?