Hannah Begbie - Blurred Lines

Becky takes three quick steps, ordering everything inside herself to be quiet, and soon enough she has slipped into a good, quick pace and is running through the streets, heels slamming hard on concrete, landing so as to feel those shockwaves snake up sharp through fibula and tibia. And then, when her chest and muscles ache, she adjusts her gait to save her shin-splints and instead let lungs and thighs scream.

She runs down an alley – she’d never dream of taking it at night and even now, with just the weak morning daylight, she holds her breath in her chest and her keys in her hand like a dagger. Once she’s out the other end, she races for the park where round and round and round she will go, pushing herself faster on each lap.

She lets herself have one lap – only one – where she lets Scott fuck her before she cuts his throat.

Then she is so full of shame. It drums in her ears and leaks out of her tear ducts and flecks her mouth with spittle.

She stops running. Finds a tree. Stands with her back to the rough-edged bark and now she cannot stop what she does next. She curls her hand into a fighter’s fist, making sure her thumb stays on the outside of her second and third knuckles, exactly as she was taught. Then, at the thought of Scott’s flashing smile and icy eyes, at the thought of that woman’s hair shining so bright and gold, her arm stretched so long and thin across the rug, her wrist held, she pummels her thigh. Softly at first, like a drum. And soon enough she is thumping her leg, much harder this time, and imagining all her thoughts, all her feelings, being knocked out of her with every beat, like an old-fashioned washer woman pummelling the dirt out of fabric. Nice and clean, washed away and forgotten.

Soon her leg hurts so much she cannot thump it any more. Underneath her jogging bottoms she knows it will be pink where the flesh has been hammered, and that there will be a yellowish tea-wash stain behind that and that soon the pink patch will go purple and black before it too goes yellow tea-wash. She hammers and punches on the same spot because she is trying to stop something but it is a race she is losing and however much she tries to hold it back, she can’t: her mind ribbons out like it is being released into the wind, sharp claws at each ribbon’s end, thoughts and memories all searching for something, a clue and jigsaw piece, something to make her whole again.

Hounslow, London

13 September 2003

Becky loves Saturdays. No school all day, and then another day just like it to collapse into after this one’s spent.

Today her parents have gone out to the garden centre and left her in peace to enjoy the high-pitched presenters of Saturday morning television as they leap about in front of butter-yellow and sugar-pink backdrops. When Becky is old enough to do this kind of thing, when it is her turn to interview people, it will be in her contract that she gets to choose the colour of the sofa – hot pink to offset her lime-green leggings, thank you! She will ideally graduate quickly from children’s television into a kind of late teatime, primetime Saturday slot just after the family game shows. And as a presenter she will have a habit of asking tough and yet elegantly emotional questions like, ‘But in the last analysis, how does that actually make you feel ?’ Perhaps while reaching out a warm hand in genuine concern. It will sort of be her thing , so that after a while her guests expect it and people will talk about how she was the refreshing opposite of all the old men who do their chat shows.

Becky has a box full of diagrams of the set she will inhabit, drawing each one like a bedroom with four walls. It doesn’t occur to her that you need to put the cameras somewhere, so one wall has to be imaginary. She sees no trickery, no special effects. Just a bright, bubblegum reality that is kind enough to welcome her in, whenever she turns on the television.

Charred burgers and relish for lunch today, the classic Saturday meal in the Shawcross household, complete with Dad complaining about broken tongs and Mum saying he should bloody well do something about it then.

Becky goes to the local pool. In the changing room she watches other women’s bodies as they get in or out of their costumes. As she walks to the water, she is a catwalk model with all eyes on her. When she dives down, she is a dolphin or a jet-ski or a shark. When she returns home later that afternoon the house smells of hot dogs and frying onions: the conciliatory dish her mum offers her dad after a hard day’s arguing.

She calls out from the hallway. ‘It stinks in this house. Will someone please open the window? All my clothes are going to smell of gross oil and onions.’ Then she runs up the steps to her bedroom, two at a time, in a bid to rescue her party outfit.

Downstairs her mum begins a fresh diatribe on her favourite subject, which is ‘being blamed for bloody everything in this house’.

Becky stands at the mirror of her wardrobe in her underwear, wanting to look more sophisticated than she does in these baggy pink cotton knickers bought in bulk by her mum every Christmas. She needs to investigate alternative options. She hates the idea of a G-string, the notion that somehow you are a block of cheddar perpetually on the verge of being halved by a cheese wire. And then there’s the sheer hassle she’d get if she actually bought something nice (comfortable cut, bold-coloured lace) and her mother found them in the washing basket. The torrent of questions that would follow! Who was she thinking of impressing with a pair like that? Who the bloody hell did she think she was? Which boy exactly had she impressed so far? And the crowning glory: what precautions was she taking, and did she know that even condoms can’t prevent pubic lice from spreading?

Becky lays her outfit out on the bed and her make-up on her side table, so that everything is ready. She loves decorating herself: all that nipping and tucking and flaring and wedging, like taking a sharpened pencil and rubber to your outline and adjusting it accordingly.

She holds up a fluorescent-pink vest top 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.’