Hannah Begbie - Blurred Lines

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Publishers 2020

Copyright © Hannah Begbie 2020

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2020

Cover photograph © Shuttershock.com

Hannah Begbie asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008283261

Ebook Edition © July 2020 ISBN: 9780008283278

Version: 2020-08-13

‘Compelling, fierce and all too believable … a heart-stopping portrayal of what it costs to speak out’

Clare Empson, author of Him

‘Deeply compelling and gripping, with characters so realistic you feel as if you know them, I couldn’t put it down’

Isy Suttie

‘A fast-paced, tightly-wound thriller with great dialogue and compelling characters. A brilliant page-turner perfectly designed for the #MeToo era’

Viv Groskop

‘Beautifully written, very timely, very honest – I read it deep into the night’

Emma Freud

‘Important and perfectly paced, this is one of the best books I’ve read this year’

Zoe West

For my sons, Jack and Griffin

Contents

Cover

Title Page BLURRED LINES Hannah Begbie

Copyright

Praise for Hannah Begbie

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Acknowledgements

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Hannah Begbie

About the Publisher

She feels the sales assistant looking her over, appraising her against the wine that she has delivered to the counter. It is a Burgundy, priced at sixty-five pounds, its provenance declared in elegant loops on a simple label. She couldn’t pronounce this château , and she suspects this man knows that perfectly well. Look at this woman, with her dull, errant hair and the catalogue-bought black trousers that reach for but never quite achieve a tailored fit: at how her slouch and the crease to her brow clash against the pin-straight, darkly varnished floorboards of this wine shop.

He wraps the bottle in crisp crepe paper, one finger cocked like he is taking an elegant tea, as if to tell her: this is how it is done. Granted, her wardrobe, her hairstyle, her whole life cannot be salvaged by a moment of his time, but perhaps the act of witnessing his precision and professionalism and his good taste might, in some small way, chip away at her roughness.

She has pulled this bottle from the shelf because a hand-written card describes it as ‘a classic example of the type’. Now she wishes that she had been bolder. That she had chosen something without a ready-made approval, to state firmly that she knows better than this man, than any man, how her desires are best met by grapes, and terroir , and time in the bottle. Imagine asking if they had the same wine but from another year. A better year, or worse. Knowing what the sun or the humidity or the rain had done to that corner of France in that year.

Why should she know? Who is asking her to know these things?

‘Any tips for drinking it?’ she asks, her demeanour easy and friendly, like she’s only really filling a spare minute while he wraps the thing. Like she has no need of his opinion, but chooses to seek it anyway. A generous gesture that allows for him to know more about this bottle than simply how to wrap it.

‘Are you drinking it straight away?’

She shrugs. She won’t be drinking it at all, unless she’s asked to share it. And even then, she’d only take a few sips.

‘Well don’t let it get too warm,’ he says. ‘Won’t hurt to decant it, but it won’t struggle straight out of the bottle either. Cash or card?’

Becky hands over her debit card. It is the same colour as when she was at school. The first-savings-account hue of somebody who agonizes over whether sixty-five pounds, which she really cannot afford, is enough to spend on wine for a man who might consider it midweek drinking, a bottle to open mindlessly before rushing off to a weekend away, leaving it to idle and spoil on the kitchen island. Is it enough, a bottle like this, for a man like Matthew?